This is, I suppose, a question that only applies to folks who have both Hulu Plus and Netflix.
Are y’all happier with shows that drop a season at a time, Netflix style, or on a more traditional weekly basis? I was thinking about how the new season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is coming out Friday and I’m really looking forward to it. Then I was thinking about how I’m going to be sad when Sunday rolls around and I’m done with it.
I think that on the micro level I love it when shows come out a season at a time, but on the macro level I love knowing that when I come home on any given day, Hulu is going to have a couple new episodes of the shows I like that aired the night before. And, moreover, that if I get busy for a few days those shows are going to just pile up into a nice little buffer.
On the other hand, there won’t be another season of Kimmy for a year. Once I binge, it’s gone. And forget trying to pace myself. If I could do that, I wouldn’t be a diabetic.
I have mixed feelings as you do, about binging TV culture. I mean I like that if I finish an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or Orange is the New Black I can immediate watch the next one until the season is over. However, in contrast to, say, HBO shows - It’s hard to have a “water cooler” discussion about OitNB in the same way as Game of Thrones. The later is almost a collective experience, especially when something major happens. It’s even greater due to spoiler politics - with a binging show it’s hard to have any discussion on, because you have to figure out which episode you both are on. And even then, if you binge, you may not recall explicitly which event happened in which episode.
I’m not sure how I feel. I love time-shifting but also like the way people will actually talk about a show after it airs in the more traditional model. It’s tough to talk about binge-able shows unless all parties have seen every episode. Particularly when binging, it’s tough to remember what happened in which episode.
It’s interesting that even some cable channels are getting into binge-watching. Showtime is releasing every episode of Andrew Dice Clay’s new show on-demand and streaming while still airing it weekly for the six episodes. I think we will see this happening more often in the near future when it comes to shows that are on TV.
No reason to limit the question to those who have those services. Ever since television shows were released on DVD (or even on VHS), people have been able to binge-watch whole seasons or entire series runs.
I wish Netflix would let you set up a mixed queue of stuff to watch. Like one episode of this, one of that, one of the other thing, a documentary, a couple episodes of this…then repeat.
They make it too easy to binge, by just serving you up the next episode in a series. I would like to watch House of Cards, Daredevil and Trailer Park Boys all at once, with ease, without having to use my remote.
That’s true, not to mention runs of seasons on Amazon and whatnot. But I’m specifically thinking about new content (which Amazon is also doing a little of) rather than seasons of existing content.
Either way, the first sentence of my OP is a bit disjointed and irrelevant since somebody with cable and Netflix or cable and Amazon might experience the same conundrum as me. I was phrasing the question a little differently when I first began writing it.
I don’t “binge” watch one episode after another, but I don’t start watching a show until I’ve got an entire season’s worth of episodes on hand either - this way I’m never waiting for a new episode, and can watch them on whatever schedule I prefer (usually something like a few episodes a week.)
I don’t binge. I have a limited amount of time to watch TV per week, so I watch one episode at a time. If it’s a weekend, I might watch two. I also like a little time to think about what I’ve seen.
I prefer shows that are available all once like NetFlix’s House of Cards.
I rarely binge watch all of it immediately - usually I do an episode a night over a week or so, but I like having control over that schedule. If the show is at a cliffhanger and I have time, I want to keep going. If I want to ponder an episode and analyze it, I’ll stop to do that instead, but I probably don’t want a whole week of pondering. I’d rather keep going after a day or two.
I didn’t use to watch much TV and only now realize that I lost interest while waiting for the next week to see another episode, or more likely a few weeks depending on the fickle schedule of the network. PVR helped a bit, but there wasn’t enough storage to keep all the episodes and movies until I wanted to watch them. I could never justify to myself the cost of a DVD of a series, so I never went that route.
On demand streaming has changed how I watch entirely, I love binging entire seasons or series. And since I wasn’t watching much TV for the past few decades, I have lots of amazing shows to catch up on, plus Netflix and others have been developing their own shows.
Spoilers are a bit of a problem, but it’s much the same for weekly shows since most people don’t watch those on the day they air and things leak early anyway.
I have found it adds to my enjoyment to read episodic reviews on av club or other sites, including this one, as I watch. That’s my water cooler experience.
I like apportioned viewing (sounds like a rule an evil stepmother makes for the children).
Like some others have said, I like a bit of breathing room between episodes so I can digest them mentally. I also come here and to AV Club to see what I might have missed. Lots of time I’ll re-watch “Better Off Saul” or BBT to see some details that I originally missed. If these were binge episodes I wouldn’t get the chance to do that before getting lost in the next episode.
The only time I binge watch is when the local cable company has a preview weekend for HBO or Showtime. Then I’ll use their on-demand features to watch all of the episodes of things like “The Leftovers” or “Game of Thrones” . I also discovered that if the preview lasts through Monday, if you start watching on demand for just a minute on Monday, that episode or movie is available for another 24 hours, so the preview can last another day.