It seems like the default viewing method nowadays, but I just don’t enjoy watching that much of one thing all at once. I get the appeal, if you like it, great. I like the occasional movie marathon, and I’m fine watching a couple episodes in a row. It’s just that I find myself getting bored and fidgety after too long.
It’s probably because I’m “old,” but to me a television show isn’t a single ten-hour movie. Even shows I really like, like Stranger Things or That 70’s Show, i like to take a break, watch something else maybe, reflect, laugh at a different style of humor.
The only reason this is even a small issue is that it makes discussion of said shows problematic. If my wife or my friend binges a show we both watch, it hampers conversation with spoiler avoidance and general plot flow.
Sorry to complain. Have fun watching however you watch.
One million (ok, actually about 40) years ago, I remember watching a particular popular program that came weekly in the network rotation. I anticipated it, watched it, digested it, discussed it with others at the “water cooler”, and anticipated the following installment. Somehow dissecting and reliving it were a sort of foreplay and afterglow.
I need time to process, digest, and formulate some hypotheses—I need to participate. I don’t want to simply learn the facts but I also want to absorb the emotions that go along with that. So I think I get where you’re going, OP. We don’t all process at the same speed etc. Among fiction writers, the term is “Tease to please.” Put an idea out there and let the audience reflect on it.
:dubious: That’s how every current network TV or premium cable show still is. It’s not like that format has gone away at all. It’s just streaming shows that release their season all at once (though some of those also adhere to the weekly format.)
I find the best way for me to binge is not multiple episodes per day, but one episode every one or two days. It’s especially hard when they are hour-longs, which most are (though these days length can vary arbitrarily).
There will occasionally be weeks where four or five shows will all release at around the same time and it really gets overwhelming. That’s when I really have to discipline myself and have to, at most, watch two separate shows each day. Any more than that and my brain gets too full. I’ll break them up with other kinds of work/leisure, which helps a lot (video games, reading articles online, social media etc).
I do feel the pressure of keeping up with everyone else, who somehow seem willing to binge an entire show over a weekend, but bugger 'em, they’re the exception not the rule, and most of us go at a more measured pace, squeezing things in where we can fit them into our routines. And that’s okay.
It’s become easier as more people adjust to slower consumption too. We’re all starting to feel it a bit, I think.
I like the option of binging, or not. Like GuanoLad, I appreciate being able to watch 1-2 episodes each day. Part of the reason is that my memory isn’t the greatest, so watching something with a complicated plot only once a week means I might forget stuff. The more compressed watching schedule makes it easier to keep track of who’s who/what plot twists have occurred.
To be honest, watching a show depends on how much I’m interested. I can get through several 1-hour episodes in a day, or watch one 20-minute episode for several days.
I think you end up enjoying a show less if you binge watch it. Some time between episodes lets you digest and think about and talk about what you saw, and to anticipate and get excited for the next one. If you’re eating a dessert, you take your time to enjoy it, you don’t (or shouldn’t) just scarf it down as fast as you can. That’s an imperfect analogy but I think you get what I mean.
Binging it reduces the impact, the anticipation, the reflection, the depth of understanding, and just sort of wears you out on that thing so that you don’t enjoy it as much.
I’d much rather watch 3 or 4 shows at once and switch between them and consume each at a relatively slow pace than to try to burn through one as fast as I can. I think even for people that prefer binging they’d end up getting more enjoyment overall out of the work if they slowed down.
I especially hate the drop a season all at once model of netflix/amazon prime because it makes discussion of the show almost impossible and makes it hard to have a shared cultural experience. Something like Game of Thrones creates all kinds of discussion and it’s a shared cultural entity. Something like Stranger Things becomes “hey, did you see the new Stranger things yet?” “Uh, I’m up to episode 3, where are you at?” “Oh I already watched the whole season. Remember when… shit… did you see that part yet? Nevermind.”
I don’t either usually. For hour long shows I usually only watch one or two in a row. For half hour sitcoms, three or four at most. Sometimes it seems to me people who really binge start to see it as a grind they need to get through and stop really watching and instead only care about the goal of finishing.
We never binge-watch, though I work with people who always do. We start by watching the first two episodes to see if we’re interested. If we are, we’ll watch two a week to keep up on the plot and characters. We find it difficult to do that if we only watch one per week. It seems many shows nowadays have a large number of characters. Sometimes someone who appears in episode 2 won’t show up again until episode 6, and by then I’ve forgotten who they are.
This is true. The other thing is the number of shows available today. I think there are more than 500 new shows each year on broadcast, basic cable, premium cable or streaming platforms. I grew up in the broadcast era when there were only three national networks and some local independent stations. So if you watched something on NBC, you could go to school or work the next day and reliably find someone who watched the same thing. (Did you see that character fall down the elevator shaft in L.A. Law last night?) There’s less of that now; there are lots of threads about shows I never watched because I don’t have this or that streaming service or premium cable channel. And of course when they drop all the episodes at once, you can’t talk about the show from the same common point.
It was fun when we talked about Game of Thrones episodes here, or even earlier, episodes of Lost. (Why was there a polar bear on that deserted island?)
-If it’s something that I really love, I want to savor it and make it last as long as possible. Right now I have 5 episodes of What We Do in the Shadows on my DVR. I’m waiting for the perfect time to watch them and then it will be one per day if even that.
-I almost get a sick to my stomach feeling watching hours and hours of the same show. I need to mix it up a little.
-I have other things I need/want to do. It feels like a huge waste of time. It’s a little easier in the winter when I’m cooped up. My boss and I were watching Ozark around the same time. I’d watch an episode when I went to bed each night, sometimes falling asleep before it ended. So it was taking me more than a day sometimes for an episode. One Saturday in May we had the most beautiful weather. It was our first day in the 70s and not a cloud in the sky. In Minnesota, that’s a holiday! The following Monday, my boss tells me that he and his wife watched the entire season plus some of the next on Saturday from early afternoon until 1am! I could not even fathom doing that. The thought of sitting in the house staring at the tv for 12 hours on the most beautiful day ever made me (like I said above) sick to my stomach.
Oh, I didn’t mean it had gone away. Rather, it was the only choice we had. 40 years ago, in 1980? Most of us probably didn’t have a VCR either so we couldn’t make a “binge-it-yourself” recording for ourselves, either.
I really wish some streaming video service would add a “playlist” feature, like any music streaming service does (YouTube allows this…does paid YouTube do this?)
I want to sit and watch a mix of shows. One Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Rec, Community, then again and again and again. I don’t want to have to get to the end of an Office episode then exit and find Community and find the next episode. And sometimes I don’t want to binge.
There’s got to be some sort of licensing problem with the idea of playlists, otherwise they’d be doing it already. User-created playlists is a great data goldmine!
Agreed. Good example, Disney+ has all the Disney Afternoon animated shows from my childhood but no easy way to watch them ina block together. Likewise, Spin and Marty is presented separately from the Mickey Mouse Club, so you have to back out to the menu repeatedly to view it like it was originally broadcast.
I don’t really binge watch either, for reasons others already mentioned. I don’t really have enough free time most days to watch more than an hour or two of TV. And I don’t really like just watching the same thing continuously, so I tend to mix it up and get into a weekly routine with me streaming shows. So I might watch an episode of Bojack Horseman every Monday night, an episode of Fleabag every Tuesday, etc. Now that I’m working from home and I don’t have my old commute I have a bit more time, so lately I’ve been stretching it to two or three episodes per evening, but still the same pattern of a different show each day of the week.
One gripe I have with shows that were specifically for streaming services is that they don’t include that recap of the previous episodes at the beginning like network TV shows do. It’s almost like they expect you to binge watch and have the things that happened in previous episodes fresh in your mind. But with my one episode per week pattern if say episode 6 reverences something that happened back in episode 1, it’s been like 6 weeks since I saw episode 1. I need something to refresh my memory as to what happened. That’s typically more of an issue with dramas than comedies.
I am currently going through 19 shows. Five of them are first time and the rest are repeats. I rarely watch more than two or three of a particular show.
Columbo is more of a movie. It’s one show every two weeks or so.
I have some that are one or two episodes a week. For example, it could be MAS*H Monday.
Let’s see… 19 shows. Average maybe four episodes a day, which makes 28. So, I average little over one time a week for each one.
bing watching is more fun from a solo perspective.
But like you said, waiting a week between episodes is more fun socially. I remember when I was a kid I would call family and friends after every survivor episode. We would strategize and make predictions about what would happen next, it was fun!
I don’t binge watch. Admittedly, I just don’t watch that many shows, especially with so many new shows having so many characters and so many plot twists.
But I know I’m in the minority. Most of the time, I’ll just watch a movie which is over in 2 hours or so.