To Binge or Not to Binge…What’s the Best Way to Watch Television?

In 2005, iTunes began streaming select television programs that became downloadable after direct payment. YouTube followed shortly after that the same year, and even illegally posted shows started streaming. As network television and other platforms caught on, streaming took the nation by storm. Netflix began streaming in 2007, and then really upped the ante in 2013 when they popularized the idea of releasing all the episodes of its serial programs simultaneously.

This ‘dropping’ or ‘dumping,’ as it was often crudely called, soon became known by a more fun word, as well as one that suggested the addictive implications of so much at once, with the term “binge-watching.” Indeed, by November of 2015, the Collins English Dictionary chose the word “binge-watch” as the word of the year.

So, is “binging” all it’s cracked up to be? Is watching the entire slate of episodes of Netflix’s runaway hit Dead to Me better than if it was enjoyed one week at a time? Of course, binging a series fits perfectly with the shifting paradigm of viewer power that now permeates all media. Consumers now have oodles of power to control what they want and when they want it with long waits a thing of the past.

They can order anything from Amazon in a day, sometimes an hour. Folks can fast-forward through any commercials on their DVRs. And social media allows us all to block whomever we want. The world has become inundated with the idea of instant gratification, so why shouldn’t television programming be available all at once and let each viewer decide if binging is right for them?

Nibbling vs Gorging

Jeffrey Wright in Westworld

Network television still conforms to a weekly calendar, limiting how much of a show we can see at one time. Even basic cable programs and premium channels like HBO and Showtime have refused to ‘drop’ all of their shows on any one date. Instead, these platforms cling to the idea of “appointment TV” just as much as was the norm throughout the first 70 years of programming.

If one wants to watch a season of Westworld or Ray Donovan all in one sitting, they certainly can, but it will have to be after all episodes have already debuted in their given three-month viewing window.

Is binging a better way to watch television though, outside of the control factor? Arguably, the ability to control when you see something is a small part of the audience experience when viewing any program.

After all, isn’t the contemplation of a show, and subsequent discussion of it with friends, part of its appeal as well? Isn’t thinking about what we witnessed part of any experience, even the digesting of our entertainment? Of course, it is. What about the anticipation of what happens next?

Simply regarding viewership as gorging is hardly the proper diet when it comes to appreciating all that goes into a program or series. Ideally, there should be a ‘cleansing of the palate’ when it comes to art, rather than just rushing from one experience to the next, and that is where binging can certainly lessen or trivialize such experiences. Even worse, binging can obliterate much of our memory of what we just saw, and certainly mar the savoring of artistry that’s evident in any single episode.

I can think of no better example of this than Twin Peaks: The Return on Showtime during the first six months of 2017. The reboot of the original 90s series by David Lynch and Mark Frost presented so much fodder for the viewer packed into each hour-long episode that viewers needed a full week to digest all that they had seen. From the twisting narrative to the trippy visuals, to trying to ascertain its meaning, those qualities would not have been the same if we’d been rushed from one episode to the next.

Why, the famous, or infamous, episode eight is still being battered about some two years after its premiere, what with its atomic bomb, mouth-invading insects, and that dirtied woodsman crushing DJ’s skulls. There’s no way all of that could have wholly appreciated if viewers just rushed onto the next chapter with dueling Cooper’s, slices of pie, and games with Sonny Jim!

Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern and David Lynch in Twin Peaks: The Return

Netflix has made a great deal of money off of its business model of dropping all episodes of a show at once, but the talk value seems to have lessened with subsequent seasons of their programs, or the influx of so many shows now being consumed in such a fashion. The later seasons of House of Cards didn’t get nearly as much discussion up and down social media, and the last parts of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt struggled to trend.

Perhaps such shows stayed too long at the dance, but no matter, because each season appeared in its entirety at once, their distribution model became old hat, and some novelty wore off in how we experienced them in total.

The evaluation of TV shows has not only become more difficult for viewers when they’re taking in 8-12 hours in one sitting, but it’s become too overwhelming for the press to cover correctly as well. Websites like BuzzFeed, Deadline or Vulture thrive on being of the moment and serving up their news in easily digestible and deft articles, and it’s a lot easier to write about one episode than an entire season.

A season deserves more of a long-form evaluation to be genuinely worthy anyway, whereas a singular critique of a single episode is much more immediate and timely. With individual episodes, it’s easier for Salon, The Young Folks, and DoomRocket to break everything down for us, especially at the exact moment we’re looking for such ‘water cooler moments’ in the discussion online.  There’s more community evident in the Twitterverse regarding a show’s single episodes than in its entire season.

Community may be why the networks cling to the idea of weekly releases. In many ways, it could be argued such a model respects the viewer more. Finding a dozen or more hours for one sitting is incredibly difficult for anyone who has a job, family, friends, or hobbies. Such chunks of time certainly don’t present themselves every week, and thus it becomes a question of what one devotes themselves to watch. One outcome that no network and platform wants to see is for their show to get lost in the shuffle and miss out on talk value in the press or online.

Eliza Scanlen and Amy Adams in Sharp Objects

Even more importantly, those shows appearing once a week help put the artists’ work in a more thoroughly visible context. Would HBO’s Sharp Objects played as eerily if viewers didn’t have a week to rewatch and study all the information that the show sneaked into its backgrounds and corners of the screen? Not very likely.

Were the motivations of Erica Shepherd (Jennifer Carpenter) on NBC’s The Enemy Within rendered more mysterious by giving viewers a week between episodes to ponder just what the hell was her end game?

Undoubtedly. And was Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) rendered a more threatening villain because he didn’t appear on every episode of  Supergirl on the CW? If that show were binged, his sparse appearances wouldn’t have felt as sparse.

Amazon Prime has reaped all kinds of awards for its original series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but it’s the kind of show that deserves more time to savor and process than binging allows. Watching ten hours back-to-back can’t help viewers appreciate all the incredible production values on display in every moment of the show, to say nothing of treasuring the quality of acting and comedic writing.

Comedy, like horror, is more effective when kept short and sweet. An hour of Mrs. Maisel kvetching plays a lot funnier in one hour versus ten where her schtick may seem all too similar.

Perhaps the best way to use one’s power in watching is to binge moderately. Just because one can watch an entire show in one sitting doesn’t mean that one has to do it that way. Spreading out the experience one episode a day gives the viewer ultimate control over scheduling without wolfing it all down at once and risk sensory overload. No matter, binging is here to stay, and the viewer can decide precisely how they want to consume their shows. Binge watching is now an alternative to going out on a Saturday night.

The numbers have been pointing to a society that demands such control for over a decade, and such benefits go way beyond TV dial control. Many facts point to a form of comfort and coddling that individuals get from binge-viewing. 45% of young adults regularly cancel social plans to watch a show. Statistics also show that it’s more and more one of the critical ways for Americans to de-stress during the week. 60% of all TV viewers, younger or older, have reported watching at least two or more episodes of a show in a row at some point in the week. Such facts not only point to the business model of binging but the DVR and other streaming platforms across the globe.

Ultimately, viewer choice is infiltrating every form of entertainment, from television viewing to listening to music on radio stations to catching the latest flick. Five years ago, the simultaneous release of a movie in the theater and on VOD was a rarity, but it’s becoming ever more prevalent, particularly with independent features that cannot afford to premiere on 2,000 screens at once. The best part about such choices is that the viewer gets to say, “when,” and with more and more shows, they get to say “how” too, as most television is available on computers, phones, and tablets now too.

Still, choosing to wait and let someone else have control is another way to make such decisions.  A new crime thriller entitled Jett that stars the incomparable Carla Gugino has just debuted on Cinemax and its episodes are being doled out one week at a time. The first episode was chock full of intrigue and twists, as well as terrifying thrills and sensual delight. There was a lot to savor here, and those watching will have to wait to enjoy its further pleasures. What a tease, what anticipation, what a way to go – and for some, they’d have it no other way.

by Jeff York

Jeff York has been writing film criticism online since 2011. His weekly blog “The Establishing Shot” is read in 27 countries and he was a film critic for the Examiner online for six years, covering mainstream cinema, as well as horror until the magazine shuttered in 2016. Jeff comes from the world of Chicago advertising, and he’s also an illustrator whose work has appeared in hundreds of periodicals including Playboy, the Chicago Tribune, and W magazine. Jeff is an optioned screenwriter, an original member of the Chicago Indie Critics (CIC), and belongs to both SAG-AFTRA and the International Screenwriters Association. You can find his reviews on Rotten Tomatoes as well.