The "binge watch all new episodes" culture is good for us, but bad overall

[Lucky_Lefty]

Personally, I could care less about water cooler talk or talking online about a show that's week to week. Matter of fact, I purposely go out of my way to not watch TV shows. I'll wait until it either goes off for good or stay a good 2-3 seasons behind so I can interpret it without cornballs ruining it with their hypothetical's. I find it corny live tweeting shows and shyt.

 

[Deltron]

The good and bad of binge watching for me is that it's good that it's all available at once, no need to wait week after week to watch the season/series. The bad is that after the binge, the wait for a follow up season is ...at least with weekly episodes the wait isn't as bad since there's time to digest each ep week after week. This of course only applies to current shyt.

Binge watching past shyt is fun. Doing that w/ Robotech right now.

 

[STAN JONES]

My only problem with binging is i tend to forget most of what happened by the time the next season airs

 

[Deltron]

^^Haha same here

 

[threattonature]

I definitely prefer the week to week aspect. I like being able to talk shows with other people or putting people on and then being able to hang and watch. I enjoy the social aspect of TV. With binge watching it's impossible to talk about a season as it's ongoing. Plus at times others notice things that I overlooked and it's way easier to remember the little context clues when watching week to week compared to someone mentioning something back in episode 1 that you'd have forgot by the time you finished the season.

 

[NobodyReally]

I agree with OP. I do miss the weekly anticipation and water cooler and dinner chats about "what may happen next". It was really a social thing, I think and it was sorta exciting. I feel like everything we do now is less social and more "do your own thing". When people talk about shows now, you have to be careful about spoilers and it's just really surface level because everyone in the group may be at a different place in their binge watching. I see the advantage of being able to binge-watch, I just miss the group speculation and everyone being on the same page.

 

[NobodyReally]

I definitely prefer the week to week aspect. I like being able to talk shows with other people or putting people on and then being able to hang and watch. I enjoy the social aspect of TV. With binge watching it's impossible to talk about a season as it's ongoing. Plus at times others notice things that I overlooked and it's way easier to remember the little context clues when watching week to week compared to someone mentioning something back in episode 1 that you'd have forgot by the time you finished the season.

Ha, comment twins

 

[satam55]

My only problem with binging is i tend to forget most of what happened by the time the next season airs

^^Haha same here

Yep, shyt be a blur.

 

[AquaCityBoy]

Think about how comic book fans feel.

Either wait two weeks to a month for the next issue, or trade wait and read it months after everyone else has already finished it.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

Co-sign. I been saying this since the Marvel/Netflix shows were announced, if not before that.





The folks who make the opposite argument that are in favor of binge-watching all at once when it premieres, just make me . If that's how you feel, what's wrong with binge-watching after the season ends. It won't make a difference to you.

i have a few shows i watch after the season is over - suits, the americans, etc.

My only problem with binging is i tend to forget most of what happened by the time the next season airs

this is my issue with week to week by the time new episodes air, i forgot some shyt that went down the week before, when i binge all of it gels together better

I see OP's point tho. Like OINTB, we have one big conversation about it at work and it's over. If this were a weekly series, me and my co-workers would have more to talk about

 

[Panther]

I'm too busy to keep up with anything that doesn't come on the weekends, so binge watching works much better for me

 

[MartyMcFly]

Binging is cool but I'm still not with it entirely unless I'm catching up on some shyt with a late pass, like I did with Mad Men or Arrested Development on dvd in college. But for the most part, I'm a week to week guy. There's certain shyt I won't comment on while I'm watching because I'm actually watching and care more about paying attention to all of that rather than comment on here....unless it's Raw because the TSC threads are always a highlight of the week.

It does suck overall though as far as the way we consume and how we expect tv to be written now. We give less credit to episodic tv and more to serialized even though some shows shouldn't be serialized at all. On the flip side, we expect our movies to be written like tv shows now which is bugged out

 

[Ribbs]

I will never understand people's thought process of "I can't wait for [name of Netflix show] to come back" and they burn through it in two days. There's no time to discuss, there's no time to savor what you just saw. You can't let an episode breathe before hoping right into the next one. And you're less likely to retain anything. There's some shows I can't binge either. Mr. Robot, I can't binge that Some of those episodes are far too heavy to just hop right into the next one.

I only really binge older shows and I have a scheduled time for them. Power Rangers, 24 and Naruto are currently in the Netflix rotation and after I finish a season, I watch a season of another show (rn Legend of Korra) and go back to PR or 24 (since they have more seasons than others).

Scheduled pace > Binging.

 

[Piff Perkins]

Never liked binge watching. I enjoy the journey of watching a good show. The last time this worked perfectly was True Detective S1. Every week I was discussing the episode with my brothers, sharing links, preparing snack plans for Sunday nights. It was amazing. And when we got to the finish line it felt great. The Coli thread was amazing too. None of this would be possible if you burned through the show in two days.

I watched Mr Robot last year, months after its tv finale. Watching it by myself was fun too, and even then I didn't binge. I watched an episode every other day at the most. Usually I'd wait 5-6 days between eps.

Binging can be fine in the right environment but I prefer watching stuff at a normal pace.

 

[hex]

I don't mind binge watching but The Coli threads on these shows are damn near as entertaining as the shows themselves. And like someone else pointed out, if people do binge watch after the fact they can go browse the old threads to experience what it was like to watch it live.

Fred.