Binge-watching is exhausting: An appreciation of the weekly TV release format

Paste Magazine

"Look, I have been a staunch defender of and believer in the binge watch method since I was a teenager watching mega rerun blocks of cable series on Saturday afternoons," says Allison Keene. "In fact, it’s possible that I never watched live TV (or an episode when it premiered) until some time after college. My greatest TV joy was seeing a block of Law & Order or Real World episodes running ad infinitum. I binge watched TV shows on DVD, and later, via Netflix (on DVD!) By the time Netflix streaming arrived, I was primed to consume a season in two or three sittings, thrilled by the lack of commercials and being able to stop and start on my own schedule. For a long time, I would have described this as ideal. But the reality now has become more of a be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenario exacerbated by Peak TV. Again, it’s a burden felt more acutely by someone whose job it is to stay on top of this never-ending carousel of seasons that may premiere all at once. And yet, part of my waning enjoyment of bingeing is a general exhaustion tied in part to the artificial constraints we’ve created around Netflix’s binge-and-purge model. A show debuts on a Friday, and by Monday it’s old news (and spoilers abound). And more often than not, it’s then completely forgotten about."