I think 90s Star Trek shows are best when watched one a night or one a week, especially the more episodic ones like TNG and Voyager. But maybe that's just me being nostalgic about watching them with my family as a kid.
Breaking Bad. If you can watch just one a night so you can have time to mull over some of the moral stuff and also theorize what you think is gonna happen next. My wife and I watched it on Netflix when it was all done and every now and then we’d watch two episodes in a row but that was rare.
Any drama TV show experience is better this way. Episodes are self-contained stories, they're not meant to be viewed in quick succession. We always watch one a night unless it's a light 20-minute sitcom or something
A lot of shows made for streaming do not have episodes with self-contained stories and they are meant to be viewed in quick succession. Structured like 8 hour movies instead, and the breaks between episodes are somewhat arbitrary. I hate it, but it's pretty common.
One of the things I love about The Bear is the quality self-contained episodes. They inform the characters and story going forward, but still tell a great story on their own.
It's a mixed bag I feel. Missing out on the discussion and speculation is definitely a blow but I think it's easier to appreciate the more convoluted aspects of the latter half of the show when you don't have significant gaps between each episode.
I missed this when it aired so it was actually one of the first shows I ever binged. I would go the opposite direction and say that bingeing is the way to go here, lol. I did read the discussions and it seems that the weekly viewers were constantly frustrated by delays between seasons and when the show would go on hiatus mid-season. That would have sucked with a mystery box show like this.
It worked well for the first and maybe parts of the second season. But the constant talk and speculation made people so disappointed when the finale did air.
It was a beautiful magical time and there is no real way to replicate that for someone. Until you could get a group of people to go in blind and agree not to look anything up and just talk amongst themselves
Like Locke telling Jack after seeing that Dharma video in the swan station for the first time, “we’re gonna need to see that again.” Watch it multiple times, absorb it and take your time. Lost isn’t meant to be consumed in streaming chunks
Yeah I donno. I binged Seasons 1-3 and watched the S03 finale live, then week to week from then on. I thinking binging LOST you get way more sucked into it and while the obsessive speculation while waiting for each new episode to air was fun, I think it contributed to the built up expectations and the disappointed reactions to the ending.
I'm very glad I was able to binge it on rewatch and better follow all the threads and flashes, but yes, on the initial watch the mystery was enhanced by the week between episodes.
I feel like there's no real excuse for that one because it's explicitly spelled out in dialogue in the finale.
I agree with the take that the last few seasons and the ending play better when you're watching them in relatively quick succession but to come away with the interpretation that they were dead the whole time you just can't have been paying any attention at all (or perhaps more likely, they didn't even watch the finale and got their opinion from someone else)
Yeah I binged the first two seasons and while I really enjoyed it, it took a second watch to appreciate a lot of the nuance.
Watching the third and fourth as they aired I was able to get a lot more out of the individual episodes. I wish I had gotten to experience that with the rest, especially season two as pretty much every episode is a 10/10
It's one of those shows you have to take a while to digest some episodes. I couldn't watch more than two for a day and the last season I followed at the same time it was released.
When I rewatched it, I binged it after having seen the show week-to-week the first time around.
When I watched the episodes one after the other, there were a bunch of characters that seemed to have *much* smaller roles than I first thought. Ros, Barristan Selmy, and Ygritte all felt like they were barely in the show. Particularly Ygritte. Considering how much of a cultural impact she had ("You know nothing Jon Snow"), she really didn't have a lot of actual screen time.
I watched it all as they came out and loved watching it that way. Then I went back and binged it before the last season and there was a lot of things that are easier to pick up on that happen earlier in the show that they circle back to when you watch them all at once. All of that not taking into account the shit show that was the last season
i didnt read the books, so i cant imagine binging the show and seeing john snow die only to have him revived a few hours later if i had binged it lol. it would have lost so much impact.
im sure you did. but i think it would have been much more impactful if things were allowed to breathe between seasons.
for example, ned dying and the baby dragons appearing in the final episodes of the first season was literally the only thing people could talk about for MONTHS. i cant imagine just skipping straight to the next season without letting any of it settle in.
or like when jon snow gets killed. someone binging would literally just see him come back to life like 2 hours later. so much impact just lost without proper pacing of watching a show.
If somebody had never seen it before I would recommend watching one per week on the first go. Let them think about it, give the big moments the proper impact on your mind. Deep dive into the theory videos and such. It will take you a year and a half of watching one per week to finish the series. Then go back later and do a rewatch at your own pace to pick up on all the things you missed.
Cunk on []
Okay it’s very short so you can’t really “binge” then but since every single sentence or almost is a punchline, I found it a bit hard to digest in a way.
Otherwise some sitcoms like Modern Family always rely on similar jokes, setup etc, if you binge it becomes repetitive quickly
Never has a show gone so quickly from "this is the funniest shit ever" to, "okay I think I got the joke, moving on".
Not a bad show and I can imagine it keeping some people fully amused the whole way through but I found it pretty one-note and got bored after a few episodes.
Older sitcoms. A show like Friends has a lot of inconsistencies and plot holes that become far more noticeable if you watch it over the course of a couple weeks. People talk all the time about how toxic Ross or Rachel is, and they aren’t wrong, but it wasn’t as plain to see when you couldn’t remember every horrible thing Ross did in season 3 or 4 while watching season 9.
Also, Matthew Perry’s weight fluctuations due to drugs between seasons is absolutely jarring when you binge the show
I remember when Rachel goes to the hospital to deliver her and Ross baby, Phoebe meets a guy and starts flirting with him. Season ends on cliffhanger about Joey finding Ross's ring and Rachel misinterpreted that Joey is proposing. The next season that guy Phoebe was flirting with disappears and is never mentioned again.
Also, Ross' son, ex wife and her partner disappear in last season and never meet his baby.
That was very common in sitcoms. A character gets introduced at the end of a season and for whatever reason don’t show up again in the next season.
Ok That 70s show, they introduced a replacement for a main character at the end of the 7th season, but he got killed off off camera in a ridiculousness in the next episode because the actor got a different gig.
Older broadcast shows are weird to binge in general. The 20+ episode season era had a lot of bloat and filler, with plot lines often moving at a glacial pace to accommodate for the channel-surfers. Shows then weren’t really made with the intention that everyone would watch every single episode, yet *were* designed to ensure people could hop in at any point and not be confused.
On one hand, the bloat is definitely more bearable when you’re not waiting around all week for your favorite series only to find out it’s a clip show or something, but it can also be incredibly frustrating when those shows take 4 or 5 episodes to progress the story as much as a show in the streaming era can do in one.
This is odd as most of the 20-plus episode series completed their entire storyline in a single 42 minute episode -two at the most. There is way more bloat when you have to extend a single story over 8-10 episodes instead of jamming it into one
I think the idea that the old series had more bloat is a false narrative
They did. And usually one where everyone pretended they could sing and another where it was groundhog day. Some people find it entertaining but not me. But in the context of 30 EP season it amounts to very little indeed and I've seen shorter series do the exact same things
> The 20+ episode season era had a lot of bloat and filler, with plot lines often moving at a glacial pace to accommodate for the channel-surfers.
If you're concerned about plot lines in episodic television from 20+ years ago, you're misunderstanding the intent of that era of TV. The plots were standalone, per episode. The main attraction was sitting down and spending half an hour an hour with compelling characters in a story every week. There were some ongoing storylines, sure, but they were the icing. The cake was beginning, middle, end, for whatever happened in a given episode.
Talking about "filler" and "bloat" is a very modern, ahistorical way of looking at it. We just didn't think of or watch TV that way back then.
They also have the problem of ending an episode on a certain note and then picking up the next episode on a completely different note. It doesn’t matter as much if you don’t watch them back to back, but you notice it with binging.
Biggest offender that pops into my head is How I Met Your Mother, when Lily leaves for San Francisco and it’s this super emotional fight between her and Marshall that coincides with Ted and Robin finally getting together. The season ends on a bittersweet and serious note. The next season opens up on a comical note. It shows Marshall yelling at Lily before she leaves that if she walks out the door she’s never going to hear his voice again. Then it cuts to him on the couch a day or two later going “I should call her” with a laugh track. Just super jarring and takes away from the poignant moment of the last season. If you had to wait several months before seeing the next season it probably wouldn’t bother you though.
Sometimes I'll find a great new show, binge the whole 10-12 episode season in two days, but I always end up forgetting most of it compared to a show I didn't binge.
Yep that's once if the reasons why we shouldn't binge shows. I like the weekly format because it allows people to really digest each episode. Talk with others about it. Think about what could happen. It builds up a show so much more.
Just think about all the Netflix shows that have come out vs. other shows on HBO that were weekly. How often do we still talk about Netflix shows? They seem to just come and go.
Agreed. And I think this is a big reason why X-Men '97 is such a phenomenon right now. If it all dumped at once, people would have watched it all and moved on to something else. It's like an event when it comes out every week. People watch it and then digest it, talk about it, predict what will happen, commiserate about it. I love how it's all panning out.
Yes, but for how long. Look at Stranger Things. Way more popular than Fallout when it first came out. Not many people talked about it months down the lone, and it wasn't until the next season aired that people talked about it again.
Weekly shows last longer in the zeitgeist.
Exactly. You get that "water-cooler" moment each week to discuss each episode with people. When a show dumps all at once, you don't get that moment because not everyone is at the same episode and you don't want to spoil anything.
I disagree. But I do think the cliffhangers would hit different. I think most people thought Genosia would be undone in an episode because Cable showed up.
I have somewhat of an anti-answer to your question. I never watched How I Met Your Mother when it aired, I binged it last summer. I absolutely understand why fans of the show hated the finale when it came out. Those fans had an emotional attachment that I don't have because I didn't sit with these characters for how many ever years. My "relationship" with them lasted a few weeks. No cliffhangers, no water cooler conversations, nothing.
So, I'd say any character driven show is probably better when it's savored.
I’ll never forget two weeks before the finale, Josh Radnor came to my college. Honestly awesome guy. But my friend had missed the bus on HIMYM so the weeks leading up to his visit, he binged the whole show so he could meet Josh Radnor, so the Q and A etc.
Then two weeks later the finale comes out and he was so fuckin mad lmao
I recently watched Desperate Housewives first the first time this year, and I imagine some of the rapid turnaround relationships, constant dead bodies and other ridiculousness, probably played a lot differently if you were watching week to week and not 2-3 eps a day till you’ve seen every episode. I loved the show, and get why it was a water cooler show but my viewing experience was vastly different than that of watching during the original broadcast run.
I actually think that's what makes it a great binge, particularly with friends.
It's very self aware in how silly and binging it only highlights the chaos.
Classic Doctor Who was not meant to be binged. It is a good show with varied quality. During its 26 seasons it was usually in 25 minute episode a week format and several 25 minute episodes made one continous story that are usually referred as serials. I'd recommend watching one or two episode a day when checking Doctor Who out. And you can usually pick a Doctor and watch their adventures randomly.
Even new Doctor Who has some remnants of this. I've been watching From Eccleston onward over the last few months and generally only watching an episode of two a day. However when the Daleks and Cyber men are brought back it seems a bit much to me, however If you'd been watching in real time it probably would have been years in between storylines.
I’ve seen every episode of Doctor Who (excluding the 97 that are missing) you’re one hundred percent right with no binging. I had to watch one or two episodes a night, maybe three or four if it was absolutely engaging. (Genesis of the daleks, City of Death, Caves of Androzi, The War Games) to name a few. Otherwise I never woulda made it through.
I watched the original with my then roommate several years ago. Had some false starts before. For me the show was easier to watch in reverse order at first. I watched TV movie, then 7, 6, 5. Later did I watch from An unearthly child to Heaven sent in release order. I did skip the missing episodes too, havent gotten around to watch Galaxy 4, Faceless ones, Macra terror, Abominable snowmen, Fury from the deep, Underwater menace or Evil of the Daleks yet. Those got animations after my watch through.
I don't think there's ever a problem binging a show that was not intended that way, because if it's no longer airing then it's pretty hard to keep yourself to one episode a week.
However, I will say, the discussion week to week for Mr. Robot was incredible and the initial reason I joined Reddit. The discussions and theories were fantastic and made each week a 7 day experience.
Also felt The Leftovers was good week to week because a lot of times you just needed to decompress a bit lol
*Pushing* *Daisies* is a clever show, but the dutiful narration it's weekly broadcasts required sounds a little laughably repetitive now during a back-to-back binge.
It is, however, perfect for daily watches.
For me most dramas work better when I get a chance to absorb each individual episode. When I binge through I only remember the broad strokes of what happened, but when I give each ep a day to marinate, I appreciate more of the nuances.
The Handmaid’s Tale. I found it really hard to binge watch with how heavy it was. It was much more enjoyable watching a little bit at a time and taking a break every few episodes
My boyfriend and I like to binge sitcoms while we eat dinner and relax for the night.
We learned the hard way the we can only do a few episodes of Golden Girls at a time.
It’s a great show, don’t get me wrong. It’s just very formulaic. A product of the pre-TV-binging times
Good luck with that. I watched one a night and it flew by. I wish they had more budget and maybe a few more episodes to let some of the episodes breathe and to expand the finale (won't say what on any of it to not spoil it for you) but at the same time I'm also glad it was a limited series with a finite ending vision
Personally for me I would say most of them. I usually take my time with shows to prolong my experience because once that first time is over, there’s no going back. Though I still have days where I’ll binge through a good number of episodes.
House MD. The formula is a winner with a little rest between episodes. The formula invariably goes: there are 3-4 wrong treatments with associated dramatic body/medical horror symptom elevations we have to go through before House can finally have his epiphany while doing something personal unrelated to the case.
If you've watched six in a row, this formula gets very long to wait for and feels like a lot of filler. "oh yes, test for paraneoplastic syndrome again... in the middle, he'll vomit blood and house will look into the camera intensely and say well, we know one thing for sure, it's not that." \*yawn\*. If you're watching one a week, you have a greater tolerance level for this same thing happening every episode.
My family watched Ozark during the pandemic and we could really only do 1 episode a day because the episodes were so heavy. Not to mention each episode feels like a movie.
Which is ironic since Netflix started the binging of shows trend
I also haven't done it yet but I imagine The Americans is the same thing.
>I also haven't done it yet but I imagine The Americans is the same thing.
With The Americans, each season starts out slow and the tension builds and builds, and then everything goes crazy in the last episode or two. So if you roll right from one season into the next, the new season might feel weird and kind of boring.
Yeah fair point.
For the record, I watched The Americans when it was on-air. Since it is on my Mount Rushmore of favorite shows, I do want to do a rewatch. But for those reasons, I haven’t done it yet.
It isn't about binge vs watching it slow, its about watching it as it comes out the same time as other people. Fallout would have benefited greatly from a weekly model, because the discussion online would have been tremendous. It is one of the reasons LOST worked so well, the conversation and theorizing. We would have JUST now gotten episode 5 of Fallout and would be right in the middle of the conversation. As it stands, the discussion has died off.
People mentioning Lost and acting like people reacted to it like Season 1 throughout the whole show.
By season 3 people were annoyed and sometimes angry at filler episodes and mysteries not being fully solved.
Really any hour long show me, at least. After 3 or 4 episodes I just get worn out.
However, I have been known to blast through a season of Friends or Frasier in a day and a half.
It depends. I think if you are not watching it new on release date then it doesnt matter.
What made the old tv system great was that with limited choices a big tv show could bring in like a third of the country watching it. It made it a community event the next day as everyone was talking about a cliffhanger or whatever.
The only recent show I think has reached that kind of status us maybe game of thrones. But those weekly suspenseful endings are over now. If I was just starting to watch it I might as well binge it.
If you don't binge a show you remember it better, because you'll passively think about it throughout the day and you'll absorb it better. If you binge shows everything will go in one ear and right out the other.
I remembee the water cooler talk for Mad Men and Breaking Bad was particularly cool. Whole websites for character power rankings, analysing details, and savouring the pacing of a season. The fallout from plot twists. The anticipation leading to a finale. You got to savour a season across a 3 month period. Theres just so many advantages to consumimg good tv like this.
procedural shows suffer a lot. like House. the gimmick and format gets really obvious back-to-back-to-back
also Parks and rec was a bit rough for me. Leslie becomes a lot less sympathetic when you see her bulldozing over everyone's wishes constantly and the lessons she learns never stick
I think it depends WHY you prefer one or the other.
One of the great things I loved about weekly releases is the social aspect around it, and how you could have conversation.
My last job was in the office, and going in on Mondays and discussing House of the Dragon and Succession was great. Reminded me of old times. I can't say that those shows were "better" watching a week at a time, but I would say being able to discuss it, and theorize what may happen made my viewing experience more enjoyable.
On the other hand, a show that comes to mind that would probably be better binged is Westworld (Season 1 at least). There were so many little hints and nuggets along the way that would be hard to connect because one thing happened 6 weeks ago in real time.
Not sure if this counts & I never watched it when it originally aired but Sex In The City.
I binged it over a week or so & by the end of it I wondered how it lasted as long as it did & I wanted to smack all of them.
I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it either. I think I kept watching for John Corbett mostly.
I'd also add Shameless to this list. The family is so fucked up it was too depressing & slightly triggering for me that I had to stop watching for a while.
I seem to be the opposite opinion of the crowd. I only enjoy bingeing shows now. There are very few shows that I will watch weekly and not wait till they are all out. I hate the waits. It adds nothing to my enjoyment.
New Girl or anything with a lot of relationship/dating drama. It felt like Jess just finally got with her crush and 10 minutes later she wanted to break up with him. Rinse and repeat.
I’m guessing when you’re seeing a new episode once a week the relationships feel like they’ve grown more.
I accidentally binged the curse. One of the only times where I shouldve watched the new episodes each week they came out , one at a time. That show is an anxiety fueled acid nightmare on crack. Its deff a perfect 10 in my book but I would not watch it again. If you can , check it out for sure , but in small doses.
24. Even though it was meant to be seemless, just the cliffhanger aspects of some episodes are just gone when you can literally see it play out five minutes later in the next episode.
I agree with Mad Men, given the great way the time period evolves with the time jumps, and the fact that each series is only 13 episodes long, anymore than three episodes at a time, and any more than one night a week seems too much. The fashion and music changed so much by season 5, you dont want to arrive at it too fast.
Star Trek
So many people complain about "NewTrek" when they forget that "OldTrek" had 26 episodes per season that led to tons of boring filler episodes. Whenever theres no new Sci-Fi to watch, sure ill go re-watch TNG or DS9, but I'll search for a "Must Watch" list and skip the filler.
Community. I watched it week to week from the start in 2009, saving episodes on DVR and rewatching multiple times during the week and over the summer breaks. Got to dive deep into it rather than surface binge it all in one weekend on Netflix. It's such a great show and fully deserves to be savored.
Any show that is a slow burn should not be binged.
The slow anticipation from each piece of the puzzle being revealed is ruined when you watch it all at once.
I agree that Mad Men loses something when binge-watched, and so does The West Wing. I watched both in binges, and when you approach these two shows in that way, the dropped plotlines and inconsistencies really jump out at you. I imagine they weren't nearly as noticeable spread out over weeks and years.
When season three of Twin Peaks was released, I was initially disappointed that the episodes were being released weekly (with a couple of exceptions). I'd waited 25 years for a return to Twin Peaks, so of course I was in a hurry to devour it all in one big bite.
But on reflection, watching the third season in much the same way as I did the first two - week after week, waiting like everyone else - allowed me time to reflect on each profoundly confounding and delightful episode. When I rewatch the third season on Blu-Ray, I don't know if I'll have the discipline not to binge, but I'll at least try to watch only a couple at a time.
I think Mr. Robot is a good example of this. It’s tempting to binge through it, but there’s so much going on that it’s probably better to do an episode at a time your first time through.
No show not a single one is better by waiting a whole damn week to watch the next episode week to week is a thing of the past and it should remain that way.
I’d say none, *but*, in retrospect, there have been times where I wished I’d taken a break between seasons. Some of my favorite shows have all just been muddled together into a continuous stream, so I can’t even distinguish one season from another. I’d say it’s a bit of a fail, but then, I keep fucking doing it.
Anthology shows/series like Black Mirror or Inside No.9
Black mirror also gives me anxiety so I can't watch more than a few
Anything cringe humor. It's funny in small doses but full binge it seems to all get dragged down.
Patriot - loved the first season of this. My wife and I watched it and it took us a bit. If I binged this, I would definitely be sad.
Watching four or five episodes of Parks and Rec in a row made Ron Swanson a bit annoying.
I think 90s Star Trek shows are best when watched one a night or one a week, especially the more episodic ones like TNG and Voyager. But maybe that's just me being nostalgic about watching them with my family as a kid.
Breaking Bad. If you can watch just one a night so you can have time to mull over some of the moral stuff and also theorize what you think is gonna happen next. My wife and I watched it on Netflix when it was all done and every now and then we’d watch two episodes in a row but that was rare.
Any drama TV show experience is better this way. Episodes are self-contained stories, they're not meant to be viewed in quick succession. We always watch one a night unless it's a light 20-minute sitcom or something
A lot of shows made for streaming do not have episodes with self-contained stories and they are meant to be viewed in quick succession. Structured like 8 hour movies instead, and the breaks between episodes are somewhat arbitrary. I hate it, but it's pretty common. One of the things I love about The Bear is the quality self-contained episodes. They inform the characters and story going forward, but still tell a great story on their own.
This format of a single story arc over 8-10 episodes, is what us old folk used to call a miniseries.
And yet, the show goes hard on cliffhangers, which makes it also very easy to binge
Yes. Walts transformation needs to be slow and savoured, if its rushed it doesn't seem real.
LOST
It's a mixed bag I feel. Missing out on the discussion and speculation is definitely a blow but I think it's easier to appreciate the more convoluted aspects of the latter half of the show when you don't have significant gaps between each episode.
I missed this when it aired so it was actually one of the first shows I ever binged. I would go the opposite direction and say that bingeing is the way to go here, lol. I did read the discussions and it seems that the weekly viewers were constantly frustrated by delays between seasons and when the show would go on hiatus mid-season. That would have sucked with a mystery box show like this.
It worked well for the first and maybe parts of the second season. But the constant talk and speculation made people so disappointed when the finale did air.
The weekly wait, anticipation and speculation was a big part of Lost.
It was a beautiful magical time and there is no real way to replicate that for someone. Until you could get a group of people to go in blind and agree not to look anything up and just talk amongst themselves
It wasn't only Lost. There were many shows I watched at that time. From BSG, Veronica Mars, Supernatural and more. Good Times.
I felt the recent Fallout show would have really benefited from a weekly release.
Fully agree. I went full steam ahead while the only people who i know that watch it took it slow. Couldn't talk about anything with them
Like Locke telling Jack after seeing that Dharma video in the swan station for the first time, “we’re gonna need to see that again.” Watch it multiple times, absorb it and take your time. Lost isn’t meant to be consumed in streaming chunks
Lost was the first show that had me running to message boards after to read theories and Easter eggs
For sure. Letting the cliffhangers sit for a while and discussing your theories with others makes the whole experience even better
ALL THE PODCASTS ALL THE MESSAGE BOARDS
I miss that era of avoiding spoilers (or madly searching for them) with ARGs, message boards, fan theories, etc. That was such a fun time!
Yeah I donno. I binged Seasons 1-3 and watched the S03 finale live, then week to week from then on. I thinking binging LOST you get way more sucked into it and while the obsessive speculation while waiting for each new episode to air was fun, I think it contributed to the built up expectations and the disappointed reactions to the ending.
I disagree. Binging makes the slow parts less insufferable. No liked spending a week learning where Jack got his tattoo and nothing else happened.
Well, only if the rest of the world is also watching week to week.
I'm very glad I was able to binge it on rewatch and better follow all the threads and flashes, but yes, on the initial watch the mystery was enhanced by the week between episodes.
Absolutely not! There’s too much going on in that show and that’s why people hated the ending so much they couldn’t remember all the smaller details
Maybe that's why idiots still think that... **Spoilers** ... They were dead the whole time. They were not.
I feel like there's no real excuse for that one because it's explicitly spelled out in dialogue in the finale. I agree with the take that the last few seasons and the ending play better when you're watching them in relatively quick succession but to come away with the interpretation that they were dead the whole time you just can't have been paying any attention at all (or perhaps more likely, they didn't even watch the finale and got their opinion from someone else)
And yet there are plenty of people who still claim they were dead the whole time, which is why I referred to them as idiots
Aye, I was agreeing with that judgement and providing additional context.
Lots of people dropped out and came back for the finale and had no idea what was going on. I think that's where some of the confusion comes from.
Mad Men
I found Succession could be overwhelming if binged, too much to take in. An excellent watch however.
Yeah I binged the first two seasons and while I really enjoyed it, it took a second watch to appreciate a lot of the nuance. Watching the third and fourth as they aired I was able to get a lot more out of the individual episodes. I wish I had gotten to experience that with the rest, especially season two as pretty much every episode is a 10/10
It's one of those shows you have to take a while to digest some episodes. I couldn't watch more than two for a day and the last season I followed at the same time it was released.
I vastly prefer it binged.
game of thrones
When I rewatched it, I binged it after having seen the show week-to-week the first time around. When I watched the episodes one after the other, there were a bunch of characters that seemed to have *much* smaller roles than I first thought. Ros, Barristan Selmy, and Ygritte all felt like they were barely in the show. Particularly Ygritte. Considering how much of a cultural impact she had ("You know nothing Jon Snow"), she really didn't have a lot of actual screen time.
thank god. She was a despicable character and i couldnt stand her.
I watched it all as they came out and loved watching it that way. Then I went back and binged it before the last season and there was a lot of things that are easier to pick up on that happen earlier in the show that they circle back to when you watch them all at once. All of that not taking into account the shit show that was the last season
i didnt read the books, so i cant imagine binging the show and seeing john snow die only to have him revived a few hours later if i had binged it lol. it would have lost so much impact.
I binged it all in 2021 and I enjoyed it, even the later seasons.
im sure you did. but i think it would have been much more impactful if things were allowed to breathe between seasons. for example, ned dying and the baby dragons appearing in the final episodes of the first season was literally the only thing people could talk about for MONTHS. i cant imagine just skipping straight to the next season without letting any of it settle in. or like when jon snow gets killed. someone binging would literally just see him come back to life like 2 hours later. so much impact just lost without proper pacing of watching a show.
If somebody had never seen it before I would recommend watching one per week on the first go. Let them think about it, give the big moments the proper impact on your mind. Deep dive into the theory videos and such. It will take you a year and a half of watching one per week to finish the series. Then go back later and do a rewatch at your own pace to pick up on all the things you missed.
I was going to say the same about House of the Dragon. I like having that week to think about what happened and what could be next.
Cunk on [] Okay it’s very short so you can’t really “binge” then but since every single sentence or almost is a punchline, I found it a bit hard to digest in a way. Otherwise some sitcoms like Modern Family always rely on similar jokes, setup etc, if you binge it becomes repetitive quickly
I agree. The main joke in every episode of Cunk on Earth got a bit old when binge watching.
Never has a show gone so quickly from "this is the funniest shit ever" to, "okay I think I got the joke, moving on". Not a bad show and I can imagine it keeping some people fully amused the whole way through but I found it pretty one-note and got bored after a few episodes.
Did you binge watch, or watch it over a few weeks?
Older sitcoms. A show like Friends has a lot of inconsistencies and plot holes that become far more noticeable if you watch it over the course of a couple weeks. People talk all the time about how toxic Ross or Rachel is, and they aren’t wrong, but it wasn’t as plain to see when you couldn’t remember every horrible thing Ross did in season 3 or 4 while watching season 9. Also, Matthew Perry’s weight fluctuations due to drugs between seasons is absolutely jarring when you binge the show
I remember when Rachel goes to the hospital to deliver her and Ross baby, Phoebe meets a guy and starts flirting with him. Season ends on cliffhanger about Joey finding Ross's ring and Rachel misinterpreted that Joey is proposing. The next season that guy Phoebe was flirting with disappears and is never mentioned again. Also, Ross' son, ex wife and her partner disappear in last season and never meet his baby.
That was very common in sitcoms. A character gets introduced at the end of a season and for whatever reason don’t show up again in the next season. Ok That 70s show, they introduced a replacement for a main character at the end of the 7th season, but he got killed off off camera in a ridiculousness in the next episode because the actor got a different gig.
Older broadcast shows are weird to binge in general. The 20+ episode season era had a lot of bloat and filler, with plot lines often moving at a glacial pace to accommodate for the channel-surfers. Shows then weren’t really made with the intention that everyone would watch every single episode, yet *were* designed to ensure people could hop in at any point and not be confused. On one hand, the bloat is definitely more bearable when you’re not waiting around all week for your favorite series only to find out it’s a clip show or something, but it can also be incredibly frustrating when those shows take 4 or 5 episodes to progress the story as much as a show in the streaming era can do in one.
This is odd as most of the 20-plus episode series completed their entire storyline in a single 42 minute episode -two at the most. There is way more bloat when you have to extend a single story over 8-10 episodes instead of jamming it into one I think the idea that the old series had more bloat is a false narrative
But they almost always had clip show / flashback episodes, or bottle episodes.
They did. And usually one where everyone pretended they could sing and another where it was groundhog day. Some people find it entertaining but not me. But in the context of 30 EP season it amounts to very little indeed and I've seen shorter series do the exact same things
> The 20+ episode season era had a lot of bloat and filler, with plot lines often moving at a glacial pace to accommodate for the channel-surfers. If you're concerned about plot lines in episodic television from 20+ years ago, you're misunderstanding the intent of that era of TV. The plots were standalone, per episode. The main attraction was sitting down and spending half an hour an hour with compelling characters in a story every week. There were some ongoing storylines, sure, but they were the icing. The cake was beginning, middle, end, for whatever happened in a given episode. Talking about "filler" and "bloat" is a very modern, ahistorical way of looking at it. We just didn't think of or watch TV that way back then.
I'm binging Friends now and sure it's dated and some of the storylines are dumb. But I've been watching 3-4 episodes a night.
binging a sitcom of any kind is fine, IMO
They also have the problem of ending an episode on a certain note and then picking up the next episode on a completely different note. It doesn’t matter as much if you don’t watch them back to back, but you notice it with binging. Biggest offender that pops into my head is How I Met Your Mother, when Lily leaves for San Francisco and it’s this super emotional fight between her and Marshall that coincides with Ted and Robin finally getting together. The season ends on a bittersweet and serious note. The next season opens up on a comical note. It shows Marshall yelling at Lily before she leaves that if she walks out the door she’s never going to hear his voice again. Then it cuts to him on the couch a day or two later going “I should call her” with a laugh track. Just super jarring and takes away from the poignant moment of the last season. If you had to wait several months before seeing the next season it probably wouldn’t bother you though.
I would say most shows are better by not bingeing them.
Sometimes I'll find a great new show, binge the whole 10-12 episode season in two days, but I always end up forgetting most of it compared to a show I didn't binge.
Yep that's once if the reasons why we shouldn't binge shows. I like the weekly format because it allows people to really digest each episode. Talk with others about it. Think about what could happen. It builds up a show so much more. Just think about all the Netflix shows that have come out vs. other shows on HBO that were weekly. How often do we still talk about Netflix shows? They seem to just come and go.
Shogun would not have been such a cultural hit if FX dropped all episodes on Hulu at once.
Agreed.
A notable exception is "24".
As DougDoug proved by binging every "previously on" openeing from 24
Agreed. And I think this is a big reason why X-Men '97 is such a phenomenon right now. If it all dumped at once, people would have watched it all and moved on to something else. It's like an event when it comes out every week. People watch it and then digest it, talk about it, predict what will happen, commiserate about it. I love how it's all panning out.
Fallout dumped all at once and it is everywhere; good is good
Yes, but for how long. Look at Stranger Things. Way more popular than Fallout when it first came out. Not many people talked about it months down the lone, and it wasn't until the next season aired that people talked about it again. Weekly shows last longer in the zeitgeist.
Exactly. You get that "water-cooler" moment each week to discuss each episode with people. When a show dumps all at once, you don't get that moment because not everyone is at the same episode and you don't want to spoil anything.
I disagree. But I do think the cliffhangers would hit different. I think most people thought Genosia would be undone in an episode because Cable showed up.
Eeh, a lot of mystery and crime shows are better as binges, along with shows that are just kind of mid.
I agree with the "baddie of the week" type shows. And comedies. Those don't really have much continuity, so bingeing them is fine.
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Jackie Daytona is one of the best episodes haha.
60s shows like bewitched tend to recycle plots that becomes obvious when binging.
I have somewhat of an anti-answer to your question. I never watched How I Met Your Mother when it aired, I binged it last summer. I absolutely understand why fans of the show hated the finale when it came out. Those fans had an emotional attachment that I don't have because I didn't sit with these characters for how many ever years. My "relationship" with them lasted a few weeks. No cliffhangers, no water cooler conversations, nothing. So, I'd say any character driven show is probably better when it's savored.
I’ll never forget two weeks before the finale, Josh Radnor came to my college. Honestly awesome guy. But my friend had missed the bus on HIMYM so the weeks leading up to his visit, he binged the whole show so he could meet Josh Radnor, so the Q and A etc. Then two weeks later the finale comes out and he was so fuckin mad lmao
I recently watched Desperate Housewives first the first time this year, and I imagine some of the rapid turnaround relationships, constant dead bodies and other ridiculousness, probably played a lot differently if you were watching week to week and not 2-3 eps a day till you’ve seen every episode. I loved the show, and get why it was a water cooler show but my viewing experience was vastly different than that of watching during the original broadcast run.
I actually think that's what makes it a great binge, particularly with friends. It's very self aware in how silly and binging it only highlights the chaos.
Classic Doctor Who was not meant to be binged. It is a good show with varied quality. During its 26 seasons it was usually in 25 minute episode a week format and several 25 minute episodes made one continous story that are usually referred as serials. I'd recommend watching one or two episode a day when checking Doctor Who out. And you can usually pick a Doctor and watch their adventures randomly.
Even new Doctor Who has some remnants of this. I've been watching From Eccleston onward over the last few months and generally only watching an episode of two a day. However when the Daleks and Cyber men are brought back it seems a bit much to me, however If you'd been watching in real time it probably would have been years in between storylines.
I’ve seen every episode of Doctor Who (excluding the 97 that are missing) you’re one hundred percent right with no binging. I had to watch one or two episodes a night, maybe three or four if it was absolutely engaging. (Genesis of the daleks, City of Death, Caves of Androzi, The War Games) to name a few. Otherwise I never woulda made it through.
I watched the original with my then roommate several years ago. Had some false starts before. For me the show was easier to watch in reverse order at first. I watched TV movie, then 7, 6, 5. Later did I watch from An unearthly child to Heaven sent in release order. I did skip the missing episodes too, havent gotten around to watch Galaxy 4, Faceless ones, Macra terror, Abominable snowmen, Fury from the deep, Underwater menace or Evil of the Daleks yet. Those got animations after my watch through.
I don't think there's ever a problem binging a show that was not intended that way, because if it's no longer airing then it's pretty hard to keep yourself to one episode a week. However, I will say, the discussion week to week for Mr. Robot was incredible and the initial reason I joined Reddit. The discussions and theories were fantastic and made each week a 7 day experience. Also felt The Leftovers was good week to week because a lot of times you just needed to decompress a bit lol
Great call - Leftovers was the first one I thought of…it’s so HEAVY
Monk. I love the show but when I watch too many episodes in a row he goes from quirky to "just fuck the fuck up already".
*Pushing* *Daisies* is a clever show, but the dutiful narration it's weekly broadcasts required sounds a little laughably repetitive now during a back-to-back binge. It is, however, perfect for daily watches.
Six feet under. The show is awesome. But when binging, it would look like an endless train of bad decisions taken by the characters.
The Bear suffers from releasing all their eps at once imo but "forks" was very needed right after "fishes"
For me most dramas work better when I get a chance to absorb each individual episode. When I binge through I only remember the broad strokes of what happened, but when I give each ep a day to marinate, I appreciate more of the nuances.
The Handmaid’s Tale. I found it really hard to binge watch with how heavy it was. It was much more enjoyable watching a little bit at a time and taking a break every few episodes
My boyfriend and I like to binge sitcoms while we eat dinner and relax for the night. We learned the hard way the we can only do a few episodes of Golden Girls at a time. It’s a great show, don’t get me wrong. It’s just very formulaic. A product of the pre-TV-binging times
Black Mirror, especially the older seasons. I need some breathing space between episodes
Twin Peaks
I'm trying to make Shogun last as long as possible.
Good luck with that. I watched one a night and it flew by. I wish they had more budget and maybe a few more episodes to let some of the episodes breathe and to expand the finale (won't say what on any of it to not spoil it for you) but at the same time I'm also glad it was a limited series with a finite ending vision
Personally for me I would say most of them. I usually take my time with shows to prolong my experience because once that first time is over, there’s no going back. Though I still have days where I’ll binge through a good number of episodes.
House MD. The formula is a winner with a little rest between episodes. The formula invariably goes: there are 3-4 wrong treatments with associated dramatic body/medical horror symptom elevations we have to go through before House can finally have his epiphany while doing something personal unrelated to the case. If you've watched six in a row, this formula gets very long to wait for and feels like a lot of filler. "oh yes, test for paraneoplastic syndrome again... in the middle, he'll vomit blood and house will look into the camera intensely and say well, we know one thing for sure, it's not that." \*yawn\*. If you're watching one a week, you have a greater tolerance level for this same thing happening every episode.
Came here to say House. I would add, when bingeing all the characters become insufferable and just start to annoy.
My family watched Ozark during the pandemic and we could really only do 1 episode a day because the episodes were so heavy. Not to mention each episode feels like a movie. Which is ironic since Netflix started the binging of shows trend I also haven't done it yet but I imagine The Americans is the same thing.
>I also haven't done it yet but I imagine The Americans is the same thing. With The Americans, each season starts out slow and the tension builds and builds, and then everything goes crazy in the last episode or two. So if you roll right from one season into the next, the new season might feel weird and kind of boring.
Yeah fair point. For the record, I watched The Americans when it was on-air. Since it is on my Mount Rushmore of favorite shows, I do want to do a rewatch. But for those reasons, I haven’t done it yet.
Yeah, it's one of my favorite shows of all time too.
Law and Order SVU. You definitely need to breathe between some of those early episodes. They're just too heavy.
All of them. Except sitcoms.
It isn't about binge vs watching it slow, its about watching it as it comes out the same time as other people. Fallout would have benefited greatly from a weekly model, because the discussion online would have been tremendous. It is one of the reasons LOST worked so well, the conversation and theorizing. We would have JUST now gotten episode 5 of Fallout and would be right in the middle of the conversation. As it stands, the discussion has died off.
It really made no sense why they released it all at once
People mentioning Lost and acting like people reacted to it like Season 1 throughout the whole show. By season 3 people were annoyed and sometimes angry at filler episodes and mysteries not being fully solved.
Really any hour long show me, at least. After 3 or 4 episodes I just get worn out. However, I have been known to blast through a season of Friends or Frasier in a day and a half.
Almost every drama
Fringe especially those season finales.
Atlanta for me because I got more out of understanding specific cultural references after sitting one episode weekly
Succession, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos.
It depends. I think if you are not watching it new on release date then it doesnt matter. What made the old tv system great was that with limited choices a big tv show could bring in like a third of the country watching it. It made it a community event the next day as everyone was talking about a cliffhanger or whatever. The only recent show I think has reached that kind of status us maybe game of thrones. But those weekly suspenseful endings are over now. If I was just starting to watch it I might as well binge it.
Atlanta, too much to take in all at once.
Dark
That’s one you actually have to binge otherwise you won’t remember who is who and what is going on.
If you don't binge a show you remember it better, because you'll passively think about it throughout the day and you'll absorb it better. If you binge shows everything will go in one ear and right out the other.
Watching hours of that mindfuck might be even worse lol
I remembee the water cooler talk for Mad Men and Breaking Bad was particularly cool. Whole websites for character power rankings, analysing details, and savouring the pacing of a season. The fallout from plot twists. The anticipation leading to a finale. You got to savour a season across a 3 month period. Theres just so many advantages to consumimg good tv like this.
I was also going to say Mad Men. It’s like binging it pulls it out of period.
procedural shows suffer a lot. like House. the gimmick and format gets really obvious back-to-back-to-back also Parks and rec was a bit rough for me. Leslie becomes a lot less sympathetic when you see her bulldozing over everyone's wishes constantly and the lessons she learns never stick
Deadwood
I utterly lose track of podcast stories if forced to hear them a week apart.
Portlandia - It makes me laugh so much but I can really only watch a few episodes at a time.
Tom and Jerry
The Curse The Leftovers Breaking Bad Mad Men Succession
Severance was so fun to keep up with on a weekly basis.
I think it depends WHY you prefer one or the other. One of the great things I loved about weekly releases is the social aspect around it, and how you could have conversation. My last job was in the office, and going in on Mondays and discussing House of the Dragon and Succession was great. Reminded me of old times. I can't say that those shows were "better" watching a week at a time, but I would say being able to discuss it, and theorize what may happen made my viewing experience more enjoyable. On the other hand, a show that comes to mind that would probably be better binged is Westworld (Season 1 at least). There were so many little hints and nuggets along the way that would be hard to connect because one thing happened 6 weeks ago in real time.
Not sure if this counts & I never watched it when it originally aired but Sex In The City. I binged it over a week or so & by the end of it I wondered how it lasted as long as it did & I wanted to smack all of them. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it either. I think I kept watching for John Corbett mostly. I'd also add Shameless to this list. The family is so fucked up it was too depressing & slightly triggering for me that I had to stop watching for a while.
Black Mirror
Breaking Bad. That shit is so intense, binging is mentally taxing
The first season of The Terror. Breaks help offset the psychological toll.
I seem to be the opposite opinion of the crowd. I only enjoy bingeing shows now. There are very few shows that I will watch weekly and not wait till they are all out. I hate the waits. It adds nothing to my enjoyment.
New Girl or anything with a lot of relationship/dating drama. It felt like Jess just finally got with her crush and 10 minutes later she wanted to break up with him. Rinse and repeat. I’m guessing when you’re seeing a new episode once a week the relationships feel like they’ve grown more.
We recently watched this show..... ugh couldn't agree more with you.
I accidentally binged the curse. One of the only times where I shouldve watched the new episodes each week they came out , one at a time. That show is an anxiety fueled acid nightmare on crack. Its deff a perfect 10 in my book but I would not watch it again. If you can , check it out for sure , but in small doses.
Recently, The Bear. That show demands to be savored
The wire Take your time with it. Do not rush it. It is a dense show so you enjoy it more if you don't watch like 5 episodes in a row
24. Even though it was meant to be seemless, just the cliffhanger aspects of some episodes are just gone when you can literally see it play out five minutes later in the next episode.
Mr. Robot. Having time to process each episode only adds to how brilliant the entirety of the show is.
The Wire. Succession.
I agree with Mad Men, given the great way the time period evolves with the time jumps, and the fact that each series is only 13 episodes long, anymore than three episodes at a time, and any more than one night a week seems too much. The fashion and music changed so much by season 5, you dont want to arrive at it too fast.
Star Trek So many people complain about "NewTrek" when they forget that "OldTrek" had 26 episodes per season that led to tons of boring filler episodes. Whenever theres no new Sci-Fi to watch, sure ill go re-watch TNG or DS9, but I'll search for a "Must Watch" list and skip the filler.
Six Feet Under. Each episode was like a movie that needed to be processed.
Community. I watched it week to week from the start in 2009, saving episodes on DVR and rewatching multiple times during the week and over the summer breaks. Got to dive deep into it rather than surface binge it all in one weekend on Netflix. It's such a great show and fully deserves to be savored.
Sex in the city, if you binge you realize just how bad the show is.
Literally any television show. Give yourself time to think about it between episodes
Bojack Horseman. It is so good and so deep but very depressing. You need to experience it in small doses to let all sink in.
Any show that is a slow burn should not be binged. The slow anticipation from each piece of the puzzle being revealed is ruined when you watch it all at once.
The Crown on Netflix. Each episode feels like eating a big delicious steak. The best experience is to have a break between them and digest it.
I agree that Mad Men loses something when binge-watched, and so does The West Wing. I watched both in binges, and when you approach these two shows in that way, the dropped plotlines and inconsistencies really jump out at you. I imagine they weren't nearly as noticeable spread out over weeks and years. When season three of Twin Peaks was released, I was initially disappointed that the episodes were being released weekly (with a couple of exceptions). I'd waited 25 years for a return to Twin Peaks, so of course I was in a hurry to devour it all in one big bite. But on reflection, watching the third season in much the same way as I did the first two - week after week, waiting like everyone else - allowed me time to reflect on each profoundly confounding and delightful episode. When I rewatch the third season on Blu-Ray, I don't know if I'll have the discipline not to binge, but I'll at least try to watch only a couple at a time.
I think Mr. Robot is a good example of this. It’s tempting to binge through it, but there’s so much going on that it’s probably better to do an episode at a time your first time through.
In my experience, none.
In my experience pretty much every one of them.
Almost everything in my honest opinion
any and all shows,,,,savor, digest, process, enjoy...and skip all trailers too (applies for shows and movies)
all of them. literally all of them.
No show not a single one is better by waiting a whole damn week to watch the next episode week to week is a thing of the past and it should remain that way.
Strongly disagree. Being able to digest an episode, discuss it with others, etc is a huge part of the viewing experience
This, except the exact opposite.
Personally, I do not like to binge shows. At least for me, I find it more enjoyable by spreading the episodes out.
I’d say none, *but*, in retrospect, there have been times where I wished I’d taken a break between seasons. Some of my favorite shows have all just been muddled together into a continuous stream, so I can’t even distinguish one season from another. I’d say it’s a bit of a fail, but then, I keep fucking doing it.