A thought on tv show binge watching

I know well im going to come across as a precious little gowl in this but i think binge watching is ruining the way we enjoy tv shows.

Anyway. Some spoilers for old shows coming up.

What are your top 10 TV shows? I'm asking for 10 because its a grand round number and its much easier condense your faves down to 10 rather than 3 or even 1.

Mine are, in descending order;

(10) Veronica Mars
(9) Rome
(8) Seinfeld
(7) The Shield
(6) Oz
(5) Buffy The Vampire Slayer
(4) Deadwood
(3) The Sopranos
(2) The Wire
(1) ER

They all have one thing in common. They were all shown on TV first. They were all shown before binge watching either through Netflix or boxsets became de rigeur. We watched 1 episode a week and thought nothing more of it. We enjoyed that episode. Phones were put down, doors were locked, the curtains were pulled, loud people were shushed and the show started. 

When it was over we turned to whoever was watching with us and said either "Jesus I did not see that coming at all!" or "i can't believe i waited a week for that hape of shit." And then we waited for next week. And during the week we thought about what had happened to the characters in the show, how the storylines had played out or how pissed off we were at the horrible cliffhanger the episode had ended on. We talked about it in the work canteen, "Did you see how drunk McNulty was!!", we talked about it in the pub "Jesus, that fight between Dan Dority and Captain Turner was vicious wasn't it, his eye popped out!" and we talked about them on the bus "I CANNOT BELIEVE ROSS SAID RACHEL INSTEAD OF EMILY!!!" And it all added up to a super sense of anticipation for when the new episode aired.

That sense of anticipation is gone now because we can watch the next episode by just waiting, we don't even have to do anything, the next one starts in 30 seconds automatically. Any sense of tension is gone too. If an episode ends on a massive cliffhanger we don't care because we will see the resolution in a manner of minutes. Remember in 'ER' when an episode finished with both Carter and Lucy being stabbed? I was dying, my head was fried having to wait a week to see did they live. But i loved it too. The sense of tension and anticipation was immense. Now, pfffft, all gone.

Another thing is you just don't get to care about the characters as much any more. We plough through a 22 episode tv season in a week or 2. What once took the bones of a year is now at the mercy of how lazy we are feeling on a certain day. 2 examples spring to mind here. Willow in 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' and Bodie in 'The Wire'. Willow is probably my all time favourite TV character. Lovely geeky awkward Willow. I'm an awkward cunt so of course i'd pick her. Over the course of 22 episodes aka 9 months you'd fall in love with her. Watch all 22 episodes in a week and not a hope would you care as much about her. Nope. As for Bodie, at first he seems like just another run of the mill heroin selling scumbag but if you take your time with the show you end up thinking about why he does what he does, what effect being on the corner has on him, how he ended up there and naturally you begin to empathise with him. If you piss through the show in a weekend he becomes just another background face.

I've watched a fair few new shows on Netflix in the last year or so. 'Orange Is The New Black', 'Narcos' and "Braquo" come to mind. All good shows, well made and acted. But i just didn't care about anyone in them. Not saying it's the writers fault, its not of course, i'm blaming the viewing method. 

If you like to watch shows that way, fair play, it's just not for me.

Ignore me, i'm a briary dinosaur.