I can't go back to watching regular, weekly TV anymore. Between Netflix and the ability to watch everything on demand, it makes more sense to get in to a show, binge it all like you would a great book, and enjoy seeing the whole story that was years in the making.
When DVDs started becoming the norm, I got in to them big time. I would run to the video store in downtown Normal after getting out of class while I was going to ISU and I would get a bunch of movies at a time. A lot of my money those days went to that rental place, and it was well worth it.
I would walk away from TV for a while, instead focusing on other things in life. Then I got a place where the cable was free, and away some of my time went again. Specifically, I caught back up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Later came watching Angel, but that I did watch weekly for the fifth season. The show that I really got hooked on when watching it was 24. I remember my roommate Will at the time and I sat down and started watching it. We were amazed. We stayed up way too late, and just purge ourselves of it. Will's brother Rob eventually joined us, and it was amazing. Through the first 2 seasons, we got hooked. But it was somewhere in that second season that things went awry for us. Maybe because that was the only two seasons out at the time.
Then cam Six Feet Under. That I binged and got in to before I had to wait and watch it episode by episode for the last two seasons. Still well worth it.
The Office, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Scrubs. Each holds a special place in my heart, but Scrubs gets a little more specific. After my broken engagement, I moved in with my friend Johnny. We both got in to the show. I had watched the first couple of seasons and he joined in. It was maybe in its fifth season at the time, but we still had plenty to watch.
We would sit and watch it, fast forwarding to the next episode after the credits hit. We would both be sitting there with drinks in hand, laughing away. He would be smoking in his chair, and I would be relaxing on the couch. Some nights he would pass out first, others would be me, sometimes both.
Then along came Netflix in to my life, and I got big in to the DVD side of things. Futurama was one that I got caught up on. Then they started the instant streaming, and I was a goner. More shows started to follow, to the point that I have more shows in queue than I can even think of. I am also waiting as more shows join up, and even have Amazon Prime to find shows there.
Too many good shows, not enough binge time.
I like the idea of seeing a full story these days. Give me the whole comic book in a graphic novel collecting 6 or so issues. Give me an entire season of a TV series. Make me fall for the characters and immerse myself in an entire section of story arcs so much that I want to come back again and again and again. Forget the single part a week, spread out over a year. And even forget a book a month for an entire year. Blah to that noise.
It isn't often that I will dip my toes back in to a series after it is completed. I did go through Simpsons several times, as well as Saved by the Bell. The Office went through a couple of runs. Six Feet Under I've been through three times, each time I believe with a different girlfriend. Scrubs has a special place in that I've binged the show only after major break ups in my life. The most recent time I sorta got burnt out on it. It wasn't too long ago that I decided that I didn't have time to re-watch stuff, I committed myself to only take in something new. I didn't have enough time in this life to repeat on TV shows and re-live the past. It was time for something new.
So here I am consuming. Game of Thrones. Arrow and Flash. The Man in the High Castle. There is so much out there that is of great quality that wasting time on watching something you've seen before just seems so fruitless. I would say that maybe it could exist in the background and white noise, but even then there is good music that you haven't heard that could also fill the space. Or random YouTube channels.
Wait...there is a world outside of TV, right?
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