My Issues with Binge Watching

I don’t know about you, but I have never been a fan of binge watching. It’s partially because it’s a thing that I cannot do easily, but I also feel like it’s not how tv shows should be watched. Maybe that’s just me and my somewhat old-fashioned type of thinking, but I know I might not be completely right. Netflix has changed the landscape for how tv shows are watched. This is by helping the change of tv programming from standard cable and satellite to internet streaming and producing entire seasons of tv shows at a time that allows people to watch them all in whatever pace they feel like. Netflix may not have been the singular voice of it all, but it was the fastest and strongest horse in that race. A race that involves so many other varieties of streaming platforms that are still trying their hardest to catch up to. What does this have to do with my opinions on binge watching? Loosely based on it, I was talking a friend about episodes on Voltron season 3 and since I didn’t binge watch it and she did, she didn’t know what happened in either episode. That’s where the idea of this blog came from.

The first thing that bothers me about binge watching shows is the fact that episode titles and what goes on in them matter. You can make the argument that books have chapters too and they get thrown in together under one binding. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a chapter of a book is comparable to one episode of a television show. A chapter usually tells the audience one segment of a story and what is going on in it. This could be any sort of page length, which is up to the author writing it. TVs are much more laid out and uniform. With some exceptions, they either thirty minutes or an hour with time for commercials in between. No matter what life of time they are, they also tell a complete story in their own right. They have their beginnings, the drama builds up, the drama releases, and a cliff hanger for the next episode. That’s what makes them special. If you want to let go of episode titles and things, then you might as well be watching extremely long movies.

The next thing that bothers me is finding the right show to binge watch. I know so many people that can binge watch any show and that is alright for them, but it doesn’t work for me. I’m too much of a scatter brain to watch one show for an extended amount of time. I get bored extremely easily and need to keep changing things up in order to keep my attention span in check. My idea of watching a lot of anime in one day is watching two or three episodes of a lot of shows until I fall asleep. If anything, there are three shows that I ever binged watched because they locked me in and made me want to keep going. These are Fate/Zero, Ping Pong: The Animation, and Lupin the Third Part 4. What makes them special? I don’t know. I really don’t.

I don’t know about you guys, but it’s hard to gauge the quality of a show during a binge watch. I’ve tried rewatching Fate/Zero ever since I did binge watch it and I didn’t feel the same way about it afterward. This makes me wonder if it wasn’t as great as I thought it was when I was in the zone for it or something. It’s not like I didn’t like it, I just some a lot more of its flaws then I did the first time. Ever since I became a blogger, I stopped binge watching shows on purpose. When I review a show, I need to make sure that I nail down all the things that I consider good and bad about a show, so it’s a balanced review. As much as other people love a purely positive review, those aren’t what I try to do because those aren’t who I am. How did I get this far into watching a show when I was reviewing a thing?

Everything you have read before this paragraph is just my personal opinion. I have never said my opinion is the end all be all. Everybody has their view point and everyone’s opinion is on an equal level as mine. If you want to binge watch anime or anything else, then go ahead and do it. Who am I going to tell you to stop? That’s not what is important here. As much as some people like ramming their opinion down other people’s throats, I will never do that. Why? Because everyone’s opinion matters here.

With that all aside, what is your opinion on binge watching? Do you enjoy doing it or do you prefer watching something weekly like I do?