I have a problem. I've had it for many years. Recently, I discovered that this problem not only has a name, but almost everyone else has gone through it at some point or another. My problem is called binge watching. Binge watching is the act of watching an entire season or series of a television show in a short amount of time, sometimes not stopping to shower or sleep.
My earliest memory of binge watching was in 2004. I had heard of 24, but had never seen any episodes. The new season was starting soon and I wanted to catch up. Back then, Netflix wasn't streaming yet, but you could get television shows on DVD. Over the course of 4 weeks (keep in mind each disc was only 4-6 episodes and I had to wait for the mail), I caught up on 2 seasons of the show. That's 48 episodes! I couldn't get enough. And when I couldn't wait for the DVDs to arrive via mail, I would head to the video store to see if I could get the episodes quicker. I remember being super embarrassed on a Saturday in July of '09 when I went to Videoport 3 times in one day to rent episodes of Rescue Me. I thought I could just wait for the DVDs to come in the mail. I couldn't. The clerk just smiled at me the third time I went in and said, "Gotta love Tommy Gavin."
A lot of the time, my binge watching has been to catch up on shows I had heard a lot about and were still airing new episodes, but I just hadn't gotten around to. I caught up during the off-seasons on Grey's Anatomy, Castle, Friday Night Lights, The Good Wife, How I Met Your Mother (7 seasons in the summer of 2012), Rescue Me and Downton Abbey. To be a true binge, you really have to watch several episodes in a row and it has to take the place of something else you should be doing (like going outside or working).
In other cases, I used my binges to take on shows that I had always wanted to see, but missed when they originally aired. This was the case with Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, Alias, Arrested Development and, last month, Felicity.
But what happens when you can't maintain the binge? Maybe you start strong, but then a month has gone by, then two and eventually, you take that show off your instant queue. This happened to me with The Wire and The West Wing. And interestingly, I gave up on both halfway into the 3rd season. Is it binge overload? Would it have been better if I had watched those shows one week at a time when they originally aired? I think that's the sign of a true binge. When you can't get enough of a show. You stay up late, you call in sick to work, you order way too much take-out. You get super wrapped up in the characters and the show and when it's all over, you feel a little sad.
I'm looking for my next fix. Community and The Sopranos aren't streaming. Am I willing to wait for the DVDs? I hear great things about House of Cards. I know that I'll spend all day on May 26th binge watching the new season of Arrested Development. In the meantime, I guess I'll see what mood I'm in on the next rainy weekend.
What's your favorite binge show?
