I’ve been binge-watching TV shows and movies since the 90s. First, it was churning through my sister’s old VHS recordings of Doctor Who and X-Files, then there was collecting and watching whole series of anime piecemeal from places like Sam Goody and Suncoast. By the early 2000s, companies began releasing series by the season instead of by the episode (for actually affordable prices) and that made binge-watching shows a lot easier. Just popping to the library to pick up a season of The Sopranos was a heckuva lot easier than asking to borrow someone’s VHS recordings. Now, binge-watching a show is simpler than ever, but the biggest complaint is that people have to binge for fear of spoilers and wish they could savor a show distributed episodically.
I don’t care about that. Spoilers are rarely a barrier to enjoyment for me and I learned a long time ago how to space watching a really good show out to maximize the episodic thrills. No, my issue with the current binge model is it doesn’t account for shared universes and all the weird watching orders that can be required. Nor does it account for older shows which often aired in a different order from which they were produced, leading to weird story inconsistencies as characters get introduced long after they actually show up in shows. And it seems like it should be an easy problem to solve for.
Visit The Verge to read this article.
