"binge-worthy show" man fuck that
i want my shows one episode followed by a whole ass week of going a little insane over it with the people on my phone, writing fics theorizing and going over every single scene through amazing gifs and meta, before the next ep drops and the cicle begins anew
speak louder
It's also contributing to the overall stagnation of writing. Binging isn't conducive to analysis.
Binging and whole season drops also seem to be a bit hard on fandoms and fan content creation.
Looking at eg. House of the Dragon last year, which spaced out 10 episodes over 10 weeks (that is 2 1/2 months) and the fandom content production and fandom discussions over multiple platforms were so high! It gave fans time to speculate, to produce and to wait for. It held the anticipation high and invigorated the fandom over a long time.
But Netflix (or other streaming services) when they drop a whole season in one go? I feel yes, many fans will watch it. But the vibe is very different. And there will be discussions and fan content, but I feel it is not necessarily good for a fandom in the long run. The built-up does not carry these fandoms as long for "casual" fans and will not bring the same influx of new fans and new content to those fandoms. And that is sad for fan spaces in my opinion.
It's not just fandom. When I teach popular culture, I also mention how binge culture is destroying the social function of shows.
In the traditional broadcasting structure, you have an episode a week at a set time - you sit down and you watch it, maybe make a family thing out of it. The next day you go to work, and your coworkers have seen the episode too, and you talk about it - because a tv show is a safe topic (not political, not too personal), so you have something to bond over/socialize.
But when a whole season drops at the same time... You either force yourself to binge it, turning your schedule upside down, or you watch it in bits, risking to fall behind. Say a popular show drops a season on a Saturday. On Monday at work, there will be people who haven't started it, people who are half-through, people who have finieshed it... Mix with the fear-of-spoilers culture, suddenly this point of bonding becomes restricted, even eradicated.
It’s also destroying show production. These days if a season isn’t binged in the first week — fully, completed, watched all the way through in THE FIRST WEEK — it doesn’t get renewed. There’s no opportunity for shows to grow legs and catch on. Netflix would’ve canceled The X-Files. Netflix would’ve canceled so many classic shows that were allowed to find their audience gradually.