"There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain."
“There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain.”

Pardon the interruption, but I’m turning our attention towards TV today. I don’t talk about TV very much on this space for a variety of reasons, but like many of you, I find myself consumed with House of Cards.

In case you haven’t heard, House of Cards is the new series that was released exclusively to Netflix. This is the second TV show the streaming service has hosted (after Lilyhammer last year), and in both cases Netflix has made the entire season available in one drop.

This is what intrigues me. If you know me at all, you know that I’m not just fascinated by what people watch, but how people watch it. Where TV is concerned, that has taken a radical change in the last decade.

We’ve arrived at a point where viewers have a lot more control over how they watch the shows they watch. Several years ago, avid fans might have to make plans around their favorite shows – for instance, not wanting to go out and do anything on a Sunday night for fear of missing what would happen on The Sopranos. Now, however, the power has been seized by the viewer. PVR’s and Tivo’s are commonplace, so watching things at the time and date one wants is as easy as pressing a few buttons. One could even store up several episodes and watch them in long binges.

On the more illegal side of things, shows are readily available for torrenting. Don’t want to pay the extra money for HBO, but still want to follow Game of Thrones? Now you’re covered. This too allows for viewing in blocks, and in the case of imported shows like Downton Abbey, even allows one to see what happens entire months before North American broadcasters show the episodes.

But back to House of Cards.

The fascinating thing with this show, produced by David Fincher, is that it dropped its entire thirteen episode order on one day. It basically dares you to cancel any plans and watch ’em all. This leads me to the point of this post.

While Netflix is upping the bar by allowing this sort of mass consumption with a brand new property, this idea of watching an entire season in one fell swoop isn’t new. For a long time now, we’ve been able to buy entire seasons (and entire series) of whatever TV show we like on dvd and blu-ray. Which such access, I’m curious how people like to consume their television and why?

The networks have long wanted us to stick to a pace of one episode a week, and for many of us, I dare suggest that such ideas are antiquated. That pace works just fine for shows like CSI that are procedurals (a new case solved every week, some minor character development happens around it). However for shows that are telling a long narrative – The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Homeland – most viewers would like things to move much quicker. But how much quicker?

Left to our devices, many of us would in fact watch an entire series of a show in one or two days. In an age where seasons of TV are 13 episodes, this feels very do-able. Cancel all your plans one weekend, get comfy on the couch, and have at it. However, I can’t help but feel that this is like saying “I’d like some ice cream” and that resulting in sitting down with a whole carton and a spoon. On the shows one hasn’t seen before, doesn’t that feel a bit like bingeing? Sure, it tells the story in one fell swoop, but it eats up so much time, and then leaves you with nothing.

Now that said, there are certain shows I believe actually benefit from being mainlined like this, as it downplays the antsiness viewers felt while watching it week-to-week – The Walking Dead and Lost come to mind.

For my money, the trick is still to stagger the consumption a little bit.

Recently, I’ve been digging into the (now sadly cancelled) BBC series “The Hour”. After downloading all twelve episodes from its two seasons, the idea was to make it the Sunday night show. When Walking Dead took its break in November, Lindsay and I were left with no Sunday night show (besides Dead there was also Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad all on the bench for months still). My idea was to watch one episode of The Hour every week, and the pace still worked rather nicely. Well, the pace worked nicely for me anyway – by the end, I was getting pressure to immediately queue up the next episode as soon as the episode we watched concluded.

Then there’s the series that inspired this whole post, House of Cards. Upon realizing that I’d been handed the keys to this political kingdom, I had to think quickly about how I wanted to take it in. My decision was to watch one a night (finished chapter four yesterday evening). At this pace, everything is moving along nicely, and I don’t feel like I’m losing entire days sitting in front of my laptop.

For me, it’s all about balance. It’s about dropping two scoops into a bowl rather than opening the carton and grabbing a spoon. However, I am not one to judge, so if the latter is more your style, allow me to pass you a spoon.

What say you? How do you prefer to consume your television and why?

20 Replies to “All At Once: Consuming Television in the Information Age”

  1. At the moment, I want to catch up on Breaking Bad, Mad Men and Doctor Who before they come back. But I can tell now that I’ll only be able to do that with the first show. (I only need to see the first half of season 5.)

    Oh, and I usually watch TV shows through DVD. (If they show episodes I was unable to watch on the DVD on TV, then I’ll record it.)

    1. How far behind are you on Mad Men and Doctor Who?

      Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, have you ever thought about taking the drive up for TIFF? I seem to forget how close you are to all of this cinematic goodness.

      1. Well, I’m nearing the end of Tennant’s run on Doctor Who. (Watching the specials.) As for Mad Men, I haven’t even started watching it yet.

        As much as it seem tempting to travel to see films, I think I’ll pass this time around. (Though it would be nice to get out of the country for once in my life.)

        1. Well it’s not like it’s going anywhere – they run it every year, so whenever you feel the urge, it’ll be there for ya. Think about vomit some September, even if it’s only for the weekend. The local film crowd will take good care of you.

  2. I totally get your point, you need balance in your life. I.. I don’t have any balance. 😀 I am currently not studying nor working so I’m basically watching seasons upon seasons of shows. I for instance watched American Horror Story season 2 in two to three days.
    I sometimes even skip watching some shows completely, Homeland, The Walking Dead and even The Vampire Diaries – then, I have 4 to 5 episodes to watch in a row and it feels as a long and great movie.
    Comedy doesn’t work like that to be honest, it did before but now I get super tired of watching comedy for hours in a row. Serious and thrilling shows are the ones to marathon away.

    Nice post! I was actually thinking about the House of Cards format of publishing its entire season as my Wild Wednesday post but I think you said it all today. 😀

    1. I’d still be curious to read your take on House of Cards (I’m currently five episodes in and loving it), so do bring that up for Wild Wednesday.

      I forgot to even mention how much of this hinges upon one’s schedule. When we all go through those quieter stretches of life (vacations and such), the tendency to mass-consume is even higher. I’m actually coming off a four-day-weekend and had to continually tell myself not to spend it on the couch watching endless movies and TV. Then again, these breaks are so rare…why shouldn’t we spend them relaxing how we want?

  3. When we catch up on shows as a family, we do the one episode per night approach, even if it’s something we’ve seen before (just finished Firefly and Arrested Development again). But when left on my own, I devour the carton. Recently started going back through an old favorite and I’m watching 3-4 eps a day while feeding the baby. When I watched all of Buffy a few years ago, I sat on my couch for 7 straight hours one night (in the middle of the week) burning through episodes like an addict. I simply have no self control, which is why I don’t keep ice cream in my house..

    1. See, I sorta kept re-watching out of the equation because that feels like a different animal. While the propensity to binge is still in place, the hunger to find out “what happens next” is lower. So doing other things while the marathon is happening is a bit more feasible.

      To that end, I’ve been known to plough through shows like Scrubs in eight-episode-blocks.

  4. Rachel is right. We don’t have any Ice Cream either. 😛

    Personally, I prefer to have everything at my disposal and then go at it in my own time. If I am really invested in it and have enough time, I go all out and finish it up. I finished whole The West Wing in a month, less than two months ago but then I practically did nothing else for more than three weeks. I have done something similar with Friday Nights Lights, The Wire, The Sopranos etc. but I never really lost control in any of these cases. So, I guess, ‘I like to decide my viewing schedule myself and not depend on Network to decide when to drop an episode and when not to’ is what I am getting at.

  5. Rachel is always right. I think it can depend on the show though. Watching 2 Dexter is about all a night can take, but watched 4 Call the Midwife in a night recently. I actually save up shows like Fringe and Walking dead for that reason. Only bites you in the ass when the DVR dies with all your episodes.

    1. I’ve thought about doing it that way, the only thing is that the hard drive on our PVR isn’t all that big. We can only record 20 hours of HD before it’s full.

      So while I was lagging behind on American Horror Story, I had to finally wave a flag and say “screw it” since the eight episode backlog was taking away from valuable Daily Show space.

      For your method, I usually rely on blu-ray.

  6. Right now for me it’s a mix of both. I like the scheduled order of watching shows at a certain timeslot, but there are other ones (mostly on cable channels) that I typically watch exclusively off OnDemand or PVR.

    One problem I am noticing with shows like House of Cards, in which the whole season is available at once, is that it is much harder to avoid spoilers if you are someone that wants to take his time watching (I’m only two episodes in).

  7. Great post Ryan. I like to watch stuff in maybe two or three episodes at a time if I can but no more, otherwise I feel a bit jaded by it. I do like having the option of when and how to watch though, I really like catching up on shows that have now finished like The Wire, etc, so I know I can watch the whole thing from beginning to end without binging on it and then being drip fed stuff over the next few months.

    1. Funny you mention The Wire because I’m working my way through that series, and if ever there was a case for me overly nursing a show – that’s it.

      I’ve been sloshing through it for 2+ years. We have the entire series, so basically I end up watching a season over a week or two, and then forget about it for something like six months.

      I’m obviously one for taking things slow, but The Wire is where I take it to a silly extreme.

  8. Personally I’m a big fan of not having to watch things when they are on. Haven’t watched many television shows lately, only regular one being Top Gear, but even that I usually a few days after it has aired. The great thing with my cable provider is that it offers a on demand portal for almost all channels and shows, so this really frees you in watching something when you want to.

    1. There’s only a very small handful of shows I watch “live” (“live” meaning I tune in 10-20 minutes late so I can fast-forward through commercials and catch up by the end of the broadcast).

      Kinda nice to save them up for when you’re feeling like just stretching out on the couch and being lazy, ain’t it?

  9. I did the whole carton of ice-cream with the first two seasons of 24 waaayyy back when they first came out on DVD. Not. Smart. At. All.

    I think parenthood has tempered our TV habits. Nic and I are now half-and-half. Even if the complete collection is at our fingertips, we wait until the munchkin is down for the night, pour a glass of wine (usually 1 glass/episode), and then – time permitting – watch 2 or 3 episodes. But if it’s Saturday night, well then all bets are off.

    1. Oh man – 24 was one of the worst for promoting binging! I’ll never forget the 48 hours where I feverishly watched season five so I could be up on things before season six began. Curiously, it was all downhill from there.

      Two-or-three episode blocks can be a good way to go, sorta the best of both worlds right? Don’t have to wait to “find out what happens”, but don’t empty out the whole buffet.

      harder to do with the HBO & BBC shows though, since no commercials means a solid 55 minutes per episode rather than 44.

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