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Netflix's binge-release model once felt innovative, but now it feels burdensome

posted 5 years ago by TMC-4 (20121)
1 reply | jump to latest

https://www.tvguide.com/news/disney-plus-weekly-release-netflix-binge

The binge-release model has led to a feeling of TV overload. "That sense of never being able to keep up with every series worth watching has much to do with the fact that there's more TV now than ever — and more high quality TV as well — but also because shows land on our virtual doorsteps in bulk quantities with alarming frequency," says Keith Phipps. "It's not great for TV fans. But it's also not great for TV series." Phipps says the approach "worked brilliantly, at least for a while" with the "daring" binge release of House of Cards, Arrested Development and Orange Is the New Black in 2013. But as he points out, the recent season of Stranger Things had a lot to unpack, while GLOW Season 3 should've provided conversation fodder for weeks. Instead, the window for talking about them opened and closed so quickly that TV chatter quickly moved on to other things. "There's nothing wrong with binge watching (within healthy limits, of course) and the idea of having full runs of TV seasons past and present accessible at all times is an innovation that might have seemed like science fiction even 15 years ago," says Phipps. "But where the option of giving viewers new seasons of TV en masse once served as a novel competitive advantage — why wait when you can have it all now? — its limitations have started to become apparent. That's to say nothing of how intimidating it can be to stare at 10 or 13 episodes and wonder when you'll have the time to watch all of them, particularly with new full-season blocks following so quickly on their heels. (Done with GLOW? Here's nine hours of Mindhunter for you.) TV released on a weekly basis, however, becomes part of the ebb and flow of daily life. The days of everyone sitting down at the same time to watch the same show are in the past, apart from outliers like Game of Thrones. But the all-or-nothing option of the full-season-at-once feels like an inadequate replacement, offering few of the communal pleasures that have defined TV from its start and blunting the cultural impact of shows we should all be talking about together."

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14379) 5 years ago

While there are drawbacks to this model, I would like to point out that there are two good things that have come out of it too.

The first is that you could set it up so that your family/friends watch 1-2 episodes per evening, maybe draw it out over time, and then you can have something to watch for a while in the that time slot.

The second is, they are much better with continuity now than they were with tv shows in the past. If there's one thing that always bugged me about some shows made, even as recently as 2010, it was the fact that the people who made them were not always consistent with their characters or story-writing.

They would say things later in the series that contradicted what you had learned of, say, a character earlier in the series, or they'd shoe-horn in something about the characters later on in the series that doesn't make sense overall ("Once Upon A Time" was notorious for this). Or they'd have the same thing happening over and over again, and never mention what was wrong with that, or even have the characters notice.

A common example would be from the tv show "I Dream of Jeannie," where Dr. Bellows would just walk into Major Nelson's house, as if the guy never locked his door, and nobody thought how creepy it was that the guy could just come in any time he wanted and witness part of a spell gone wrong with Jeannie.

It's also nice to know they don't have Chuck Cunningham Syndrome anymore. That drives a lot of people nuts, to see a character just disappear from the show with no explanation.

The series' all can now work like novels instead of the same old thing in every episode. Granted, you can't play them out of order now, but it's nice watching the characters' and story evolve over time.