Some of my best memories as a kid are of family TV time. My mom and brothers and I would all squeeze onto the couch after dinner and tune in for YTV’s latest escapade. We watched everything from Goosebumps, to Freaky Stories, to Are You Afraid of The Dark?, to Student Bodies. If I was lucky, I’d be allowed to stay up and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my mom after my brothers went to bed. It was good, old-fashioned TV time.
In elementary school, I came home after school and did my homework in front of the Family Channel all night. I watched the newest episodes of Kim Possible, Lizzie McGuire, and Even Stevens. Sunday nights were Degrassi nights, and when 8 p.m. rolled around, I had a hot chocolate in hand and I was snuggling up to my dog on the couch.
In high school, it was Vampire Diaries, 90210, True Blood, The Hills, Laguna Beach, and MTV Live. I had a wall calendar in my bedroom (before Smartphone calendars existed) where I marked the time slots of my favourite shows.
Call me a TV addict—but I love television, and always will. The early stages of my bingewatching career began when my household was introduced to Bell’s PVR (Personal Video Recorder). For the first time ever, I could put my favourite shows on “timers,” and simply press the “record” button on my remote. I began watching episodes the day or a few days after they aired.
With the recent boom in streaming companies, binge-watching has become a thing; a thing that has been taken to a whole new level since Netflix began releasing full seasons all at once.
Binge-watching has its perks; it allows viewers to watch TV shows at their own pace and their own time. When Netflix released the third season of Orange is the New Black, viewers were able to watch the 12 episodes over one weekend, or spread out over a few weeks. Releasing full seasons allows for flexibility, however, are there downfalls to binge-watching?
The most obvious con to binge-watching is the absence of shared viewership. Before we were able to watch a full series on demand, viewers had to watch shows on their airdate, which kept viewers in sync with other viewers. Talking about shows with friends is completely different between binge-watching and weekly viewing: weekly viewing allows viewers to discuss what happened in the most recent episode, and to share that excitement for the next episode, while binge-watching dampens that conversation because it poses the risk of spoilers. When OITNB was released this past summer, I couldn’t talk about it with any of my friends because we were all on different points in the season, and trying to have a conversation about the characters or events felt like walking on eggshells.
Another aspect that is lost in binge-watching is becoming invested in the show’s characters. Stretching a series out over a span of a few months allows viewers to become emotionally invested in the show, perhaps finding themselves thinking about a particular character throughout the week until the next episode is aired.
Though I am a sucker for binge-watching (I blew through The Mindy Project in an embarrassingly small amount of time), I do miss the buildup of being forced to wait for a whole week for a new episode. I miss the overwhelming frustration of being left with a massive cliffhanger and a whole seven days until I can find out whether the main character is a vampire or not. I miss the emotional investment in a series that runs all winter, and being able to call my friend in the middle of an episode to rave about everything that just happened.
However, I certainly do not miss commercials, so I guess that’s where streaming leaves us with a one-up.
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The Ontarion publishes independent, student-produced news, opinion, and commentary for University of Guelph students so that they can make informed decisions in their lives. To do this, The Ontarion provides learning opportunities and training in journalism, media production, leadership, board governance, and other aspects of nonprofit news.
The Ontarion is the University of Guelph’s independent student newspaper. It began in 1951 as part of the Ontario Agricultural College and then began to represent the entire University of Guelph once it amalgamated in 1964. The Ontarion incorporated in May 1970 as The Ontarion, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation registered with the province of Ontario.