Q. You’ve been anti-binge for a long time, most recently regarding “The Bear.” All 10 episodes of season two were released and I’ve been watching one a day. I love bingeing and I hate it that more and more streaming services are doing weekly releases. BINGE LOVER
A. It’s true, I’ve been against the fast consumption of good, new TV shows for a long time now — 10 years, to be exact, since Netflix got the bingeing trend going in earnest in 2013 with “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black.” And I’ve written about it before.
I haven’t liked the way bingeing leaves viewers out of sync so that, for instance, right now it’s hard to talk about “The Bear” to anyone — especially not in a newspaper — since fans are at different points in the just-released season two. I also haven’t liked the way that well-crafted individual episodes — there are a few of them in “The Bear” this season, including a dinner flashback and Richie’s educational trip — so easily get lost in the shuffle of viewing an entire season in a matter of days. There are other reasons to dislike bingeing ― Whatever happened to anticipation? Whatever happened to patience? — but I won’t run through them once again in these pages.
But I have evolved a bit on the topic, and I now see that different shows call out for different treatment. I realize I’ve been a bit binary, when perhaps the best approach is to weigh each case separately on its own merits. There are plenty of series these days that probably do work best in binge mode, series that are like popcorn — filled with air, not especially nutritional, and addictive. Netflix is the biggest purveyor of this kind of TV, where you can just keep plowing forward without missing much. Indeed, with the likes of “The Night Agent,” “Clickbait,” “Emily in Paris,” or “Bridgerton,” you may not want to ponder along the way, lest you discover plot silliness or shallow ideas.
Bingeing is also a positive when it comes to playing catch-up, when you want to watch the first season of, say, AMC’s “Dark Winds” so that you’ll be up to date when season two premieres next month. It’s also a positive when you’re rewatching a series that you love — “Ted Lasso,” for example, which offers some nice in-jokes and cross-seasonal mentions you might have missed during the first viewing experience.
But I still feel that the likes of “Breaking Bad” deserve to be consumed slowly, so you can savor the acting, the extraordinary cinematography, and the writing, and so that you can have time to think about what just happened and why. That show has so many excellent episodes that almost stand on their own in terms of themes; each one deserves to be taken and savored. I now feel that way about “The Last of Us,” the HBO series that seemed to hit new heights with each beautifully crafted hour. Likewise “Succession,” whose final season, in particular, was a weekly joy.
So many of the shows we consider among the best, including “Mad Men,” “Fargo,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Black Mirror,” are worth savoring one at a time, stretching out the enjoyment across weeks and months. I know I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to this issue, but, as my mother used to say, what-are-you-gonna-do?
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.
"TV" - Google News
June 27, 2023 at 12:07AM
https://ift.tt/fHkxmnz
If you must binge TV shows, binge responsibly - The Boston Globe
"TV" - Google News
https://ift.tt/Jncl4Qi
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "If you must binge TV shows binge responsibly - The Boston Globe"
Post a Comment