The term and the activity are pretty mainstream these days, with the advent of streaming services like Netflix, but binge watching may have originated back when TBS and some of the other cable originals would run marathons. The slow evolution of binge watching popularity was probably due to the (lack of) quality of offerings and minimal control. There were not that many people interested in devoting free weekends to The Gilligan's Island Marathon or The Gunsmoke Marathon.
Actually, there probably never was a Gunsmoke Marathon, because there were 635 episodes of Gunsmoke, which would have been reallllly long weekend, like 26 days of non-stop watching of what was usually the same story every week. Mimsy argues that Gunsmoke "wasn't really that popular". The show was only on for 20 years, dear...
 |
James Arness was Sheriff Matt Dillon. Once
a week for twenty years. With commercials. |
Binge got bigger with the arrival of home videotape, placing control in the viewer's hands, then came CD's, and the breadth of the selection-- and the convenience-- exploded. You could watch one after another of any crappy old show that caught your fancy and never connect to actual, real life--and no commercials!
We discovered binge watching --of a rudimentary sort-- during the time we lived in the Caribbean. We paid about a zillion dollars a month for satellite TV that offered the crappiest programming imaginable (like endless novellas from Puerto Rico and island governmental meetings). For actual entertainment we ultimately turned to Netflix.
Problem solved...not so well, it turned out, as our internet service (which likewise required an immense monthly ransom payment), worked sporadically, slowly and unpredictably. We would watch for a few minutes, then let it buffer for a few minutes, then watch again, trying not to lose the storyline. It was mind boggling, all these wonderful state of the art technologies smashing into each other like a NASCAR accident and ultimately working like a big pile of electronic crap. HD big screen smart TV + satellite technology + the internet + fabulous entertainment, all operating on infrastructure that couldn't reliably run the original pong game. So binge watching required dedication, patience and a lot of time.
 |
| My felonious girlfriends from Orange,..most of them, anyway |
| . |
I've made new video friends I would never have expected, as we've just finished binge watching Orange is the New Black. It's an incredible show about the residents and staff of a fictional women's prison in upstate New York. Pair up great entertainment with the binge commitment and you may end up with unexpected results. We've watched the available four seasons of Orange, getting to know everyone, night after night, bonding, as it were, and now must wait for months until the next season becomes available.
So here I sit, in withdrawal, desperately missing my white/black/Hispanic lesbian transgender female felon TV friends as I await the release of Season V.
Keep the faith, sisters, I will be here when you return...and I never promised that to Gilligan or the Dodge City folks.
