Does binge-watching come with directions?

Gotta face facts: I don’t know how to binge watch TV.


Which is really weird because I have no trouble bingeing in other ways. I binge ice cream. And chocolate chip cookies. And comic books. (I have the palette and aesthetics of an 8-year-old. Sue me.)


But binge watching TV is apparently a bridge too far.


My students often tell me they are bingeing a particular show. Some have watched every episode of “The Office” — all 201 of them — multiple times. One knocked out two seasons of “The Handmaid’s Tale” in as many weeks. Another spent a weekend watching four complete seasons of some reality show whose name escapes me.


I, on the other hand, am attempting to binge watch “Star Trek: Discovery.” I borrowed it from the library a few weeks back. Since then, I have watched one-and-a-half episodes. Pathetic, huh?


It took me two attempts to get through the first episode because I kept falling asleep. I’m having the same trouble with episode two.


It’s not that I don’t like it. The show’s pretty good. They’ve made Trek all grim and gritty, not your father’s Trek, yadda yadda yadda.


But pretty soon, I’ll have to return the set so other people can borrow it. They’ll probably finish all 15 episodes overnight or pace themselves over a weekend, in between full seasons of “Breaking Bad.”


My completion rate is significantly slower.


In the past few months, I’ve “binged” one Hulu series, “The Act,” about a mother who forced her child to use a wheelchair when she didn’t need it. The show had eight episodes. It took me about three weeks.


I also “binged” an eight-episode series from the Oxygen channel, “Dirty John.” It’s about a slimy conman — is there any other kind? — who wriggles his way into the life of a trusting woman and her daughters. I really whipped through that one, comparatively speaking, in about 10 days.


Both shows, by the way, are “based on true stories” or “inspired by real events” or “somewhat tenuously connected to something that might have happened to somebody, somewhere, at some time.” And they’re both enjoyable, but I’m not sure you should take the recommendation of somebody with such limited TV-watching experience.



I appreciate shows that have only seven or eight episodes because I feel like I can commit to them with a reasonable chance of success. Shows with more installments start to feel like a job that you hate — picking mushrooms out of the yard, cleaning the gutters or getting a colonoscopy.


I have a laundry list of failed programs in my wake, series that I have started and then abandoned or that I promise to get back to “someday.”


These include all of the Marvel series, including “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” and “The Punisher. They include the WB’s adaption of “The Flash,” which I really like, despite being three or maybe four seasons behind. I peaced out of “The Handmaid’s Tale” after six episodes, all of which I enjoyed but found too depressing to continue.


My turtle-speed watching is mostly because I don’t prioritize TV viewing. I’d rather be reading or doing something outside, especially in the summer.


Also, I’m more of a movie guy. A 90-minute or two-hour commitment strikes me as more reasonable, a complete story that doesn’t require the broadcast equivalent of a promise ring to see through to the final credits.


Even so, I have an alarming number of movies sitting around, both physically and digitally, that I may get to, at my present rate of consumption, some time in my 70s or 80s.


It’s gotten so bad that my wife and I recently made the decision to move our TV out of the living room. When we watch the news, which is really my must-see TV, we use a tablet or phone, so why build a room around a big black relic?


Earlier this month, we lugged the TV into the basement and plunked it down in front of an old couch. We’ve gone down there to watch three times since. Once was to watch a movie.


To nobody’s surprise, I fell asleep.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com


@cschillig on Twitter