Did Binge Watching Change the Way Shows Are Written?

By Gabrielle Greenstein on March 7, 2017

Binge watching is a guilty pleasure that allows us to be engrossed in a world that is not our own for days at a time. Thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, we are welcomed into carefully constructed story lines pushing us to click “yes” each time the “would you like to continue watching?” question appears (and reminds us that we haven’t left the couch in too many hours).

Yet, on a recent binge of Mad Men, I found myself growing weary of main character and playboy Don Draper’s escapades. How was cyclical, self-destructive behavior supposed to hold an audience’s attention? Why would screenwriters center their plot around an adult man who takes seasons to mature? My frustration only grew when I realized I was only on season two of seven, as I was still interested in the culmination of the plot but frustrated by a ceaseless character arc.

Then, I remember that Mad Men was not written for Netflix — it was not written for binge watching.

Mad Men aired their 12 episode seasons on AMC from 2007 to 2015. With one-hour episodes airing once a week, the scheduling of this sixties drama is typical of a cable television show. The seven days that separate each episode force an audience to digest information and wait in anticipation for the next. The years that separate seasons allow that same audience to participate in the temporality of the story and follow it to its culmination, sometimes weary from the journey.

Yet, the characters become familiar and their growth, while slower, is realistic in its subtly. Television offers both viewers and screenwriters an opportunity to participate in a story for years and allows for a more intimate experience.

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In contrast, streaming services that create their own content typically release entire seasons at once. Netflix’s House of Cards and Stranger Things, Amazon Prime’s Red Oaks, and many more follow this premiering pattern where the wait between seasons replaces the wait between episodes. Audiences, then, do not experience the story collectively and are not bound together until the season, the story, is recognized and understood as a whole. Consequently, hours worth of information is given to a viewer at once and the plot, along with its characters, is forwarded at a quick pace where the characters and audiences alike are racing towards the finish line that is a season finale.

It is the pace of a season that truly differentiates a television show from a show written for a streaming service. The time in which we meet new characters, watch relationships begin and end, and see a storyline to completion, is purposely condensed. This is not to say binge-watching has ruined the art of the show. In fact, it has evolved the practice. Watching three or four episodes in one sitting gives screenwriters the agency to create intricate stories ridden with detailed information. Now, there is a place to build complicated domino effects where episodes do not have to stand on their own but have to connect to each other in an intricate web.

Shows created for streaming services act as novels in their completeness and accessibility. Each episode prompts you to turn the page, each chapter tells you to keep going, to keep up with other viewers, until you make it to the end. Even if it takes days.

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