Television Binge

This weekend I watched an old sitcom I had never seen before. It turned out to be part 1 of 2. Since I became emotionally invested in the show’s characters; I had to watch part 2. By the end of part 2 I was hooked and I’m planning a weekend where I can have a Binge-A- Thon. Yes, I’ll spend hours upon hours watching TV. In the winter when snow covers the ground and the weather outside is frightful it seems more plausible to binge watch TV. Even though I live in North Carolina I won’t let the fact it’ll be 60 degrees and sunny this weekend stop me from watching 536 hours of solid TV.

A recent Harris poll found that more than 6 in 10 TV viewers consume multiple episodes in one gluttonous stint. Thanks to streaming services like Netflix we are no longer subjected to repeats during the summer months. We no longer have to waste valuable time fast forwarding through commercials. We can have our favorite show at our fingertips, just by snapping our fingers.

I binged watched Downton Abbey and saw Lady Mary date, get engaged, marry, have a baby and lose a husband all while Lady Edith (her sister) still couldn’t land a man. I was emotionally spent at the day’s end. I binged watched Scandal’s Olivia Pope’s on again – off again relationship with a president who has yet to make one presidential decision.

The thing about binge watching – you pop some corn, dim the lights, put gum on the floor and you have a movie theater atmosphere. Sure, you may lose track of time and forget to feed your kids, but everything comes with a price.

After hours of TV when I got up from the couch to use the bathroom, I realized I couldn’t feel my butt. Oh, no. What happened to my butt? Thanks to my Binge-A-Thon, my butt went numb. Such is the price I paid for getting invested in Lady Mary’s life. I bet she never had a numb butt. Lucky for her, there were no televisions in her time.