The Binge
The Strange Thing About Stranger Things
May it have been better to let it build?..
On July 25th, megan added Stranger Things to our “To Watch” channel in the Slack we use to organize life stuff. My immediate response: “What that?”
To be fair, it had only been ten days since the series was unveiled to the world on Netflix. Still, that was more than enough time for many friends and seemingly most of the internet to watch the entire thing and subsequently rave about it on all the social networks. I was simply out of the loop.
But I no longer am.
While it took us a whole week — basically an eternity in binge watching time — we finished Stranger Things last night. And yes, it lives up to the hype. But rather than break down the plot or even the artistic merits of the show — the opening titles are particularly amazing — what I found just as interesting is the discussion around how people were watching it.
In other words, no spoiler alerts here.
Part of the reason why it took a whole ten days to get on my radar was there didn’t seem to be much of a build-up. I mean this both in terms of leading up to its release (the biggest star in the cast is Winona Ryder — yes, that Winona Ryder), but also in that there was no real time for a groundswell of support for the show. People found it on Netflix, watched it, couldn’t stop watching it, and because it’s only eight episodes, finished it very quickly.
Obviously, “binge watching” is nothing new. And it has basically become synonymous with Netflix. And there have long been debates about the positives and negatives of this type of viewing. On the plus side, it effectively turns something like Stranger Things into an eight-hour movie. Which, as long as the content is good — again, as it is here — is awesome. On the downside, you barely have time to actually digest any given episode. Because it’s always on to the next one.
So instead, like a movie, you can really only digest the thing as a whole. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing. (I like Ben Bajarin’s recent thesis on “storytelling-as-a-service.”) But it’s quite different than traditional television. And, in a way, it seems to negate some of the strengths of that format.
Namely, I’m talking about the notion of everyone watching a bit of content in roughly the same timeframe and then discussing it afterwards. While DVRs killed some of this before Netflix and the like came around, it still exists here and there in shows like Game of Thrones.¹ And those shows definitely benefit from the hype and forced build-up as a result.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that recent discussions I’ve had with friends about Stranger Things always seem to lead back to the question of whether or not it would be better to release it in installments (be it weekly or something else). I know this sounds antithetical in the age of Netflix — and certainly for a Netflix show! — but again, because everyone binges through such shows in their own time and at their own pace, it makes real discourse about the shows much more complicated.
Yes, we can still have a broad discussion about Stranger Things, assuming we’ve all watched all of it. But missing are the discussions about individual elements of individual episodes. And the aforementioned build-up. Because some of the mystery that may have been left hanging is likely going to be resolved by the time you’re through (though not with everything in this particular show, of course). And, frankly, who can remember every little thing that happened in the middle of an eight-hour content binge?
All of this makes me wonder why Netflix bothers with “episodes” at all. Why not just put it up there in an eight-hour format? I assume part of the reason has to do with production (this is the way television content has long been done, and they may need to sell the rights elsewhere eventually). While another part may be the fact that eight hours of anything seems awfully daunting heading into it. Episode breaks give you a natural pause in what would seem like a massive commitment.
Anyway, I just found myself thinking about all of this as we finished the show. It may have been cool to have everyone watching it more episodically throughout the summer and talking about it, and digesting it that way. I’m not sure Stranger Things would have been better this way, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been either.
[GIFs via Giphy]
¹ And, of course, live sports.
