The Guilty Pleasure of Binge-Watching

Binge watching. The modern way to watch your favourite shows. I am as guilty of doing this as anyone. While I don’t really have a whole lot of time to watch TV anymore, I do occasionally find myself with some free time, or a certain show comes along that cannot be ignored.

Over the years, I have binge-watched a few different series. I remember my wife and I spending a weekend in bed watching Battlestar Galactica, saying “just one more” at the end of every episode. Once we reached a certain point, we gave in and decided that we might as well finish the entire season. Then of course, seeing how we were left with a cliffhanger, we just had to start the next season.

But is that a “guilty pleasure?” Not so much. If we are watching something obsessively, unable to stop, that means we are enjoying it. In theory, it means it’s a good show in order to keep our attention. Nothing to feel guilty about there. Except...

Once in a while, you find a show that you have to admit isn’t necessarily great, but just somehow entertaining. I have encountered a few of these. More often than not, they tend to be reality shows. For me, this was the case with one show that I suppose I could call a guilty pleasure.

I knew of Gordon Ramsey before I started watching Hotel Hell. I knew he was a chef, knew that he had a certain reputation for being aggressive and perhaps not the most pleasant person. I suppose most people know him primarily from Hell’s Kitchen. I have watched that and enjoyed it, but for some reason, the show that I wound up binge-watching was Hotel Hell.

Maybe it was just the particular episodes that I saw, but I was drawn into Hotel Hell more than Hell’s Kitchen. I am not sure why. Both shows deal with Ramsey helping struggling business owners who need a serious makeover. Both shows have moments where you want to reach through the screen and strangle somebody. Often it’s because the business owner-- in the case of Hotel Hell, the hotel owner, natch-- is asking for help, but as soon as they receive it, they become defensive and refuse to listen to anything they are being told.

I worked for many years in retail and so I am familiar with customer service. Perhaps that is why Hotel Hell clicked with me. Many episodes revealed hotel owners who really should not be dealing with the public. Where once I had believed all I had heard about Ramsey being a jerk, I was now totally sympathizing with him as he would become increasingly frustrated with those whom he was trying to help. I’ve been in that position on multiple occasions, so I knew just what he was feeling. Some people don’t actually want to be helped-- they want to have you tell them they are right and things aren’t working out for them due to something external to themselves. A classic example was the “it’s fresh!” guy who couldn’t understand the difference between a fresh burger and one that had been frozen.

When I discovered the show on YouTube, I was hooked. I watched several episodes that first night (staying up until the wee hours of the morning). The next day I watched a bunch of clips when I couldn’t find full episodes.

Is it a great show? Not really. It’s not high drama, but it was enough to get me hooked, even though I know much of it is likely scripted and scenes must have been staged for entertainment purposes. Still, I kept watching. After a couple of days of viewing every episode I could find, I looked back on all the hours wasted and wondered what had come over me.

Overall, I don’t think binge-watching is a very good thing, for a few reasons. The first is that you can get caught up in a show and find yourself ignoring things that need to be done around the house. The ease in which we can jump to the next episode keeps us from moving on to other things. The second is that binge-watching actually robs us of what could be greater enjoyment if we watched the show spread out weekly.

I’m sure we can all recall watching some show that ended their season with a cliffhanger. We’d curse and moan about having to wait several months for the new season to start, but was that really a bad thing? I spoke to someone recently who complained about a show on Disney+ which is releasing weekly. He expressed concern that he wouldn’t remember what happened in the first episode by the time he reached the season finale and thus not be able to follow the story, which continues from week to week.

I tried to imagine how he would have survived watching a show like X-Files, which revealed information slowly, over the course of the entire series...

I am a bit sad for modern viewers like my sons who will never connect with a show the way I did when I was young. Sure, they will enjoy watching things even if they binge-watches them, but consider a show like M*A*S*H. I still consider that one of the finest shows ever made. I can recall certain scenes that, even today, stir my emotions.

When M*A*S*H ended its 11-year run, viewers were crushed. We had spent more than a decade inviting these characters into our homes. The emotions shown by the characters were emotions felt by the audience. These people were a part of our lives. Saying goodbye to them was difficult. Viewers were so caught up in that final episode that they would not leave the TV even during commercial breaks. This resulted in a collective rush to the bathroom after the show ended which sent 6.7 million gallons of water into the sewers of New York city, an instantaneous increase in water flow that had never been seen before.

The bonds made between viewers and TV characters over 11 years can never be matched by watching a show in the space of a weekend or two.

Binge-watching may seem great and sometimes it may be, but to me, the guilt in “guilty pleasure” comes from lessening the impact that a show could have by reducing it to something to speed through and then forget. If binge-watching had been possible in the 80’s, no one would have been asking “who shot JR?” They would know within moments and a pop-culture phenomenon that intrigued everyone from presidents to Queen Elizabeth would have never happened.

Binge-watching robs us of the enjoyment of anticipation and, as mentioned above, seems to also be shortening our attention span.

I think I will stick with regular viewing.