Not surprisingly, I binged Daredevil season 2 over the weekend (I mean, what comic geek wouldn’t?). So I was thinking about the relatively new (to the mainstream) concept of binging television shows in general. Is it more of a geek thing? Why do I like it so much? And is there anything wrong with a good binge? 

For those in the dark (and you really need to be living under an impressive rock to not know), binging is when you watch a large number of episodes of a show in one sitting or over the span of a weekend or a few days. I’m not talking about two episodes per night for a couple of weeks. I’m talking 13 episodes in two days (per Daredevil) or more. It’s a “not getting anything else done this weekend” sort of thing.

Obviously, binging has not always been the widespread activity it is now. Even when you could buy entire seasons of tv shows on video tape (which could be pretty pricey), most people didn’t care to sit and watch an entire season in a day or two. Plus, there weren’t a lot of tv shows actually available. That changed with DVDs, especially as to availability and price, but the big change, at least in my opinion, came with the advent of Netflix. It became cheap and easy to access all available tv shows. And then the big leap – streaming. No more waiting for DVDs to be released so you could buy them or rent them. Now, based on the service and what you’re willing to pay, entire seasons of tv shows are available on your tablet, laptop or tv at the click of a button.

So that’s exactly what we do – sit down, grab the remote and click that button for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or whatever. But now it’s not just past seasons of network or cable television that we can watch. These streaming services are producing their own shows and releasing the entire season at once. And if you’re a fan, you want to sit and watch all the things!

That’s what I love about binging. Provided you have the time for it, catching up on your favorite characters and finding out what happens next through an entire season is a wonderful thing. And when you’re a geek it’s pretty much guaranteed that a good chunk of your geek friends are doing the same thing so you don’t need to worry about dropping spoilers when you talk about it. But binging isn’t just a geek thing; there are plenty of dramas, comedies and other “mainstream” fare that people binge.

Now anyone who has ever binged knows the one big negative: you’ve just watched the entire new/most recent season of a favorite show and now what? Now we wait. We wait to hear if there’s another season coming, when it’s going to release, who is being cast. Obviously, it’s our own fault – if we had waited, taken it one episode at a time over a couple of weeks, savored the plot and acting. But no, we binged.

Screw it, we’re glad we binged! The excitement for the season was building for months. We cleared our calendar so we could indulge our fandom. And it was so worth it! The action, the drama, the atmosphere, the fights, the excitement (ok, so I’m speaking about Daredevil at this point)… we thoroughly enjoyed completely immersing ourselves in it. If we need to wait another year, fine we’ll just watch the season over again.

But guess what. These days, geeks never wait too long for another piece of fandom. We have summer blockbusters to keep us occupied and another Netflix series in the fall (Luke Cage, in case you’re redecorating your rock). So it’s really not all bad.

And we won’t stop binging – because we love it.