TV lost weekends via Instant Watch:
With the new season of “Breaking Bad” starting Sunday night, Chad Rohrbacher plopped down on his couch recently to catch up on some past episodes of the show about a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin. Twenty-two hours passed before he clicked off the set. Pausing only for bathroom breaks, sandwiches and occasional comments of disbelief from his wife, he watched two entire seasons in one go. “It just kind of snowballed,” the 40-year-old novelist and college professor recalls.
The wife and I killed the first 3 seasons of Sons of Anarchy in about two weeks, and I suspect once the “Breaking Bad” ball starts rolling it won’t stop until all the episodes have been watched.
I also watched the first two seasons of Archer inside of a week.
I must say, not having to wait for the next episode to air, or forced to stew when the season breaks, or even pause for commercial breaks is pretty awesome.
When the wife was recuperating from her brain surgery she DEVOURED Lost. I watched chunks of it when I was with her, and it didn’t really seem to be my bag.
Do you have a series addiction?
I’ve been a serious MST 3K fan for the past 20 years- I own about 30+ episodes on DVD.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is another.
Top Gear is certainly the big one on Netflix for me. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone through it, after watching it on BBC America at my friend’s house.
We have a Red Green box set and we watched through that many many many times when I was growing up.
Avatar: the Last Airbender on Netflix was a relatively recent one that falls in the “guilty pleasure” category.
And the one that I’m watching through right now almost to the exclusion of anything else is Star Trek Voyager, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit.
Oh, and MST3K would definitely be one that I could binge on if I could get a hold of a good supply of them–the ones on Netflix seem to come and go.
Several actually.
Not being much of one to watch TV, I always hear about good series’ third hand after they’ve been on for a while. I watched both Jericho and Firefly in their entirety after they had already gone off the air.
My wife and I have been waiting for the newest season of Son’s of Anarchy for a year. We just heard season 4 is coming out on DVD in August so we’re already making plans to rent it and spend a weekend watching the season.
We’re waiting for a new season of Spartacus too.
Most recently, I stumbled across “Starship Enterprise”…the prequel to the original Star Trek series with Scott Bakula. It was quite good, and my wife even enjoyed it, so we then queued up and have begun watching the original Star Trek series and have Next Generation and Deep Space Nine in the Queue to hit next after we finish it.
I know there are more that I’m not thinking of right now.
Netflix is a mixed blessing. It’s great to be able to watch shows without commercials and not having to be left hanging in between the “to be continued” episodes…but if you lose track of things, it sure can be a time suck.
Yeah we killed Jericho and Firefly in the exact same way.
Enterprise started out really strong, but I think the Hollywood types got embarrassed at the plot line and backed off, turning it into a wishy-washy mess. They had a couple of “evil Spock universe” episodes that were WONDERFUL, though.
None… dammit… I’m never home long enough to get interested in one…
You’re on the road so often, I’d assume you’d be the KING of watching series on Netflix or Hulu.
I went through Babylon 5 and Firefly like that.
Also the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
A couple graphic novels and book series as well I guess, can’t think of one specifically ATM.
Oh wait, hah most recently I went through The Hunger Games series like that, but that was more because it was basically a single slightly long novel.
I watched Firefly as it aired, but I’ve marathoned the DVD set many times since then.
I think I watched Spaced all in one day.
I marathoned each season after the first of The Wire individually.
Anime I’ve marathoned in a single day each include:
Angel Beats!
Ano Hana
Black Lagoon
Boogiepop Phantom
Break Blade
Dai Mahou Touge
Detroit Metal City
ef – a tale of memories
Eve no Jikan
Fireball
Gag Manga Biyori
Hellsing TV
Kaiba
Kaiji
Kaiji 2
Kamisama no Memo-chou
Kannazuki no Miko
Katanagatari
Kino no Tabi
Moshidora
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Ninja Nonsense
Saber Marionette J
Serial Experiments Lain
I watched LE Lain all in one sitting…I kinda wish I hadn’t. I think I was entitled for it to make sense….it didn’t.
Hellsing was really good.
Some others you didn’t mention that I consumed in mass quantities:
Berserk
Ghost in the Shell SAC (sadly the first season was some of the best Anime I’ve ever seen, the 2nd Gig just didn’t hook me at all)
Golgo 13 TV series
FLCL is really short and a run romp.
Oh right, I forgot I saw FLCL in one sitting too some months back. It was funny watching it and seeing little bits that later ended up being used again in Gurren Lagann.
I agree with you completely about Stand Alone Complex; the second Gig just didn’t even come close. If you have not yet seen the Solid State Society movie, I can recommend that one. It had a lot of what I liked about the original movie and the first season combined into one package.
I did see Solid State Society. It was OK. I got hooked on GitS from the first Anime, and from there got reading the Manga, and really stopped liking the movie much after that (same with Appleseed, which the Anime is really trash, but the first CGI movie is AMAZING, and after AKIRA its my favorite Manga) While GitS Innocence was one of the worst pieces of trash EVER, I find that the first Anime is good, but not very true to the Manga, the first SAC is VERY true to the manga and the best thing ever, Solid State Society is a bit in between.
Murdoch is a series about a clean-cut Victorian-era detective in Toronto using all those newfangled forensic things to solve crimes. Kind of a proto-NCIS steampunk thing. Cameos by Tesla, Houdini, A.C. Doyle, etc.
“Life” is a good series too; only three seasons.
“Connections” by James Burke – for history junkies. Also “The Day The Universe Changed” by the same guy.
Star Trek – original series is pretty good, too.
“Reaper” is a great “Average Joe vs Satan” series, and the guy who plays the devil is just great!
We’re the same way with Breaking Bad, SoA and Weeds(though Weeds is fast becoming unwatchable for us–Nancy’s become a self-absorbed sociopathic bitch and Shane has just gotten scary). I’m trying to get Mrs. Wraith into B5, but it’s slow going. I’m gonna have to wait until she’s really bored, I guess.
Weeds was an excellent show … for the first 2-ish seasons. It went downhill so fast from there that we couldn’t continue (although that damn opening-credits song is STILL stuck in my head 🙂 ).
hmmm, now that’s tempting. Watch the first two seasons with advise to eject once it starts getting lame.
We just watched two episodes of Breaking Bad last night (we would have watched more, but we were both pretty tired) but my interest was renewed in that they’re going into their final season, and I’ve yet to hear a bad review. I’m glad TV shows these days don’t feel pressured to squeeze every last bit of life out of a series until it becomes totally lame.
Its also helped the actors, seems that a lot more popular series actors are getting work beyond their hallmark show. Probably helps that people don’t remember them from season 10 of the show when half the original cast has quit, and a talking dog and a precocious kid is added to keep the failing ratings up.
I am working my way through Supernatural and Murdoch mentioned above. One of my previous was Avatar the Last Airbender
I’ve seen the first season of Supernatural and it was pretty darn good. I definitely need to see more of that one.
The Lovely Wife burned through 4 seasons of Bones in about a week and a half, while still taking care of the kids and house (and me!). Before that, we went through (in no particular order):
– Eureka
– Better Off Ted (highly recommend this one!)
– Warehouse 13
– Lie to Me
– Survivors (BBC show about a civilization-ending plague, which they NEVER finished 🙁 )
– Primeval
– The Walking Dead
– Numb3rs
– Avatar: the Last Airbender, which the kids love, and I get a kick out of the martial arts choreography (no pun intended). Plus Toph is freaking hilarious!
We’re now on Burn Notice, which after watching the first couple episodes looks promising.
Because the Lovely Wife doesn’t care for anime, I did all of Gundam Wing, Trigun, Hellsing, Zone of the Enders: Delores I, and a huge amount of Robotech on my own (usually late-nights or lunch-breaks). Currently working through Samurai 7 as I have time. Plan to hit Firefly soon (I probably lose some geek points for not seeing it already, huh?).
Yeah, once we latch on to a series, it’s pretty much always on until we’re done, then we find a new series. Netflix rocks!
Wife was just watching Numb3rs this morning. I gotta say the pseudo mathematics and science is laid on a little thick for me, but I certainly can see the appeal…and Mrs. Weer’d sure does too…tho she doesn’t seem to binge watch. This was the first time she’s watched an episode in over a month.
I’ll have to look into the others.
BTW Walking Dead I’m in some sort of Schrodinger Cat quantum state with. On one hand people tell me its an awesome show and I should watch it, on the other hand I hear its a lame soap opera. Also I’m a bit of a Zombie purist (not so pure that I get angry when I see “Runners” in a film) but I don’t know how I feel about setting down to watch a zombie show where I know a bulk of the cast is going to survive. The nice things about zombies is the smartest, most remorseful characters survive the longest….but they don’t survive. 😀
Um, the bulk of the cast most specifically does NOT survive in Walking Dead. I think about half have bit the dust…
But, yeah, they got a bit too soap-operaish in the middle of the second season.
And the Quantum state continues. One up, one down. I can currently both watching and not watching the series….:D
Archer, if you enjoy Samurai 7, track down Gankutsuou. It is the same studio giving a similar treatment to The Count of Monte Cristo as they did to Seven Samurai. It is a personal favorite of mine.
More series than I can count being a 20 year anime veteran. Most recent was a surprisingly good French(never thought this possible) fantasy/sci-fi show based on an MMO called Wakfu. Two full 26 episode seasons within a week and a half.
Lessee…
Dexter
Bones
Firefly
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Legend of Korra (watched that weekly, then once the season was complete, started it over and watched it with my twins in one or two sessions!)
True Blood (still not caught up, no time.)
There have been a few others, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head.
Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly got me through deployment.
Aside from that, pretty much all television I do not watch with the wife I watch a season at a batch – I find it easier to wait for the season to end, blind, rather than wait for episodes to come out week-by-week.
Trailer Park Boys is great for when you wanna laugh and not think. The IT Crowd puts Big Bang Theory to shame. Once you get hooked on Dr. Who and you find out that there are like hundreds of episodes it can get quite daunting. Then there is The Shield, Deadwood, The Wire, Hell On Wheels and American Horror Story. Oh crap, I almost forgot Lilyhammer and Justified. I watch a lot of British tv as well, there are quite a few good series from across the pound that when they get copied here in the States they ruin the show or just redo it with American actors like The Killing and Skins.