I just did ten hours of TV, but I can kick the habit anytime. Honest
I was on a plane to Puerto Rico last year, sitting behind a couple with children. The man was in headphones, watching his screen; the woman was looking after their two squirmy children. Repeatedly, she turned to him and asked him to help … and repeatedly, he shushed her and said another five minutes.
This went on for about an hour until she punched him, suddenly, hard in the head. Even then, he kept watching. (The saddest thing about the whole vignette is that he was risking his relationship for The Dark Knight Rises.)
I thought about this scene last week in Cape Cod where, with the friend I was visiting, I calculate we watched over 10 hours of TV in a four-day period. That is TV as it is now watched: side by side on the sofa, headphones in, laptop burning a hole in your stomach, for up to three hours at a stretch. (Something happens in the fourth hour of binge-watching. You don't get the same buzz. Self-loathing sets in and you just want it to be over.)
It's so profoundly antisocial – with only two senses left, anyone wanting to attract your attention would have to either cook you bacon or assault you – it's a domestic crime you can only get away with on holiday, and with someone who shares your addiction.
There's a question as to whether, with everything on demand, nothing has the same value anymore, but we're not there yet. The experience of controlling the flow of information is so novel that we still have little in the way of resistance. I was coming down from three days of The Fall, the brilliant Gillian Anderson cop drama set in Northern Ireland, and starting Top of the Lake, the New Zealand crime drama directed by Jane Campion and starring Peggy-from-Mad-Men, which my friend had already seen. She was starting Orange is the New Black, which I was halfway through. Every hour, we surfaced for study-break.
"So, the dad's awful but not a paedo, right?"
"Right."
"So why did the girl pull a gun on him?"
"I think because he didn't know what he'd done."
"He could've done it."
"Right. My question is: if Miss Claudette killed that guy, why is she in a low-security prison?"
"She probably claimed self-defense. Don't you think? She probably got that girl with the bruises as a witness."
"OK. I'm anxious about Piper's screwdriver."
"You should be."
Consumed at such high dosage, there's a lag between consumption and absorption. You emerge punch-drunk, eyes swimming. The characters visit you in dreams. Real life seems messy by comparison and a pain to get back to. When shows don't take – in my case, The Killing season 3; Under the Dome; Battlestar Galactica – you have nothing but empty calories to show for your time.
Even with the good shows, you have to think hard before committing. Very occasionally, it's possible to drum up some discipline. Three episodes into Game of Thrones I saw what it would do to my life and walked away.
Orange is a silly show in some ways, but it's good-natured and funny about when hipsters malfunction and come into contact with harsher realities. The characters are neatly drawn: the boyfriend, whose tittishness is established by how excited he is to get a piece in the Modern Love section of the New York Times; the great character of Red, the Russian cook, and Sophia, the transgender hairdresser. It's cartoonish but clever, particularly if you juggle it with the brooding art-house feel of something like Top of the Lake, which, despite comic relief from Peggy's accent, depicts a certain bruising rural poverty you don't often see on TV.
"So he drugged her or she just drank too much?"
"I think he drugged her."
"Wow."
"Yeah."
"But why did he ask her to marry him?"
Before the series ends, you start casting around nervously for what's next. Lilyhammer? Too silly. Hemlock Grove? "Isn't that supernatural?" It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia? Just doesn't feel right. There's a French crime drama called Spiral which I started watching and can feel beginning to chip away at my willingness to socialise. The dishwasher sat unstacked until midnight last night, the book I'm reading unread.
"What are you doing?"
"Just another five minutes."
The day after I got back from holiday, my vacation friend texted me at 11.30am:
Finished OITNB! Keep me posted on your progress. Let's never become meth addicts."
Reported by guardian.co.uk 36 minutes ago.
I was on a plane to Puerto Rico last year, sitting behind a couple with children. The man was in headphones, watching his screen; the woman was looking after their two squirmy children. Repeatedly, she turned to him and asked him to help … and repeatedly, he shushed her and said another five minutes.
This went on for about an hour until she punched him, suddenly, hard in the head. Even then, he kept watching. (The saddest thing about the whole vignette is that he was risking his relationship for The Dark Knight Rises.)
I thought about this scene last week in Cape Cod where, with the friend I was visiting, I calculate we watched over 10 hours of TV in a four-day period. That is TV as it is now watched: side by side on the sofa, headphones in, laptop burning a hole in your stomach, for up to three hours at a stretch. (Something happens in the fourth hour of binge-watching. You don't get the same buzz. Self-loathing sets in and you just want it to be over.)
It's so profoundly antisocial – with only two senses left, anyone wanting to attract your attention would have to either cook you bacon or assault you – it's a domestic crime you can only get away with on holiday, and with someone who shares your addiction.
There's a question as to whether, with everything on demand, nothing has the same value anymore, but we're not there yet. The experience of controlling the flow of information is so novel that we still have little in the way of resistance. I was coming down from three days of The Fall, the brilliant Gillian Anderson cop drama set in Northern Ireland, and starting Top of the Lake, the New Zealand crime drama directed by Jane Campion and starring Peggy-from-Mad-Men, which my friend had already seen. She was starting Orange is the New Black, which I was halfway through. Every hour, we surfaced for study-break.
"So, the dad's awful but not a paedo, right?"
"Right."
"So why did the girl pull a gun on him?"
"I think because he didn't know what he'd done."
"He could've done it."
"Right. My question is: if Miss Claudette killed that guy, why is she in a low-security prison?"
"She probably claimed self-defense. Don't you think? She probably got that girl with the bruises as a witness."
"OK. I'm anxious about Piper's screwdriver."
"You should be."
Consumed at such high dosage, there's a lag between consumption and absorption. You emerge punch-drunk, eyes swimming. The characters visit you in dreams. Real life seems messy by comparison and a pain to get back to. When shows don't take – in my case, The Killing season 3; Under the Dome; Battlestar Galactica – you have nothing but empty calories to show for your time.
Even with the good shows, you have to think hard before committing. Very occasionally, it's possible to drum up some discipline. Three episodes into Game of Thrones I saw what it would do to my life and walked away.
Orange is a silly show in some ways, but it's good-natured and funny about when hipsters malfunction and come into contact with harsher realities. The characters are neatly drawn: the boyfriend, whose tittishness is established by how excited he is to get a piece in the Modern Love section of the New York Times; the great character of Red, the Russian cook, and Sophia, the transgender hairdresser. It's cartoonish but clever, particularly if you juggle it with the brooding art-house feel of something like Top of the Lake, which, despite comic relief from Peggy's accent, depicts a certain bruising rural poverty you don't often see on TV.
"So he drugged her or she just drank too much?"
"I think he drugged her."
"Wow."
"Yeah."
"But why did he ask her to marry him?"
Before the series ends, you start casting around nervously for what's next. Lilyhammer? Too silly. Hemlock Grove? "Isn't that supernatural?" It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia? Just doesn't feel right. There's a French crime drama called Spiral which I started watching and can feel beginning to chip away at my willingness to socialise. The dishwasher sat unstacked until midnight last night, the book I'm reading unread.
"What are you doing?"
"Just another five minutes."
The day after I got back from holiday, my vacation friend texted me at 11.30am:
Finished OITNB! Keep me posted on your progress. Let's never become meth addicts."
Reported by guardian.co.uk 36 minutes ago.