I always thought I was beyond binge watching. I was better than sitting in bed all day or staying up all night endlessly watching fictional shows. That’s what I thought.
Then came one night I had finished all of my homework, had gone to all my meetings and had free time. What should I do with this newfound concept?
"Maybe I should start 'Friday Night Lights' and see what all the fuss is about," I said to myself.
Well, I might as well have paused my life like I pause the Netflix shows that have taken over because there’s no coming back once you hit that play button.
It’s common knowledge that it’s easy to fall in love with a show. Sure, that's happened to me before. But, you see, on TV, you have to sit through commercials. On TV, you have to you have to wait a whole week to see the next episode no matter how good the cliffhanger is.
On Netflix, you have 15 seconds to decide if you want to see if Lyla Garrity falls for Tim Riggins. In the amount of time that it takes you to fully comprehend and consume what just happened in the last 45 minutes of the episode you’ve just watched, Netflix automatically decides for you: yes, obviously you want to see how their love story unfolds.
But this isn’t how it all starts out, how the addiction begins, I mean. In fact, it evolves in stages.
1. You think to yourself, that show is so cliché. It’s overrated. I probably won’t even end up liking it.
2. You get through the pilot episode and think it is OK. I’ll give it another episode or two and see if I’ll get into it just to appease my friend who speaks nonstop about the show.
3. You actually begin to enjoy the show and warn anyone who tells you any kind of spoiler alert that there will be h*ll to pay. You’re on the brink of addiction.
4. The show grows on you, and by grows on you, I mean you’re infatuated with it. You start to watch shows back to back to back. You start to get emotionally attached to the characters (never a good sign).
5. Full-fledged obsessed and addicted, whilst staying up until 2 a.m. just to see the next episode.
Currently, I am on stage five of this addiction. I’ll remain here until I finish the last three seasons of "One Tree Hill," a challenge I am ready to conquer. In the meantime, I don’t know how I’m going to conquer a challenge resulting from my addiction: lack of sleep. Let me tell you, if I wake up one more morning thinking about Lucas Scott’s love life or the Nathan Haley Scott love story, then I’m really going to start thinking I have a problem. And the best part of all of it? This vicious cycle repeats itself each and every time you finish a series and utter those fateful words, “I think I’m going to start a new show on Netflix. Any recommendations?”
