I Have a TV Addiction (70 Shows in the last year)
Okay, I'm going to be real with y'all for just a second. When I'm not working on my next book I'm a TV junkie. I have literally watched every episode of every show, to the point that I have run out of things to watch.
I'm hardly alone. At an average of 90 minutes a day Americans spend more time on Netflix than they do eating or having sex. Netflix alone accounts for a third of all internet traffic. Of course I don't get all this stuff from Netflix... I also have Prime and the "other" streaming service.
It's ironic because I used to pride myself on not owning a television. To be fair, television in the days of the major networks was generally terrible. It probably still is... I still don't own a TV but it has through various ways and means found me and it's Good. There are so many awesome shows on nowadays people complain that you can't see them all.
Those are obviously people with day jobs and families. By the time most people are hitting their 2PM slump, I've caught up on everything that aired the previous day. If Netflix or Amazon dump a series in it's entirety I clear my schedule. (There are some shows I didn't get into-- Amazon's original programming is a little bit hit or miss for me.)
I tell myself that it's good practice for understanding character, plot and dialogue. And in a way I think it is. The Queen of Lies was an ambitious undertaking for a first novel-- most authors stick to a central character and a subplot or two. My brain doesn't work that way and I think I owe that in part to binge watching and seeing plots that don't have neat summaries unfold in the course of ten uninterpreted hours.
Obviously there's a diminishing return. I have a stack of books that lie neglected, which is shameful because I am after all writing books. I've read maybe ten since april.
Below, in purely alphabetical order, is every show I could come up with in under ten minutes that I have seen in it's entirety within the last year-ish. How does your viewing stack up to this list?
American Horror Story
Archer
Arrested Development
Arrow
Banshee
Bastard Executioner
Bates Motel
Blood and Oil
Bloodline
Bojack Horseman
Continuum
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Daredevil
Dark Matter
Darknet
Defiance
Doctor Who
Dominion
Downton Abbey
Empire
Extant
Falling Skies
Fear the Walking Dead
Flash
Fosters
Game of Thrones
Girls
Good Wife
Gotham
Grimm
Hand of God
Hannibal
Hemlock Grove
Heroes reborn
Homeland
House of Cards
How to Get Away with Murder
Killjoys
Limitless
Looking
Lost Girl
Louie
Mad Men
Marvel's Agents of SHIELD
Minority Report
Narcos
Once Upon a Time
Orange is the New Black
Portlandia
Quantico
Rectify
Review
Rick & Morty
Scandal
Scream Queens
Sense 8
Sleepy Hollow
Spartacus
Supernatural
Teen Wolf
The Originals
The Strain
Transparent
True Detective
Turn
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Under the Dome
Vampire Diaries
Vikings
Walking Dead
Z Nation
