Thu, October 27, 2005
TV in Marathon Form—4:12 PM
"The New York Times" evaluates the practice of watching certain TV shows in giant chunks in their story "Lost" Weekend. I don't know what's sadder: their interview subjects who say things like "My DVR is my new girlfriend" and compare the Lost DVD box set to a stack of "Playboy" magazines – or the fact that I can completely identify with these statements.
TV shows fall short of movies in a lot of ways, but one way they're much better is time. There's a lot more time to spend with characters – more time for complex relationships, shifting motivations, and glorious, meticulously engineered story arcs (cf. Veronica Mars, season one). Thus, the best TV shows shouldn't be viewed as episodic snippets interrupted by a week of drudgery like sleep, work, and interacting with other people. (It's bad enough they have commercial breaks!) They're best enjoyed as giant, 22-hour mega stories. Of course, this is a pretty unwieldy time commitment, so a season must usually be broken up into smaller chunks.
From the start, I could only watch Alias in two-episode blocks on alternate Sundays, which is still the way I prefer to watch a lot of my favorite shows, like Without a Trace or NUMB3RS. Like Alan Cohen says in the article, the best feeling is to watch one episode with the knowledge that another is waiting in the wings. (There is a downside, though. When Arksie and I made a summer out of 6- to 8-episode Alias mini-marathons, I got hooked on the practice, and now I can't watch that show in blocks of less than six hours. It's one reason I'm still woefully behind on all things Bristow.)
Things have been busy at the onebee compound, so the weekend before last became a TiVo catch-up period by necessity. This begat a delightful new tradition: a marathon of marathons. I had mini-marathons (2-4 episodes) of Surface, Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, NUMB3RS, Commander In Chief, Lost, and Threshold. What a joy!
Ignore TiVo for two or three weeks and then get in all your quality time in one uninterrupted, high-intensity weekend session. Name a girlfriend that will do that! (Wow, now that's really sad.)
