11.6.15 Binge There, Saw That
Everyone always knew broadcast TV was a House of Cards.
Only Mad Men believed viewers would continue to race home from The Office, so they could watch a scheduled program with their Friends, when it is so much more Dexter-ous to just record it and watch it later. Then came DVD’s, and folks could buy an entire season of a show, get all the Freaks and Geeks together, and watch the whole thing in 24 hours. Glee!
But now folks are getting completely Lost. Folks have taken to watching an entire series – several years’ worth – in one sitting. People are spending so many hours in marathon viewing sessions they are starting to look like The Walking Dead.
They are going to wind up in Scrubs at the Doctor. Who doesn’t fear that it’s a threat to our Community? Seriously, it doesn’t take a Sherlock to see this is an American Horror Story.
And now the good folks at Collins Dictionary have confirmed it. In addition to providing meanings for fairly standard words like “Sopranos,” the Collins folks keep a close eye on popular word usage. And they’ve detected a new etymological trend coming over The Wire. It’s a relatively new term that any Gossip Girl could tell you means, “staying in your House like you are suffering from Northern Exposure (even when It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), fighting with your Entourage over sitting spots like it’s some Game of Thrones, and watching TV until your eyeballs are blazing like Friday Night Lights.” And this year, this term lit up like a Firefly.
Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2015 is …
“Binge-watching.”
Now, some folks will say this trend is limited to millennials, but they are Pretty Little Liars. Any True Detective will tell you it’s fairly Transparent that we are all Sons of Anarchy. We are binge-watching in Fargo, we are binge-watching in The West Wing, we are even binge-watching in prison (where Orange is the New Black).
This is, like, the end of Rome. Whether we live in Gotham, run a Boardwalk Empire or work down at Parks and Recreation, we never see the light of day any more. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is certainly coming for us all.