Streaming shows, released all at once, in full seasons, are a new genre:
In TV, narrative has always been an outgrowth of the delivery mechanism. Why are there cliffhangers? So you’ll tune in next week. Why are shows a half-hour or an hour long? Because real-time viewing required predictable schedules. Why do episodes have a multiple-act structure? To leave room for the commercials.
HBO series like “Deadwood” — which jettisoned the ad breaks and content restrictions of network TV — have been compared to Dickens’s serial novels. Watching a streaming series is even more like reading a book — you receive it as a seamless whole, you set your own schedule — but it’s also like video gaming. Binge-watching is immersive. It’s user-directed. It creates a dynamic that I call “The Suck”: that narcotic, tidal feeling of getting drawn into a show and letting it wash over you for hours. “Play next episode” is the default, and it’s so easy. It can be competitive, even. Your friends are posting their progress, hour by hour, on social media. (“OMG #JessicaJones episode 10!! Woke up at 3 a.m. to watch!”) Each episode becomes a level to unlock.
With those new mechanics comes a new relationship with the audience. Traditional television — what the jargonmeisters now call “linear TV” — assumes that your time is scarce and it has you for a few precious hours before bed. The streaming services assume they own your free time, whenever it comes — travel, holidays, weekends — to fill with five- and 10-hour entertainments.
So they program shows exactly when TV networks don’t. They debut series on Fridays (considered “the death slot” in network TV) and over holidays. This November and December, TV’s long winter’s nap of reruns, the streaming services are unloading season after full season of original TV: “Jessica Jones,” “Transparent,” “Making a Murderer,” “The Art of More” — and more, and more. Amazon is releasing Season 2 of “Mozart in the Jungle” on Dec. 30, just in time for the ball to drop.
In other words, they schedule their shows like Hollywood movies. Streaming is like a vast multiplex where every screen is playing “The Mahabharata.” It expects commitment — and gets it.