Almost exactly two years ago, Netflix released Squid Game, the South Korean dystopian drama that temporarily took over social media. The Squid Game moment – and it was a moment, pervasive and fleeting – was an outsized version of the Netflix binge formula that, by late 2021 and especially after the mass couch event that was Covid, was so well-worn as to feel like clockwork. A show hits the streaming service all at once (in this case, nine episodes released worldwide on 17 September); it gains momentum online in memes, commentary and fan videos as part of an attention wildfire (142m households reportedly watched the show within a month); Netflix announces related projects building on the hype; the moment gives way to the next topic of the day and is consigned to the vast heap of viral internet history.
One could argue that Squid Game was the apotheosis and the denouement of the binge model – a massive phenomenon that, because it was available all at once, at people’s leisure, burned out quickly (see: Bridgerton, The Queen’s Gambit, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and more). Since then, the model that defined its platform also seems headed for the dustbin; Netflix, which has very publicly faced subscriber and financial challenges in the past few years, is reportedly considering releasing Squid Game: The Challenge, the competition show spinoff of the series, in batches rather than all at once.
It’s another major knock to Netflix’s era-defining binge model. The company, which was once staunchly opposed to advertisements and now has ad-supported plans, has experimented with batch releases for other reality shows, such as Too Hot to Handle, The Circle and the Korean competition show Physical: 100. Scripted hits such as Ozark, Money Heist and Stranger Things (another former binge success) had their recent seasons split into two parts.
The slow death of the binge model has been heralded for a while, as Netflix has weathered the fallout from its stock drop and subsequent freakout last year. But its application to Squid Game, and the separate miscalculation by Hulu to release the excellent second season of its critical darling The Bear all at once this summer, feels like another occasion to wave goodbye. I say this as a former chronic binger; my television viewing habits came of age at the dawn of the binge era, when the access to any show, at any time, en masse, was fresh, invigorating and gluttonous.
It felt like a luxury that became an expectation, in line with the boundless promise of the internet and the intensity of cultural conversations online, first on Facebook, then Twitter, now TikTok. The type of viewing once reserved for, say, Costco’s complete Friends DVD set became the standard for new word-of-mouth hits – how many hours you could inhale of House of Cards in one sitting, or how distraught you were after barreling through a whole new batch of Orange Is the New Black, or how a day of Emily in Paris smoothed your brain.
Binging not only became de rigueur for Netflix new releases but the default for consuming any old show. The most popular titles on the service were existing, beloved IP – Friends, The Office, Breaking Bad, Seinfeld – that viewers plowed through in long, repeat gulps. Television was, for me, high art or comfort, but above all, a prolonged escape; I spent a good portion of my 20s bleary-eyed after tearing through whole seasons of Deadwood, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights or Stranger Things in a night, and then, my brain in another world, inhaling whatever commentary I could find about it online. That was the model – all-consuming, transient, manic, impatient, a little like a drug.
Like social media at large, the highs were brief, with diminishing returns over the years. The binge model is now less associated with opportunity than with bloat – the always unworkable economics of streaming, the broken business of Hollywood, the tyranny of choice. (There were a record 599 scripted series in 2022.) And it’s entwined with the staleness of discourse on major social media platforms, which churn through attention heat scores at breakneck, deadening pace.
The decline of the binge model feels of a piece with the decline of the platform formerly known as Twitter, a place were even fewer people are talking about ever less interesting things. The pace of TikTok is so vertiginous and chaotic that going viral is more lottery than strategy, but shows with prolonged contact with the zeitgeist – for better, HBO’s Euphoria; for worse, HBO’s The Idol; for always, Love Island – tend to do better than something dumped all at once. Which made the decision to binge-release season two of The Bear especially disappointing. The first season was a long-tail, word-of-mouth hit that cultivated a following slowly and organically; shortening the release of the rich second season into a flash in the pan felt like a missed opportunity for hype and discussion.
That’s the new status marker for television: not being the one show everyone watched in a weekend – an accomplishment harder and harder to come by anyways – but the one people look forward to week after week, such as the HBO hits Succession or The White Lotus, Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso and Severance. That’s not just true for streaming – Succession may be the darling of the chattering classes, but the most successful show on cable, Yellowstone, gained steam season after season through linear viewing and word of mouth; old episodes will now air on CBS prime time this fall, owing in part to its widespread popularity (especially in smaller markets outside coastal cities) and in part to the fall TV season’s disruption by the writers’ strike. And ABC’s Abbott Elementary is a network breakout hit that gained fans and memes week by week.
The joke for years, of course, was that streaming services have come to resemble the cable networks they disrupted – umpteen platforms that could be bundled like channels, plenty of disposable content and ads. The death of the binge model and the return to appointment television and paced releases would follow suit. I won’t mourn the loss.
