In Praise of Weekly TV

A confluence of great shows remind us how TV is best enjoyed

Max | Disney+ | Max

You may not realize it, but we’re living through this year’s best 3-week period of television.

Technically it’s already over since Andor aired its final episodes Tuesday. (Unless, like me, you have yet to finish Andor because you don’t want it to end. In that case, the party’s still going. Is this the pop culture version of Schrodinger’s cat?)

I think we’ve underestimated the effect Netflix’s “dump and binge” release strategy has had on our viewing habits. Even when shows follow the old school, one-episode-a-week model, I often allow them to build up a backlog of episodes and then enjoy them in a gluttonous frenzy. I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I also don’t typically ask strangers how they enjoy their TV.

Bingeing is also due in part to the insane ubiquity of viewing options available anytime anywhere. There’s too much good TV and not enough time to see everything worth seeing. Bingeing doesn’t save time, but going from one episode immediately into the next prevents any narrative confusion, which at least offers the appearance of saving something. To say nothing of avoiding the painful decision of what to watch next. (The only decision I hate more: What to have for dinner.)

Even when we don’t have to binge, we binge. This is the way.

But is it the right way? I’m not so sure.

The only shows I don’t binge are the ones I literally can’t wait to see. The ones I can’t not watch. Must-see TV used to be something the networks bragged on because everything was schedule-based. We were a captive audience. If you wanted to stay current on Friends, you had to watch it at 8 PM on Thursday (I’m guessing about that time slot but also think I’m right because that was vital information for almost a decade). You had to be mindful or you missed it for at least a year, probably longer.

Once in the mid-2000s, my wife and I missed an episode of Friends and were resigned to never see it, short of buying or renting the season. Reruns never aired sequentially—you’d randomly watch an episode of Seinfeld or whatever, and enjoy it for what it was. Fortunately, my coworker taped Friends and let me borrow the VHS. But there was genuine panic for a minute.

Technology has solved all such scarcity problems. I have a TiVo but only use it to record sports these days. Everything else is available on a streamer—the shows were in all likelihood made by a streamer, for the express purpose of getting subscribers—and is more readily available than even my TiVo, which likes to send passive-aggressive messages about upgrading every time I turn it on.

For the first time that I can remember, and certainly at least since the days of regularly recording TV, I’m deeply invested in three shows that release weekly: Andor (duh), The Last of Us, and Hacks. I find myself counting down the days until the next episode, which isn’t totally unheard of; The Mandalorian got that treatment, as did some of the early Disney+ MCU offerings. The difference:

1. Andor, The Last of Us, and Hacks are TV heavyweights. I love Mando but Andor is in a different class entirely.

2. I’m planning my week around when episodes air (Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights). That's basically unheard of these days. Certainly in such quantities in a single week.

The last time I made life choices around TV was prime time Game of Thrones. I think that’s probably true for a lot of us; Game of Thrones was the last remnant of must-see TV, after which streaming basically shattered the concept of appointment viewing. No longer we were beholden to arbitrary schedules meant to maximize the number of people watching a given thing at a specific time (which is why everything airs at 9 PM EST, much to my annoyance and the inconvenience to my sleep schedule). We were given the power to watch what we wanted, when we wanted. It’s great, but with this recent, accidental resurgence of weekly must-see TV, I’m seeing the other side of it.

There have been other appointment viewing shows recently. Severance, The Bear, and Succession, to name but a few. None of those manifested a Game of Thrones-sized zeitgeist. To be fair, I don’t think that’s even possible anymore. TV is too fragmented, and the options too many. Those shows also mostly aired independent of other notable weekly shows. At least, I can’t remember The Bear jockeying with another legit prestige TV offering. But Andor, The Last of Us, and Hacks will all be Emmy contenders. That’s the kind of bounty we’re dealing with here. Every week!

Too often, finishing a show feels like completing a task on a to-do list. We finished Shrinking, now we can start Trying. We jump from one thing to the next, without any thought to what we just experienced. I’m probably alone in this, but I like to think about characters as though they’re real people. I enjoy replaying moments in my head. I ponder decisions made, snatches of dialogue, surprise twists. My favorite thing is when the story takes on a second life inside of me.

There’s no room for that in a binge world. And not just because we’re incentivized to hit ‘next episode’ immediately after the last one finishes. The shows themselves typically don’t invite that kind of investment.

For this one magic moment, fate, chance, and streaming schedules have aligned. Watching TV suddenly feels like it used to. I’m savoring episodes and anticipating new installments. I have to actually wait for something I want, which is both painful and exquisite. It's frankly an unaccustomed sensation in 2025, when so much is available immediately, or very nearly. Anticipation makes something special.

I understand this is all a fluke and not a new normal. We may never again see three prestige TV juggernauts unloading their barrels simultaneously and then making us wait a whole week for the next barrage. But man, I wish it could be like this more often.

Later this year, Stranger Things will release its fifth and final season. I've been waiting for this since season 4 released 3 years ago. In a sense, I've been anticipating the conclusion since the show first aired in 2016. Stranger Things is the perfect show to follow a weekly release schedule. Especially since all the episodes in season 4 were over an hour long. Weekly schedules also keep a show in the cultural conversation longer. It's free publicity. Why wouldn't Netflix want that?

Netflix will dump all the episodes at once because in their model, great TV is indistinguishable from bad. They don't want to allow the time and space for stories to root inside their viewers. They aren't even really in the storytelling business. They're selling virtual widgets meant to keep us glued to the TV so they can keep charging us a monthly subscription, one that keeps getting more expensive.

The tension between art and commerce is an old one. Making money is always the name of the game. I just prefer when it's less obvious. Or, rather, when the art is so good that I willingly, happily pay for the opportunity to enjoy it.

It turns out that the best way to enjoy TV is the old way.

Every episode of the 1960s Batman TV show ended with the narrator reminding the viewer the story would continue next week. “Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel,” was a promise. TV has come a long way since then. But fostering anticipation for what comes next is what TV has always done best. It's what differentiates TV from film. How strange then that much of our TV viewing involves no anticipation at all. We just watch.

Sometimes the thing I most anticipate about a TV show is finishing it just so I can start another one. How sad.