It seems no gathering of friends, or conversation, is complete today unless someone says, “Have you seen BLANK on Netflix? It’s great!” With their hundreds of shows, there is not enough hours in the day, days of the week, or months of the year to see all of the programming that Netflix has to offer. And, furthermore, not all of it is “great!” In my opinion, Netflix has become the number one contributor of stress and social anxiety in the world today. It used to be one felt he or she had to Keep Up With the Jones’ in order to complete. Now, one must Keep Up With Netflix.

I don’t want to just single out Netflix because other streaming networks like Amazon and Hulu and premium channels like HBO and Showtime also have their fair share of original “must see” programming. Even basic cable networks like AMC and FX have jumped on the bandwagon by offering limited series. Networks will draw you in with a tantalizing trailer that gives just enough information and shows just enough action and skin in one second edits to make you think, ‘Wow! This will be the best show ever!” Usually, it’s not. Unless, of course, it’s Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad was a cable triumph. An unusual storyline that tested the boundaries of morality and questioned if the end justified the means. Dexter was another original series that found you cheering for the serial killer. I watched both shows faithfully and was sad when they came to an end. But, I wasn’t sad for long. Soon, I found Mad Men. And after Mad Men came Downtown Abbey, and then the pressure started. House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Ray Donovan, Sons of Anarchy, etc. The floodgates opened and new shows spilled out of my flatscreen like a digital tsunami. How will I ever find time to watch them all? “Binge, them,” my friend said.

To me, binging has only one meaning. Middle of the night, sitting in a dark kitchen, eating an entire box of Ding Dongs. Now, however, binging means to watch entire seasons – if not a whole series – in one sitting. Since I have the attention span of a gnat, I’m lucky if I can sit through a two-hour movie let alone eight seasons of The Walking Dead. Netflix will routinely release a show with all episodes airing at once and they will advertise it as “Binge-worthy.” This is where the pressure comes in. Let’s say the show is released at 12 noon. By 10pm my friend, Michael, will have already watched all episodes, sent out an email to everyone he knows and posted reviews on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even his MySpace page from 2005 about how GREAT the show is! If by 11pm that night I tell him I haven’t seen it yet he immediately sends me a text with just one word – “Loser.”

I may be a loser, but like a good book, I want to savor good television shows. Right now I have 23 episodes of Judge Judy on my DVR. Every night after dinner I sit down on the sofa, unwrap some dark chocolate and watch two episodes in a row! I consider that binge watching and my ass doesn’t go numb. While some people may find Judge Judy on the lower side of cultured viewing, I also watch shows from other countries. Recently, I watched The Terror on AMC. A British import based on a true story about two ships stranded in the arctic. “What’s this show about?” Tim asked me one night. “I have no idea.” I said. “I can’t understand a word. They’re either stranded on these ships or it’s a UK version of The Deadliest Catch.” Everyone sounded like they were talking through turtleneck sweaters with ice cubes in their mouths. It wasn’t until about the fourth episode that I resorted to Closed Captioning. I had to do the same thing with Peaky Blinders and Broadchurch. With the exception of Broadchurch, I dumped out of the other two shows for extreme lack of interest. But don’t tell anyone or I’ll be ridiculed for not watching “The BEST show ever!”

Admitting that you didn’t like a current fave will open you up to public humiliation and verbal assaults. I made the mistake of telling someone that I didn’t like House of Cards. I watched the first season and never went back. “What? How could you not like House of Cards? That show is GREAT. You must not have understood it.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been accused of being ignorant because I didn’t like a show. I only watched one episode of Game of Thrones and I hated it. However, that hasn’t stopped my friends from insisting that I go back and watch it again because I probably “didn’t understand it.” I understood it. It was stupid. Although, if I’m in a crowd and everyone is talking about Game of Thrones, I just join in. I toss around words like dragons, swords, game, thrones, winter is coming and no one knows the difference. Television viewing was so much simpler when there were only five or six channels.

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When I was a kid, we had only the three national networks, two UFH channels and since we border Canada, we also got a Canadian channel. Even with six channels we still didn’t have a choice. We watched whatever my father wanted to watch. Dinner viewing was the news, after dinner viewing was whatever televised sport was in season (including Curling on the Canadian network) and at 9pm we had our pick of westerns or FBI dramas. Fortunately, my mother had a small TV in the bedroom and we would crowd around that to watch game shows and sitcoms. Even though my father was alone in the family room, that didn’t stop him from shouting out to me every half hour to come and change the channel. I was the human remote.

I loved television. In our home, the TV Guide always has a revered place in the center of the coffee table. The family Bible used to be there but at some point the Bible disappeared. The first thing I always checked the guide for was to see who was on The Ed Sullivan Show Sunday night. My fingers would fly through those newspaper print pages and pray that Ed’s musical guests were The Stones and not The Lennon Sisters.

Now, TV Guide has been replaced by the cable network’s onscreen programming guide. It’s not nearly as fun. I have to scroll through about 700 channels to find something to watch. I usually pass by about 689 of the networks and settle on the same ones every night. Although, last night I found an old rerun of The Ed Sullivan Show. I was instantly transported back to the Sunday nights of my childhood. I saw some acrobats, Shirley Jones singing something from a Broadway musical, Mama Cass sang a duet with Johnny Mathis and then, much to my dismay, The Lennon Sisters. Luckily, I still had 23 episodes of Judge Judy on my DVR.

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