Cable networks are getting increasingly jealous of the streaming platforms (Netflix, Amazon) putting all of their shows online at once and hogging all the attention, so it was perhaps inevitable that they’d find ways around this. Last year, NBC put the entire first season of “Aquarius” On Demand at the same time (I guess so people could see that they really didn’t like it). And now TBS has upped the ante by having a 25-hour marathon of “Angie Tribeca,” showing all of the first season’s 10 episodes over and over again for 25 hours, mostly commercial free with a few ads in-between episodes.
The show itself is not bad. It’s a reallllllllly dumb parody of “Cop” shows, but intentionally so, and you will probably find yourself laughing even if you don’t want to. Still, after a few episodes, I found myself questioning whether I really wanted to watch all episodes at once? The inspired silliness of the first few was becoming more and more of a drag by the season’s mid-point, and what might have seemed like creative farce if spaced out began to feel like they were just burning off episodes of a mediocre show they didn’t spend much to produce.
And that’s really the problem with binge watching: too much of a good thing or The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. That 8th slice of pizza in one sitting just won’t taste as good as the first one or if you had four each on different nights. I usually get that same feeling when watching Netflix and Amazon Prime shows, and I’ve also noticed a disturbing tendency in those series to start strong and end strong, but have filler-junk-episodes in between. If you know that people are just going to burn through the episodes as quickly as possible, are you really trying your best to make them all quality ones?
It’ll be interesting to see if more networks adopt this strategy or other unconventional methods. After all, “Aquarius” was renewed for a second season while its conventionally broadcast lead-out “Hannibal” was cancelled, despite “Hannibal” being two letter grades better in quality. And “Angie Tribeca” was renewed before it even aired, and the marathon ended with “scenes” from season two that smartly parody the will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic of the lead cop partners as well as the male’s new antagonistic love interest where he says “I’m dating you, but I’m in love with Tribeca.” Grade for First Season: B+ [Although the episodes are better if you watch, say…three at a time rather than the whole thing.]
Love your reviews. Only blog online that I read the entire post. Good job.
Any comments are welcome, but it’s always great to see positive ones especially.
Love this show! What humor and what a good review.
You should be writing for a magazine. Entertainment Weekly could use
some good writers. Really they are pitiful.