Last year when Netflix started releasing whole seasons of shows at once, the term “binge watching” came on the scene.

I’m not a fan. It makes it sound somehow unhealthy.

You wouldn’t call reading two chapters of a novel at once “binge reading”, right?

Back when TV was broadcast only, it was formulaic and repetitive by necessity. Each episode had to assume little or no knowledge of the characters or prior happenings on a plot arc, or risk permanently losing viewers who happened to miss one week. The increase in quality of TV programming, at least partly because of the increased on-demand nature of the medium, has been well-documented, and the new “golden age” has been well-publicized.

But we still feel that that watching 3 hours of the same show on TV is unhealthy, in a way that we don’t feel about in watching a 3 hour long film.

Ditching the “binge” terminology would help purge that lingering sense of guilt.

How about “reading TV” instead?