Netflix’s binge model is making shows like Black Mirror suffer

polygon.com:

On Dec. 4, 2011, millions of viewers watched “The National Anthem,” the debut of Black Mirrorand the one in which the prime minister is forced to have sex with a pig on live TV. When the episode ended, viewers had to sit with it. They debated the merits of the episode, what it was trying to say, and whether it said it effectively. For the week until “15 Million Merits”aired, people who were originally put off by the debut episode’s plot were given time to move past their initial knee-jerk reactions to think about the story beyond the surface level.

Season 6 of Black Mirroris out now, and was released all at once, as it has been since Netflix bought the show in 2015. When the viewers finish that first episode, all they’ll have to do is wait a few seconds for the next one to autoplay. If they want, they can finish the entire season in a single sitting, which is exactly what many viewers have been doing ever since the show moved to Netflix. It’s also a format that’s baked into Netflix’s scripted shows more broadly, to the detriment of building fandom around such shows.

Viewers are, of course, free to do what they want. But for a TV show where every episode is a self-contained story, designed specifically to try to spark a discussion, bingeing seems to be doing the show a disservice. Black Mirror doesn’t always hit, but it deserves a chance to try, and it doesn’t feel like its newer episodes have been properly given one.

It’s how “Smithereens,” a season 5 story contemplating what counts as a win when you’re fighting against a systemic problem far bigger than yourself, gets repeatedly dismissed as just a “phones bad” episode. It’s how “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too,” the story that uses its premise to explore the corporate