I prefer episode by episode to "full season"

July 29, 2023 8:40 PM

I'm curious why people like to do full season posts instead of episode by episode. I've never watched a whole season in just a day or two; is that something people often do?

Recently with a few shows I've been watching, I've wanted to come and chat about something I noticed in an episode I just watched -- but I see that they're full season posts, I don't want anything spoiled for me, and so I don't join the conversation. By the time I get to the post I've forgotten my brilliant insights and keen-eyed observations. Is it that posting one episode at a time is a pain -- and I admit I very rarely start a post about TV shows -- or do people actually prefer to be able to talk about a season's worth at a time?

posted by The corpse in the library (15 comments total)

I generally do full-season posts for kdramas -- even if it's one that's going up on streaming services in sync with the weekly Korean tv broadcasts, I don't think there are enough of us here watching that that there'd actually end up being many/any comments on the episode threads.

And I find that sometimes if I post a first-episode-only thread for a show, especially one that has all episodes up at once on streaming, people aren't great about keeping the discussion restricted to just that episode. Instead of posting the next episode or a full-season thread themselves, they'll start alluding to later episodes or general overall season discussion until eventually I'd have to start flagging for spoilers and/or go ahead and post the full-season thread myself and then remove it from my Recent Activity until I'd caught up.

So, I mostly stick with full-season thread posts now. I do try to keep that initial post spoiler-free/spoiler-lite -- so that anyone who hasn't seen the show already and is clicking in out of curiosity will just see the premise and links to a few reviews, and keep major spoilers out of my first comment.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:29 AM on July 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

It depends on the show. I've posted full-season threads about shows that I wasn't sure anybody else was going to watch. I've also posted full-season threads for shows just to be a completist so we'd have a full record of the run on FanFare. In contrast, I've also posted individual-episode threads for shows that I know had regular viewers.

I put up a full-season thread for The Company You Keep because I wanted to write about the show even though I wasn't sure anybody was watching it and I wanted a way to talk about more than the first episode (so that I could make my argument to convince people to watch). It worked, and people seemed to appreciate having a place to discover the show and talk about it.

I also posted up full-season threads for the last two seasons of The Flash. FanFare had been watching the show from the start, but as quality declined and posters left MetaFilter, the individual show posts didn't have as big an audience as they once did. I didn't want to clog the main FanFare page posting up individual episodes that nobody was going to read, so I put up season-long posts. In order to help people avoid spoilers, I indicated which episode I was writing about. That way, people could stop and come back and read my comments after they watched the episode (assuming they cared about spoilers).

For the most part on full-season posts people tend to comment after new episodes air, so it's not too hard to follow discussions based on network shows. For shows that get released in big clumps, it's a bit more of a challenge, but it's still workable.

As with most things in life, it's all about knowing (or guessing about) your audience and trying to engage with them in the manner that works best for them. Also, keep in mind that any post is better than no post.
posted by sardonyx at 11:38 AM on July 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I actually started bingeing shows before it was cool, or at least before streaming existed. For a long time I had no cable subscription but I would check out shows by DVD box set.

So, for example, I'd binge an entire season of The Sopranos as soon as it hit DVD, but didn't keep up with it as it aired. I really preferred that because I am impatient and I was single at the time and it was a good thing to do on a Saturday or Sunday.

Now if a show drops all at once or we are just coming 'round to it after it already finished, we tend to watch it two or three eps at a time until it's done.

"do people actually prefer to be able to talk about a season's worth at a time?"

Even though I like to binge things, I'd rather discuss episode by episode unless it's something like a mini-series (say, Chernobyl) where that makes less sense. Like, Good Omens season 2 just dropped all at once and so there's a full season Fanfare post for it. I'd have rather discussed those one at a time, but I can understand why they didn't break them out.
posted by jzb at 10:54 AM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I often do full-season posts for stuff that was binge-released even though I never binge-watch, but I'll also post a full-season writeup when I discover something in the middle of a season if it looks like no one else is going to bother (and then label new episode comments so people can stop if they don't want to get spoiled too early).

It's mostly because I figure that if anyone else wanted to do episode-by-episode posts, they would have already done them by the time I've finished a season or found a show halfway through a season, but I still want somewhere to discuss a show. I certainly wouldn't be offended (and would likely join in) if someone wanted to do single-episode posts of anything that I had already full-seasoned.

Which reminds me, I want to thank gauche for starting Sandman posts in single-episode format rather than full-season, despite the season being binge-released. I think it made the discussion(s) a lot better.
posted by Etrigan at 8:01 AM on August 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Much like Etrigan, I do full season posts usually if something is dumped as a full season. If it's released episodically, then that's how I post it.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:10 PM on August 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I forgot to add-yes, I often binge shows because I have chronic pain that sometimes makes walking excruciating. So being able to binge a few eps helps distract me when that happens. I basically binged all of Good Omens 2 over the weekend because thanks to the weather I was in a lot of pain. When I'm able to be more active, I'm less likely to binge. But honestly I probably would have binged Good Omens even if I wasn't in pain because it's delightful and I have little self control.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:17 PM on August 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I became a believer in Full Season posts posting about Banshee back in the day, as there were rarely more than a handful of posts on any given episode and it seemed like a waste.

But yeah, stuff with big viewership numbers, that gets released weekly, that still makes more sense to me as episode posts.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

FanFare is already a zero-to-one-comment wasteland, posting episode by episode for most shows makes it look even worse.

Shows with a fanbase on MetaFilter, like The Bear or Good Omens, could have had single episode posts, but most of what is posted has so little engagement that the effort of posting episode by episode doesn't seem like it would be worth it.

I've only posted about two series here, both full series--the first because there were only three episodes and they were released close together, the other I (correctly) assumed would only be of interest to myself, but I decided to try anyway.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:10 PM on August 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

I confess that I loathe it when someone posts a full-season post for a show that just started airing weekly. I really wanted to talk about Welcome to Wrexham, for instance as a recent example, but by the time it had dropped off the front page it was only a few episodes in, and people had mostly forgotten about it after a few weeks. I don't really care if things are one or zero comment wastelands; for me it's worse when something starts with good conversations and then peters out not because of lack of things to say about the show, but because it's not brought to mind for people who want to discuss it. But i'm also a person who much prefers weekly shows to ones that drop all at once; The Bear season 2 is the only show I've actually watched straight through, all eps. I just don't really enjoy it, so I suppose my input here is skewed.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 9:44 PM on August 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm also in the camp that dislikes the full-season posts. I generally want to see what people think as I go along, and with the full-season posts, that's just going to be spoiler city. By the time I wrap up, I'm less interested in seeing the discussion, or I've lost track of what I was thinking about parts in the first half of the season.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:17 PM on August 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

I confess that I loathe it when someone posts a full-season post for a show that just started airing weekly.

This is my pet peeve. I lose track of the full season posts, even though I mostly browse FanFare from the "My FanFare" tab. I would have talked about the last season of "And Just Like That," but the full season post got lost for me.

I really wanted to talk about Welcome to Wrexham

Dang it, I love that show. Now I have to see if I can find it at all.
posted by gladly at 7:02 PM on August 9, 2023

I think it's hard, because people are really not posting that much. I also am in the camp that wants to run to Fanfare as soon as I've watched an episode and want to tell people what I think and see what they thought *even if I'm about to binge watch the next episode*. I'm willing to pause and wait so I can talk to people. But also, I've posted a lot of episodes that one person or no people commented on. I think episode by episode mostly only works for stuff that's immediately breaking, and there's...less of that stuff these days.
posted by corb at 8:35 AM on August 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I prefer the episode by episode posts because I'm only going to be watching one or two episodes of a show at a time so with the episode by episode posts I can then post where it's appropriate. Yes many posts only have a few comments but the unique thing about Fanfare is that the posts don't time out so if someone watches the show a couple of weeks/months/years later they can still join the conversation.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:59 PM on September 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

I confess that I loathe it when someone posts a full-season post for a show that just started airing weekly.

Nobody prevents you from making posts per episode.
posted by Pendragon at 8:21 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

If it's current and weekly, I also prefer per-episode posts. I have found, though, that if make a post per episode for a show that can be binged, the entire conversation happens in the first and last post anyway. Even in cases where a show drops two or three episodes at a time (e.g. Vox Machina) making per-episode posts resulted in no comments on anything but the last post in the sequence.

Pretty much the only way I can see to make individual episode posts work on anything that's not airing currently at intervals would be to get together a book club model of people who all agree to watch on a particular schedule.
posted by Karmakaze at 8:01 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]