There's 1 Thing That Is So Frustrating About Streaming Platforms

"As a passionate TV watcher, I’m irritated by the way these seemingly arbitrary release schedules impact my viewing experience."

I began binge-watching TV series in the early 2000s, long before streaming existed and became the primary way that we consume new shows.

In middle school, I was always the last one awake at a sleepover, eyes glued to the screen, staying up to watch every episode on the next disc of a “One Tree Hill” DVD boxed set (because it was expensive, and I didn’t own the second season yet) or to watch reruns of “Degrassi” — the iteration where rapper Drake played Jimmy. In high school, I’d drive to one of the few remaining Blockbusters to rent shows that aired before I was old enough to stay up for prime time: “Felicity,” “The West Wing,” “Friends.” In senior year, my reward for completing my college applications was a Netflix subscription; my mom refused to let me subscribe earlier, convinced that I would never leave my room if I had access to the company’s extensive catalog.

Instead of fretting about little red envelopes, she should have been worried about streaming, which exploded a few months later during my first year of college. I spent most nights holed up in my room, catching up on current shows like “Psych” and “Pretty Little Liars” or discovering older series like “Ally McBeal.”

Really, the binge-watching I’ve done over the past two decades is not that different from the movie and TV marathons of my early childhood. The main difference is that binge-watching wasn’t the way I consumed new TV. Back then, it was the way I rewatched the shows I loved, caught up with past seasons of current series, and discovered older shows. Now, it’s the primary way that most of us watch new TV because few of us tune in to cable, and even those of us who do will often watch shows later via streaming platforms. For example, instead of watching “Grey’s Anatomy” every Thursday night, many of us wait for it to hit Hulu the next day, or for every episode to drop on Netflix in the summer.

The popularity and dominance of streaming has given us so many choices — from which services we use and which shows we watch to how we watch them (all at once or an episode at a time). Choice, and the instant gratification of our preferences, seem to be the biggest benefits of streaming. There’s no staying in (or staying up) to watch something live on cable, driving to Blockbuster, or waiting for a red envelope. Netflix even discontinued sending DVDs to customers in September.