We live in a great age for television. There are now more amazing television shows than most of us can realistically watch. I watch about 30 shows a week, and believe it or not, in order to keep it at that low number, I’ve had to trim a number of good series to keep the great ones: Sleepy Hollow, The Blacklist, and Scandal have all become victims of schedule purges this fall, and I’ve also been quick to kill other series that aren’t immediately impressive (Gotham, Constantine) because I just don’t have the time to wait for them to improve.
One show in particular, however, managed to weed itself out in a manner of speaking: Homeland debuted a few weeks ago, and that’s a series that I’ve been watching religiously through the first three seasons. I probably would have forced myself to continue, too, if not for one thing: The two-hour premiere.
Now, that may not sound like a terrible burden, but consider how crowded Sunday nights are for most of us: For me, there was Boardwalk Empire, The Affair, Last Week Tonight, The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, and Brookly Nine-Nine to contend with (plus, Madam Secretary, which also recently become the victim of a purge). Plus, I like to check in on the Sunday Night NFL games. And as someone who likes to keep up so I’m not spoiled working on the Internet all day, I always feel compelled to stay up as late as necessary to watch these shows.
A two-hour Homeland premiere just wasn’t going to fit into my life.
For a lot of us these days, our DVRs are like grocery lists: Yes, we enjoy watching the shows very much, but we also want to check them off the list and get to the next one so we can clear our DVRs (a crowded DVR sits heavily on our consciences). Purging can often feel like a huge relief, and we’re always looking for a good excuse to get rid of this show or that show in order to make room for others, or to get an extra hour of sleep. A two-hour premiere (or a three-hour premiere, in the case of The Bachelor‘s next cycle) is just the thing to push us over the edge. If we look at our DVRs and see three episodes of New Girl (66 minutes without commercials), or three episodes of Homeland (175 minutes) stacked up, which do you think we’re going to choose?
Kurt Sutter is the worst offender of this, of course. Sons of Anarchy is in its final season, and even if it is something of a disappointment, it’s a very spoiler-sensitive show, so it’s the kind of drama we want to see when it airs live so we’re not spoiled the next day. That has proven more and more difficult because of weekly 90-minute episodes. They’re not just bloated and pointless, but the half hour of sleep we lose because of them only makes us grumpier about having to watch them. I know people who have stuck with the show since the beginning who have bailed on the final season because the show is just not good enough this season to justify that much of a time commitment.
So yes: This is the worst kind of First World Problem — complaining about having too much TV to watch — but it’s something that networks should consider before they schedule two-hour premieres, or supersize their episodes: We don’t have time for that sh*t. And in a television world where we’re looking for any justification to delete your season pass from our DVRs, something as seemingly insignificant as a extra-long time commitment is all we need.
