#MicroblogMondays: Binging

I've never really been one for "binge-watching" television. It certainly wasn't a thing when I was growing up. Your favourite shows came on the air, and if you missed an episode, too bad, maybe you could catch it in reruns. VCRs weren't a "thing" until I was in university. We got our first one in 1989. BIL & SIL gave it to us as a thank-you gift for being Oldest Nephew's godparents.

We don't have Netflix (although we're considering getting it, because I am dying to see "The Crown"...!), and until we moved to our condo last year and switched cable providers (& got an excellent package deal), we didn't have a PVR. We did still have an old VCR (not the original, but its successor), but when we got a fancy new box for our cable system a few years ago, we couldn't figure out how to incorporate the VCR into the hookup. We actually weren't using it that much anyway in those last few years. We didn't have a DVD player for many years, and we don't use it that much either. I have a few DVD boxed sets that I could presumably bingewatch (the Beatles "Anthology" series, season one of "The Muppet Show," the entire series of "That Girl"), but in fact, we still haven't hooked up the DVD player since we moved here. (!)

Then, about two weeks ago, "Designated Survivor" resumed after being on hiatus since Christmas (one of the few new shows I've been watching this season). I had missed but PVRd the last few episodes. Or so I thought. When I went to watch them, I realized there were actually FIVE episodes I'd missed, only two of which I'd PVRd. I wound up cramming in all five episodes in one afternoon (while dh was out, visiting his father), two on PVR & three online on my laptop, before the new episode aired later that night.

This past weekend, our local PBS station aired a "Downton Abbey" marathon, the entire series from start to finish, starting Friday & ending early Sunday evening. As I've mentioned before, I didn't start watching DA seriously until the final season, so this was a great opportunity to catch up on some (not all, but some) of the seasons/episodes I'd missed (& relive some that I'd already seen). I sobbed once again as Mary & Edith finally came to a truce, the children played by Sybil's grave in the cemetery, and Mrs. Hughes led the servants in a chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" as the clock struck midnight and Edith & her Marquess drove away for their honeymoon, happy at last. 

After that concluded, I watched a two-hour movie about the Bronte sisters & their alcoholic brother, Branwell, called "To Walk Invisible." It was beautifully filmed -- but intense and bleak (like the sisters' novels) -- and I found myself straining to listen to and understand the thick Yorkshire accents. Needless to say, by the end of it all, I was drained. I still feel a bit off-kilter, physically & emotionally, this morning. Time to get out of the house for a while...!  ;)

Are you a binge-watcher? What you have you binged on lately?  What's in your viewing queue?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.