BINGE!

All day Thursday, from 10 AM on, we sat and watched the Kavanaugh hearings on television.  The sun rose, the sun set, we never missed a word. However, Mr. Wonderful was in one room tuned to Fox while I was glued to MSNBC in another. 

We recently celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary; we know we are way too old to make it to our 50th; but we’d like to get to our 22nd, which is why we watched the hearings in separate rooms.

Most of the next day, Friday, we sat in our blue leather recliners cheering for Team USA in the Ryder Cup. We hadn’t set our alarms so we could wake up at 2 AM for the opening matches from Le Golf National in Guyancourt, France. We didn’t have to. We woke up way before 5 AM anyway and were still plopped in those recliners at noon.  Foursomes and Four Balls; every hole, each putt, all interviews. We were there.

When the Ryder Cup gets awarded on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Wonderful and I will then turn the channel back to Netflix and finish viewing “Ozark” before we pick up where we left off on “Hell on Wheels” and “The Time Between” or “Peaky Blinders.”  We will watch several episodes every evening so that we can finish them and then start “Alias Grace.” We are nutty about Netflix.

Yes, we are unadulterated, dedicated, certified and persistent binge watchers. We can’t just have one piece of candy: we have to devour the whole box, in one sitting preferably. When we first discovered “Turn: Washington’s Spies” on Netflix, we would return home from a sociable evening out at our friends’ houses, then sit and watch five episodes. Interestingly, neither of us particularly likes long movies. Even more interestingly, we could watch countless back-to-back episodes of any Netflix series into the wee hours except that …. we fall asleep in our chairs.

Binge-watching has cut into our reading time. I have a pile of novels stacked up on my bedside table. My unread “New Yorkers” date back to July. 

If we decide to eat dinner while watching a show, binge-ing stifles our normal chit-chat. While I’m trying to figure out who did what to whom and why on “Broadchurch,” and Mr. W. starts yammering about which club he used on the third hole, I go HUSH. When he is laughing about Walter White prancing around the meth lab in his tightie-whities on “Breaking Bad”, and I ask if my squash casserole might be tastier with a touch more oregano, he gasps and goes, “Please — I’m into this.”

If you’re also into binge-ing, here are some suggestions of our favorite series. We laughed through “Wanted.” We bit our fingernails during “Fauda.” We learned to lift our pinkies watching “The Crown.”

And we haven’t even started watching Netflix movies!