Maybe it's because I live alone, or because my self-esteem is questionable at best on a good day, but I feel like there's a perception out there in certain circles that I'm something of a couch potato. I have to say that for the most part, this isn't true. There's something in my personal make up that leaves me feeling depressed if I spend too much time doing nothing, and most of the time that describes watching TV pretty well.
I watched a lot of "The Office" a couple summers ago while I was very gradually and patiently letting Freddie acclimate to his new home, telling myself that no, sitting there watching so many episodes in a row really was doing something so it was okay. I also started a re-watch of "Community" at the beginning of April when it showed up on Netflix, since it turns out there's not a lot of choices when it comes to spending your time during quarantine. Even with that though, I couldn't really call three or four episodes a night a binge. In fact, it was the rare event when I would get the "Are you still watching?" message.
But I did just finish a binge. This week my cable provider had some kind of a deal where other networks and services that aren't usually available suddenly were, so I sought out the drama/horror series "Castle Rock" and burned through 20 episodes in just over three and a half days.
When the show first came out a few years ago, I was really interested. A series based on locations from Stephen King novels, and even including a few characters as well? It was intriguing. The town Castle Rock gets mentioned in a lot of his books, so I wanted to see what they were going to do with it as a TV series. Of course I didn't have the right service, so I figured maybe it'd come out on Blu-Ray someday. For all I know it has, because despite a few people encouraging me to watch it, I'd mostly put the idea on the back burner...until I figured out that I was going to have access to it for a week. However, I didn't put that together until the first few days of the week were over.
I wasn't about to let this opportunity go. After a few early mornings, long evenings, and late nights, I managed to finish both seasons of the show earlier this afternoon. If you've seen the show, you'll know there are things I don't want to talk about here because there would be some big spoilers for anyone who would want to see it someday. I will say that watching this show in such a short amount of time was not different from diving into a great novel and reading it over a weekend, although it'd be two novels in this case. It was like watching movies made out of two very different Stephen King books that I hadn't read before. Even if these stories didn't come from books or scripts from Stephen King (which is fine; I'll admit to being a bigger fan of his novels than his scripts), they felt like them. All the beats were there - the broken, plagued characters trying to make things better for themselves and the ones they love, the setting that seems so depressed and forgotten by the world it might as well be haunted, and the questions about what's going on in the story that push you on to read the next chapter.
If you can handle Stephen King books, and you have Hulu all the time, I'd easily recommend this show. If you have any questions about whether or not you could handle the constant dread, the shocking moments, and the dark revelations... it's probably not for you.
And after watching so much TV this week, I think I'm going to find something else to do this evening that doesn't involve screens.
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