How to Avidly Watch Everything That Matters
It’s physically impossible to watch every episode of every good TV show. However, we do feel guilty for not keeping up with our shows. “Have you seen Better Call Saul ?” your friend asks; “Oh no, excuse me, I’m a few episodes behind,” you say, as if you were letting everyone down.
Ironically, cutting the cable made TV viewing less free and more complete. Now that it’s easy, even encouraged, to digest every single episode, skipping episodes can feel like cheating.
But this is not the case, because television is meant to be enjoyed, and any way of watching it is equally valid. While some shows are more intense than others, almost all of them contain a few weak episodes. And for every decent show, a fan will put together a viewing guide that tells you what to skip. Here are some of the best.
Breaking bad
It can permanently break the Lifehacker comments section, but yes, I would argue that there are overlooked episodes of “Breaking Bad.” While it’s ideal to watch all of the shows, if you’re having trouble boarding, the Vulture’s guide will help you get through the first three seasons faster.
But tweak this guide to your liking, especially during those crucial early episodes. If you are squeamish about violence or intense kidnapping scenarios, don’t watch the unusually gruesome S1E2 and S1E3. (If you do watch E3, skip the trashy flashbacks.) If you like comedy and pilot development, be sure to check out S1E4 and S1E5. While you can skip the stand-alone episode of the “Fly” bottle (S3E10), come back to it later. Anyone who hates this streak is wrong.
Whatever you missed, read the story briefs on Wikipedia or AV Club . And if you’re really brave, skip the controversially tidy ending of the series, focus on your own messy ending, and move on to Better Call Saul .
The wire
It’s actually legal to watch only a portion of The Wire , and since each season of the show focuses on different aspects of Baltimore’s broader social issues, you can skip entire seasons and still follow. Jezebel takes the lead every season without divulging anything special. Consider ditching the second season (with two exceptions ), which takes Avon Barksdale’s crime ring into the background, or the fifth season, in which showrunner David Simon expresses a lot of dissatisfaction with his previous employer, The Baltimore Sun. These aren’t really bad seasons, it’s just not what people mean when they shout, “You haven’t watched The Wire !?”
The Sopranos
Nobody has put out a reliable guide that skips more than one or two episodes. Here’s a combination of suggested abbreviations from WIRED , Reddit, and IMDb : S1E10 (“Hit is a hit”), S3E1 (“Mr. Ruggerio’s District”), S4E3 (“Christopher”), S4E11 (“Call All Cars”), S5E7 (“B Camelote “), S6E4 (” Fleshy thigh “) and S6E16 (” Chasing her “). As in the case of “Breaking Bad”, check the summary of the episodes on the subject of what you missed.
If you’re starting to run out of steam, skip Season 4, which has the fewest low-rated episodes and the fewest classics. Consider ditching Season 6A (Season 6 was released in two parts) and starting with S6E13.
Madmen
Each show has its own basic unit by which it is remembered. On Seinfeld this is an episode; it’s season now on The Wire . On Mad Men, despite the series’ sequential character, this is a scene: Don Draper snapping through family photos on Kodak Carousel, Megan singing “Zou Bisou Bisou,” Peggy’s quit in season 5. If you follow Skipped’s Mad Men guide , you “miss some classic scenes, but you can fix them by reading some YouTube- filled lists of the show’s greatest moments.
Buffy the vampire slayer
With a mix of Monster of the Week episodes and seasonal plots, Buffy is one of the most recognizable predecessors of modern television series. Den of Geek offers six different guides depending on your taste, but the best one is the last one, which focuses on seasonal arcs and the fight against Big Evil (a term Buffy coined for the story’s main villain).
After watching the main plots, you can select individual stories using a ranked list of all 144 BuzzFeed episodes .
Doctor Who
Start with an introduction to USA Today , which invites you to try out episodes of Blink , The Girl in the Fireplace, and The Eleventh Hour, all from different seasons of the rebooted series. Then read the WIRED guide to the different eras of the show. After four seasons with Queer as folk creator Russell T. Davis, the series writer Stephen Moffat took over as showrunner and the show became much more serial and conceptual.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
In the gold standard for drinking guidelines, Cards Against Humanity creator Max Temkin lovingly pays homage to ST: TNG , “a vision of a future in which intelligent people resolve conflicts through conversation,” before cutting the 178-hour cycle down to a top 40 hours. … When you’re done, skip straight to Temkin’s Deep Space Nine guide .
There are many alternatives for every Star Trek series. Redditors have put together several guides , and io9 has ranked the top 100 episodes across the franchise.
Office
WIRED is the best and worst for this long-running sitcom. You can just watch the good or miss the bad. Or just watch all seasons 2-7 and skip the first season (where the characters haven’t developed yet) and the last two seasons (which are fighting without Steve Carell). But catch the cast reunion in the series finale. The WIRED manual lets you skip some “important” but weak episodes, which is the right approach for a comedy that doesn’t always get stuck on the arc of its characters.
Secret materials
Half monster horror puzzle of the week, half serial sci-fi epic, The X-Files is a tough challenge to squeeze. One Redditor solves this problem with a layered annotation system. Multi-part myths can be inconsistent and frustrating, so it might be easier to give up and just try a list of the best of the best. Vulture ranks all 202 episodes and Screen Rant ranks 12 best standalone episodes .
Round speed
Lost: You know things are going downhill. Leave after season 3 and try the parody of the full Wrecked episode.
Battlestar Galactica: Exit on a High Note: Exit after a bittersweet two-part Exodus (S3E3-4), before a final arc based on a couple of poorly planned turns. Or try the Choire Sicha episode guide .
Homeland: Quit after Season 2 or even after Season 1. This is not controversial.
Twin Peaks: The creator himself directed several episodes of this show. ABC forced David Lynch to solve the murder of Laura Palmer; after that, he was almost absent until the series finale, and it shows. So, once Laura’s killer is identified, move on to the ending.
Sherlock: There are 13 episodes so far, each 90 minutes long. Skip the second episodes S1 and S2.
The Office: Skip Season 1 and watch the British original. Skip seasons 8 and 9 without Steve Carell, but return to the series finale.
Roll Your Own Binge Guide
WIRED lists the most and least important episodes from over 80 shows, even short UK dramas. This approach works great for comedies, but for dramas, find a fallback cross-check list.
On Tumblr Tumblr Skippable, created on the basis of crowdsourcing, there are only a handful of shows, but he ruthlessly effective mentoring of and presentations. This is especially useful for cult hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer .
Any show with a dedicated fan subreddit will likely have a couple of guides. Just follow the search « reddit guide of binge [display name]. “Always check comments for dissenting opinions.
Both Vulture and AV Club take stock and evaluate a wide range of shows. Use them to brush up on any episodes you missed, or set a rating threshold for yourself and just watch the best.
Whichever approach you choose, you will inevitably miss a good episode or miss a bad one. All of this is subjective and it is a compromise. Just remember how much time you will save to watch more shows.