The 30 minute rule that saved my binge sessions

I kept picking shows that started slow and I'd give up after one episode. Last month I started a simple rule: watch the first 30 minutes of episode 1, and if I'm not hooked, I move on. It sounds obvious, but I used to force myself through three or four episodes out of stubbornness. That wasted about six hours on shows I ended up hating anyway. Now I check episode runtimes first, because some are 45 minutes and that changes the math. Has anyone else got a cutoff time for deciding whether to commit to a series?

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thompson.robin1mo ago

My buddy Marcus swears by this exact system, but he flips it around and watches the last 30 minutes of the season finale first to see if the ending is worth any of it. That backfired hard when he got hooked on a show that turned out to be five seasons of filler with a great final episode, so he wasted a whole weekend on pure garbage. He's back on your method now, though he still refuses to watch anything with more than three seasons unless the first five minutes are perfect.