It’s always fun to be the first one of your friends and fam to discover something new. Maybe you were the person who got into wine facials before everyone else. Or maybe you were the first to jump on the #watermelondress memes long before everyone and their mama started doing them. However, sometimes it can be great to be a bit late to the party. That is definitely the case with TV shows.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s definitely fun to be the first one to discover an awesome new TV show before it blows up and everybody starts watching it. But, it can also be great to get into a show after it has been going a few seasons and you know it’s a success. Just because you missed the series premiere doesn’t mean you should ignore the show completely and wait for the next big thing to come along. Have a look at 17 reasons why it’s actually great to get into a TV show after everyone else.
1. You can binge-watch everything at once.
Binge-watching is as much apart of our TV viewing habits as Netflix and chill. It’s fun to watch one episode of a show, but it’s even better to watch 12 episodes of a TV show back-to-back on a Sunday afternoon—especially when you’re doing it with your best friends, endless bags of candy corn, brownies and snuggling in comfy blankets. When you start watching a TV show from the beginning, you have to wait a long time before the first season DVD comes out for anything to binge watch. As good as one episode may be, you cannot watch it over and over.
2. You don’t have to wait a week for an episode to drop.
Remember how painful it is to wait for a new episode to be released? It’s difficult to wait 24 hours when there is a special two-night TV event. But, a week? It’s torture. You feel every second slowly tick by and the day when that new episode is on will not come fast enough. When you’re late to starting a show, there will likely be a good collection of episodes built up so you can go find out what happens next right away.
3. If you haven’t found out the spoilers by now, you don’t have worry about the internet ruining them.
If you didn’t watch a show the night it premiered, you basically need to hide under a rock where there is no WiFi or phone reception to ensure that you don’t hear any spoilers. Ideally, you would stay there for the next week or two until everyone has moved on to the next *dramatic* moment on some other show. If you’ve made it passed those two weeks without hearing the twist, you should be able to watch older shows without worrying about people and/or the internet spoiling them for you because they’re focused on newer, more scandalous things. That said, whenever you bring up that you’re watching this sort-of old show, be sure to mention what season you’re on so your friends don’t accidentally spoil.
4. You don’t have to deal with hearing about fan theories.
Love them or hate them, it’s difficult to avoid fan theories when you’re caught up in watching a popular TV show. If you try and avoid them, you’ll still be forced to deal with them when you see random headlines talking about them. Your social media feeds will likely end up littered with comments from people who claim to “know it all,” too.
When you get into a TV show late, you won’t have to worry about the trending hashtags. Furthermore, a lot of the fan theories from when the show first came out will be proven right or wrong by now so no one will be interested in discussing them anymore.
5. You know that the show is a success so you can actually get invested.
One of the risks of getting into a show when it’s new is that there is a possibility it could get canceled. Even if you think it’s the most fabulous thing on earth, there’s a chance that the network or the rest of the world might not think so. Or, there could be some casting issue or strike which eventually leads to the show getting canceled. When you join something a few seasons in, at least you know there is a good backlog of episodes to enjoy.
6. You can skip ahead to see how things are in later episodes if you’re bored/don’t like something.
Let’s be honest: Sometimes there are parts in the best TV shows that we find a bit dull or wish that we could fast forward through. When we’re watching them live, that obviously isn’t a possibility. And even if we could skip them, we often don’t because we only have 22 or 48 minutes of a TV show when we take off the commercials, so we want to enjoy it as much as possible. If you’ve gotten into a show a few seasons in, you won’t be bothered about fast forwarding through that boring bit of dialogue or that random dream sequence.
7. You can avoid the painful hiatus between seasons.
The time between seasons is the absolute worst. There are only so many times you can rewatch the season finale looking for clues that you might have missed during the other 83 times that you watched it. And then you might become so desperate you will start reading and believing the craziest fan theories. When you’re late to the TV show party, you can time it right so you can watch the episodes when the show is between seasons. Then you’ll be all set for the new premiere. Clever.
8. You don’t have to hear about people obsessing over every episode.
Have other people ever ruined a TV show for you? Sometimes it’s not the unlikable characters, questionable acting or ridiculous plot that ruins things. It’s the other fans who take their obsession with the show to the extreme. If you’ve ever been forced to listen to a conversation where someone discussed the significance of a character’s scarf for 45 minutes, you will get what we’re talking about.
Chances are if you become interested in a show after everyone else, the crazy diehard fans will be off speculating about something else so you won’t have to worry about them sharing their wild thoughts with you.
9. You can look back at all the accomplishments/awards the show has.
There’s no need to wait until #ThrowbackThursday to take a trip down memory lane. You can do it when you start watching a TV show after it has been on for a few seasons. Once you’re familiar with the plot and characters, you can start your research and see all of nominations and awards the show has won. And then you debate about the ones they deserved and what ones they were definitely snubbed on.
10. You can search for almost anything about the show and find it.
In the early days of a show, you’re lucky if you even find promo photos of the premiere episode. A teaser trailer of questionable quality is normally the most you will find. A few seasons in, you’ll likely get millions of search results. You’ll be spoiled for choice with fan pages, social media accounts, clubs celebrating each actor and actress, fan merchandise shopping sites, fan theory sites, fan fiction. You name it, it will probably be on the world wide web.
11. You can decide for yourself whether it’s honestly good or not.
When you begin watching something before it gets really big, there is sometimes a part of you that wants to keep watching the show even if you’re not quite into it, just in case it gets better. Similarly, you might want to keep watching it because if it blows up, you can brag that you knew it was good from the very beginning. That weird mental block is normally removed when you start watching something late. You weren’t pressured into watching it before so now you can decide for yourself whether it’s actually worth watching or whether you should go devote your limited free time to something you truly enjoy.
12. You won’t be sick of hearing about the show because people will be focused on the next new thing.
You will know that if you watch something live, there are approximately 28,000 tweets about it and endless headlines the next day. Then you have your friends, family, and strangers in the Starbucks line yapping about it. When you’re not watching it live or close to the premiere date, you can rest assured that other people will be focusing on something else so you won’t have to hear an endless stream discussing what went down on the show.
13. You can probably watch it on Netflix/get the DVD for cheaper.
Don’t have the channel? No problem. Wait long enough and the show should appear on your Netflix eventually… or maybe it will show up on Hulu/whatever streaming site you prefer. If it hasn’t shown up there, you should be able to pick up a DVD of season one for pretty cheap if it has been out awhile. Most people probably paid at least $30 when the DVD first came out, but if you know where to look, you can easily snag it for under $15.
14. You can finish a few seasons then start them again without being bored.
For television lovers, there’s nothing worse than the empty feeling about finishing one season and not having another one to go to. Just what are you supposed to do now? That’s why it can be beneficial becoming interested in a show after there are multiple seasons already released. You could binge-watch two of them in one night if you really wanted to and you would still have more to watch. This way, you can re-start it, but there have been so many episodes in between that it’ll still feel fresh.
15. Good TV shows only get better with time.
A good TV show is like a good bottle of wine: It will only get better with age. Now, I’m not saying this is true for as the seasons go. We know that the Grey’s Anatomy effect is real. But as the show itself gets older, it often gets better (i.e. Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life, etc.). Therefore, you don’t need to stress about not watching a TV show when it first premiered. Chances are the jokes will still be funny one, ten, and even twenty years from now. When you have an amazing cast, addictive plot and all of the cliffhangers, a TV show will remain in the pop culture hall of fame forevermore.
16. It’s fun to look back at the actors and actresses compared to now.
Who doesn’t love a bit of nostalgia, especially when it involves our favorite actors and actresses? It’s always a treat to watch older shows knowing what celebrities look like now to see what they were like at the start of the TV show. You know, before it got the massive budget, new wardrobe department and a competent makeup artist. It’s surprising the differences in even one or two seasons.
17. You can choose from all the fan merch and get it at cheaper prices.
One of the annoying things about retail is that they try to charge as much as possible for something that’s new and exciting as opposed to starting it at an affordable price to gauge people’s interest. It’s irritating for people who want to be he first on a trend because they end up paying way more. The benefit of being a late adopter is there is more selection and more competition which means prices go way down. You might even be able to find some fan merch on sale. And discounted fan merch is just as good as full-priced fan merchandise. Fact.