Disney+’s “WandaVision” began with a bold, disorienting move, taking viewers and depositing them without explanation into an unsettling bubble of 1950s television.

I am referring, of course, to the show’s practice of releasing new episodes only once every week.

Releasing TV installments on a schedule — “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel,” as the show’s superhero predecessor “Batman” promised — was standard practice in the days of black-and-white TV, and still is on most traditional networks. But the age of Netflix has led accustomed streaming fans to getting full seasons all at once, and some WandaViewers did not care to wait for what an IndieWire review referred to as “inconvenient weekly installments.”

“WandaVision” is not the first streaming show to face complaints for not feeding its audience on the all-you-can-eat plan. Last year, Eric Kripke, showrunner of Amazon’s dystopian superhero drama “The Boys,” defended the decision to release Season 2’s episodes weekly, against some fans’ objections, “to have time to sort of slow down a little bit and have conversations about everything.” (“The Boys” did release its first three episodes on its premiere date, “WandaVision” its first two; Disney is also following the weekly model with its latest Marvel series, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”)

Slow down? We are not much of a slowdown society these days. If people can have something, they increasingly believe they should, in Costco-size portions, to be savored or swallowed anaconda-like as they see fit. Who the hell is anyone else to tell us to chew between bites? We’ll chew when we feel like it!

Fans’ increasing expectation of — and creators’ occasional pushback against — the binge model resonates with other tech-driven arguments over how art should properly be enjoyed. Should the audience or the artist decide how the work is best experienced? Are you violating the artistic intention of an album when you listen to it on shuffle? Are you a cretin for watching a movie on your phone when the director insisted it be viewed on a big screen?

Certainly, advocates of “I want it all, now” can sound entitled, like kids on the Wonka factory tour grousing that the gobstoppers aren’t coming fast enough. But there can also be a kind of high-handedness to the defense of weekly airings, as if the communal watercooler ritual were somehow more authentic, and as if viewers needed to be guided toward the correct choice lest they, like children failing the marshmallow test, make the wrong one.

Maybe a more useful way of looking at the weekly and binge models is that neither is inherently better. Instead, they’re one more set of storytelling tools — like shooting in front of a studio audience, or not — creatively suited to different kinds of stories.

Release schedules, like many aspects of TV, are a case of the creative format following the business model. In the days of rabbit ears TV, you watched a show when it was beamed at you or not at all. Weekly (or daily) schedules built habits and fan bases.

When Netflix entered the original-series business in the early 2010s, it could have followed some form of scheduling. Instead, dropping full seasons at once was a way of branding it as a forward-looking business — this ain’t your grandma’s TV! — and a way to find viewers where broadcast TV wasn’t. (By letting viewers watch at their leisure, Netflix laid claim to the vast stretches, like Fridays and Saturdays, when fans had a lot of time and less marquee scheduled programming.)

For an era — well, a few years — this defined streaming TV. And the different formats led to different creative forms. Traditional TV serials broke stories into structured units with tune-in-next-time endings. Binge series are often looser in episode structure, sometimes to the extent that whole seasons can feel like extended “episodes.” (Or extended movies, such as Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” whose season titles — “Stranger Things 2” and “Stranger Things 3”— recalled the film franchises that inspired the series.)

Eventually some competitors, including Hulu, Apple and Disney, separated themselves from Netflix with old-school weekly schedules, at least for some series. And Disney+, with its first streaming phenomena, showed that the traditional TV schedule works best for shows that play like traditional TV, with tight episode construction and careful maintenance of suspense.

Mystery, in particular, lends itself well to the waiting game. In “WandaVision,” part of the mystery was the show itself: What were these weekly “sitcoms,” really, and who was in charge? The effect wasn’t ruined by bingeing (I recently rewatched it with my wife, who caught up on it over a couple of days), but it really benefited from giving it a long-term lease in your head.

Disney+’s “Star Wars” western, “The Mandalorian,” was a different sort of mystery. Each episode arrived with little information about what it was or where it was going. (The existence of its pint-size breakout star, Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, wasn’t even revealed until the end of the first episode.) Every installment dropped you into a new world, on a new adventure, without warning; it felt like watching a serial short before the main feature at an old-timey movie parlor.

But “mystery” here doesn’t have to mean genre mystery. This was the case with “Mad Men,” whose creator, Matthew Weiner, has said, with justification, that it wouldn’t work if released a full season at a time. Its artfully withholding storytelling and its willingness to drop the viewer in unexplained circumstances made watching feel like allowing yourself to be blindfolded and kidnapped once a week. (Of course, that hasn’t stopped bingers from mainlining it during the pandemic.)

Bingeing, on the other hand, benefits certain kinds of immersive long-form TV that Netflix has gotten adept at: more straightforward miniseries, such as “The Queen’s Gambit,” and the visual equivalent of page-turner novels, such as “Bridgerton.” In some cases, a binge also helps gloss over weaknesses or repetitions that you might linger on with more time to dwell on them. (In general, I’m thinking of serial stories here; sitcoms, anthologies or procedurals with self-contained episodes feel less affected by the choice.)

There are also business dimensions to the debate, particularly the argument that spreading a season over months can allow a show to build word-of-mouth and grow, whereas binge-series just crash and recede, like waves on an endless content ocean. But business and artistic choices are two different things.

HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” for instance, might not have become the same mass phenomenon if it had dropped its seasons Netflix-style. But (unpopular opinion alert!) it plays better as a binge. All those slow-rolling character arcs are clearer, the ending feels better foreshadowed — even Daenerys’ years wandering Essos don’t seem quite so interminable.

NBC’s afterlife comedy “The Good Place,” likewise, always felt to me like a binge show trapped in weekly form, with the end of each episode igniting the storyline of the next, in the chain-smoking fashion of so many Netflix shows.

On the other hand, the first season of Amazon’s corporate mystery “Homecoming” might have built more suspense if it had been doled out over weeks. And on the other hand, Apple TV+’s alternative space-race drama “For All Mankind,” a slow burn of a series whose current season builds to two gripping final episodes, might have been better dropped all at once; I could see it losing viewers on the long, digressive journey before the payoff.

Regardless, it’s good to see streaming platforms experimenting with their schedules; hopefully, they’re starting to see “To binge or not to binge?” as one creative choice among many. It made sense for Netflix to prove that the binge model could work, which unlocked a form of TV storytelling whose rules creators are still figuring out.

But just because you can make TV a certain way now doesn’t mean you always should. Sometimes, good things come from those who make you wait.

Disney+’s “WandaVision” began with a bold, disorienting move, taking viewers and depositing them without explanation into an unsettling bubble of 1950s television.

Disney+’s “WandaVision” began with a bold, disorienting move, taking viewers and depositing them without explanation into an unsettling bubble of 1950s television. I am referring, of course, to the show’s practice of releasing new episodes only once every week. Releasing TV installments on a schedule — “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel,” as the show’s superhero predecessor “Batman” promised — was standard practice in the days of black-and-white TV, and still is on most traditional networks. But the age of Netflix has led accustomed streaming fans to getting full seasons all at once, and some WandaViewers did not care to wait for what an IndieWire review referred to as “inconvenient weekly installments.” “WandaVision” is not the first streaming show to face complaints for not feeding its audience on the all-you-can-eat plan. Last year, Eric Kripke, showrunner of Amazon’s dystopian superhero drama “The Boys,” defended the decision to release Season 2’s episodes weekly, against some fans’ objections, “to have time to sort of slow down a little bit and have conversations about everything.” (“The Boys” did release its first three episodes on its premiere date, “WandaVision” its first two; Disney is also following the weekly model with its latest Marvel series, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”) Slow down? We are not much of a slowdown society these days. If people can have something, they increasingly believe they should, in Costco-size portions, to be savored or swallowed anaconda-like as they see fit. Who the hell is anyone else to tell us to chew between bites? We’ll chew when we feel like it! Fans’ increasing expectation of — and creators’ occasional pushback against — the binge model resonates with other tech-driven arguments over how art should properly be enjoyed. Should the audience or the artist decide how the work is best experienced? Are you violating the artistic intention of an album when you listen to it on shuffle? Are you a cretin for watching a movie on your phone when the director insisted it be viewed on a big screen? Certainly, advocates of “I want it all, now” can sound entitled, like kids on the Wonka factory tour grousing that the gobstoppers aren’t coming fast enough. But there can also be a kind of high-handedness to the defense of weekly airings, as if the communal watercooler ritual were somehow more authentic, and as if viewers needed to be guided toward the correct choice lest they, like children failing the marshmallow test, make the wrong one. Maybe a more useful way of looking at the weekly and binge models is that neither is inherently better. Instead, they’re one more set of storytelling tools — like shooting in front of a studio audience, or not — creatively suited to different kinds of stories. Release schedules, like many aspects of TV, are a case of the creative format following the business model. In the days of rabbit ears TV, you watched a show when it was beamed at you or not at all. Weekly (or daily) schedules built habits and fan bases. When Netflix entered the original-series business in the early 2010s, it could have followed some form of scheduling. Instead, dropping full seasons at once was a way of branding it as a forward-looking business — this ain’t your grandma’s TV! — and a way to find viewers where broadcast TV wasn’t. (By letting viewers watch at their leisure, Netflix laid claim to the vast stretches, like Fridays and Saturdays, when fans had a lot of time and less marquee scheduled programming.) For an era — well, a few years — this defined streaming TV. And the different formats led to different creative forms. Traditional TV serials broke stories into structured units with tune-in-next-time endings. Binge series are often looser in episode structure, sometimes to the extent that whole seasons can feel like extended “episodes.” (Or extended movies, such as Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” whose season titles — “Stranger Things 2” and “Stranger Things 3”— recalled the film franchises that inspired the series.) Eventually some competitors, including Hulu, Apple and Disney, separated themselves from Netflix with old-school weekly schedules, at least for some series. And Disney+, with its first streaming phenomena, showed that the traditional TV schedule works best for shows that play like traditional TV, with tight episode construction and careful maintenance of suspense. Mystery, in particular, lends itself well to the waiting game. In “WandaVision,” part of the mystery was the show itself: What were these weekly “sitcoms,” really, and who was in charge? The effect wasn’t ruined by bingeing (I recently rewatched it with my wife, who caught up on it over a couple of days), but it really benefited from giving it a long-term lease in your head. Disney+’s “Star Wars” western, “The Mandalorian,” was a different sort of mystery. Each episode arrived with little information about what it was or where it was going. (The existence of its pint-size breakout star, Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, wasn’t even revealed until the end of the first episode.) Every installment dropped you into a new world, on a new adventure, without warning; it felt like watching a serial short before the main feature at an old-timey movie parlor. But “mystery” here doesn’t have to mean genre mystery. This was the case with “Mad Men,” whose creator, Matthew Weiner, has said, with justification, that it wouldn’t work if released a full season at a time. Its artfully withholding storytelling and its willingness to drop the viewer in unexplained circumstances made watching feel like allowing yourself to be blindfolded and kidnapped once a week. (Of course, that hasn’t stopped bingers from mainlining it during the pandemic.) Bingeing, on the other hand, benefits certain kinds of immersive long-form TV that Netflix has gotten adept at: more straightforward miniseries, such as “The Queen’s Gambit,” and the visual equivalent of page-turner novels, such as “Bridgerton.” In some cases, a binge also helps gloss over weaknesses or repetitions that you might linger on with more time to dwell on them. (In general, I’m thinking of serial stories here; sitcoms, anthologies or procedurals with self-contained episodes feel less affected by the choice.) There are also business dimensions to the debate, particularly the argument that spreading a season over months can allow a show to build word-of-mouth and grow, whereas binge-series just crash and recede, like waves on an endless content ocean. But business and artistic choices are two different things. HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” for instance, might not have become the same mass phenomenon if it had dropped its seasons Netflix-style. But (unpopular opinion alert!) it plays better as a binge. All those slow-rolling character arcs are clearer, the ending feels better foreshadowed — even Daenerys’ years wandering Essos don’t seem quite so interminable. NBC’s afterlife comedy “The Good Place,” likewise, always felt to me like a binge show trapped in weekly form, with the end of each episode igniting the storyline of the next, in the chain-smoking fashion of so many Netflix shows. On the other hand, the first season of Amazon’s corporate mystery “Homecoming” might have built more suspense if it had been doled out over weeks. And on the other hand, Apple TV+’s alternative space-race drama “For All Mankind,” a slow burn of a series whose current season builds to two gripping final episodes, might have been better dropped all at once; I could see it losing viewers on the long, digressive journey before the payoff. Regardless, it’s good to see streaming platforms experimenting with their schedules; hopefully, they’re starting to see “To binge or not to binge?” as one creative choice among many. It made sense for Netflix to prove that the binge model could work, which unlocked a form of TV storytelling whose rules creators are still figuring out. But just because you can make TV a certain way now doesn’t mean you always should. Sometimes, good things come from those who make you wait.

TV's battle of the binge: Why the wait can be worth it

Shortly after the premiere of the first episode of “Allen v. Farrow,” an HBO documentary series that reexamines Dylan Farrow’s decades-old sexual abuse allegations against filmmaker Woody Allen, her adoptive father, a spokesperson for Allen released a statement Sunday night slamming the series, calling it a “shoddy hit piece.”

Letty Aronson, Allen’s sister, sent the statement — attributed to a spokesperson — shortly after the first episode aired, on behalf of Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, the filmmaker’s wife and the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow. In 1992, Farrow, Allen’s longtime girlfriend, learned of the relationship between Allen and Previn when Previn was a first-year college student. That relationship is also the subject of scrutiny in the four-part docuseries.

Neither Allen nor Previn participated in the series, but it does include audio excerpts from Allen’s recent memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.”

“These documentarians had no interest in the truth,” the statement said. “Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods.”

On Monday, the publisher of Allen’s memoir, Skyhorse, raised another objection to the series: that the filmmakers had used snippets from the audiobook without permission. In a statement, the president and publisher of Skyhorse, Tony Lyons, said that the “unauthorized” use of the audio in the first episode was “clear, willful infringement under existing legal precedent.” 
 
Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/hollywood/news-after-woody-allen-publisher-threatens-lawsuit-allen-v-farrow-makers-respond-365556" hreflang="en">After Woody Allen publisher threatens lawsuit, 'Allen v. Farrow' makers respond</a>

Lyons said in the statement that the filmmakers did not request permission to use the excerpts and that the publisher learned late last week that the episodes make “extensive” use of the audiobook. The publisher’s lawyer notified HBO on Friday that “if the use of the audiobook were anywhere near what we were hearing, it would constitute copyright infringement,” he said.

The memoir was originally set to be published last year by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group until dozens of Hachette employees staged a walkout in protest and the publisher reneged. About two weeks later, his book was published by Arcade Publishing, an imprint of the independent publisher Skyhorse.

In response to the publisher’s objections, an HBO spokesperson provided a statement from the filmmakers, saying, “The creators of ‘Allen v. Farrow’ legally used limited audio excerpts from Woody Allen’s memoir in the series under the Fair Use doctrine.” The doctrine has been invoked to allow artists and journalists — including documentary filmmakers — to use limited amounts of copyrighted works for certain purposes, including using the material to illustrate an argument or to serve as the subject of a critique. 
 
Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/mia-farrow-says-bringing-woody-allen-into-her-family-is-the-great-regret-of-her-life-365451">Mia Farrow says bringing Woody Allen into family is the 'great regret' of life</a>

Episode 1 includes extensive interviews with Mia Farrow and Dylan Farrow, who accused Allen of sexual assault when she was 7 years old. It also included interviews with family and friends who said that even before Aug. 4, 1992 — the day that Dylan Farrow says Allen assaulted her — they witnessed behavior from Allen toward his daughter that they saw as inappropriate.

Allen has long denied the abuse allegations, arguing that Mia Farrow had coached Dylan to make the allegations after learning about his relationship with Previn.

In Sunday’s statement, Allen continued to deny the claims.

“As has been known for decades, these allegations are categorically false,” the statement said. “Multiple agencies investigated them at the time and found that, whatever Dylan Farrow may have been led to believe, absolutely no abuse had ever taken place.”

In later episodes, the series raises questions about one of those investigations, in particular: a report issued by the Yale Child Sexual Abuse Clinic, at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, which found Dylan uncredible after interviewing the child nine times during a seven-month period. According to the series, all the contemporaneous interview notes from those sessions were destroyed when the final report was issued. 
 
Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/woody-allen-mia-farrow-soon-yi-previn-dylan-farrow-a-timeline-365343" hreflang="en">Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, Dylan Farrow: A Timeline</a>

Prosecutors in Connecticut, where Dylan Farrow says that Allen sexually assaulted her, declined to prosecute Allen in 1993. The state’s attorney said that he did so to spare Dylan the trauma of a trial but that he believed she had been molested.

The statement said that Allen and Previn were approached about the documentary less than two months ago and were “given only a matter of days” to respond to it. It also said it was “sadly unsurprising” that HBO was airing the series, considering a production deal it had made with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow’s brother, who has spoken in support of his sister, including in the series. (Ronan Farrow, an investigative journalist who has reported extensively on sexual misconduct, has a deal with HBO to create investigative documentary specials, though he was not on the production team for “Allen v. Farrow.”)

Shortly after the premiere of the first episode of “Allen v. Farrow,” an HBO documentary series that reexamines Dylan Farrow’s decades-old sexual abuse allegations against filmmaker Woody Allen, her adoptive father, a spokesperson for Allen released a statement Sunday night slamming the series, calling it a “shoddy hit piece.

Shortly after the premiere of the first episode of “Allen v. Farrow,” an HBO documentary series that reexamines Dylan Farrow’s decades-old sexual abuse allegations against filmmaker Woody Allen, her adoptive father, a spokesperson for Allen released a statement Sunday night slamming the series, calling it a “shoddy hit piece.” Letty Aronson, Allen’s sister, sent the statement — attributed to a spokesperson — shortly after the first episode aired, on behalf of Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, the filmmaker’s wife and the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow. In 1992, Farrow, Allen’s longtime girlfriend, learned of the relationship between Allen and Previn when Previn was a first-year college student. That relationship is also the subject of scrutiny in the four-part docuseries. Neither Allen nor Previn participated in the series, but it does include audio excerpts from Allen’s recent memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.” “These documentarians had no interest in the truth,” the statement said. “Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods.” On Monday, the publisher of Allen’s memoir, Skyhorse, raised another objection to the series: that the filmmakers had used snippets from the audiobook without permission. In a statement, the president and publisher of Skyhorse, Tony Lyons, said that the “unauthorized” use of the audio in the first episode was “clear, willful infringement under existing legal precedent.” Also read: After Woody Allen publisher threatens lawsuit, 'Allen v. Farrow' makers respond Lyons said in the statement that the filmmakers did not request permission to use the excerpts and that the publisher learned late last week that the episodes make “extensive” use of the audiobook. The publisher’s lawyer notified HBO on Friday that “if the use of the audiobook were anywhere near what we were hearing, it would constitute copyright infringement,” he said. The memoir was originally set to be published last year by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group until dozens of Hachette employees staged a walkout in protest and the publisher reneged. About two weeks later, his book was published by Arcade Publishing, an imprint of the independent publisher Skyhorse. In response to the publisher’s objections, an HBO spokesperson provided a statement from the filmmakers, saying, “The creators of ‘Allen v. Farrow’ legally used limited audio excerpts from Woody Allen’s memoir in the series under the Fair Use doctrine.” The doctrine has been invoked to allow artists and journalists — including documentary filmmakers — to use limited amounts of copyrighted works for certain purposes, including using the material to illustrate an argument or to serve as the subject of a critique. Also read: Mia Farrow says bringing Woody Allen into family is the 'great regret' of life Episode 1 includes extensive interviews with Mia Farrow and Dylan Farrow, who accused Allen of sexual assault when she was 7 years old. It also included interviews with family and friends who said that even before Aug. 4, 1992 — the day that Dylan Farrow says Allen assaulted her — they witnessed behavior from Allen toward his daughter that they saw as inappropriate. Allen has long denied the abuse allegations, arguing that Mia Farrow had coached Dylan to make the allegations after learning about his relationship with Previn. In Sunday’s statement, Allen continued to deny the claims. “As has been known for decades, these allegations are categorically false,” the statement said. “Multiple agencies investigated them at the time and found that, whatever Dylan Farrow may have been led to believe, absolutely no abuse had ever taken place.” In later episodes, the series raises questions about one of those investigations, in particular: a report issued by the Yale Child Sexual Abuse Clinic, at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, which found Dylan uncredible after interviewing the child nine times during a seven-month period. According to the series, all the contemporaneous interview notes from those sessions were destroyed when the final report was issued. Also read: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, Dylan Farrow: A Timeline Prosecutors in Connecticut, where Dylan Farrow says that Allen sexually assaulted her, declined to prosecute Allen in 1993. The state’s attorney said that he did so to spare Dylan the trauma of a trial but that he believed she had been molested. The statement said that Allen and Previn were approached about the documentary less than two months ago and were “given only a matter of days” to respond to it. It also said it was “sadly unsurprising” that HBO was airing the series, considering a production deal it had made with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow’s brother, who has spoken in support of his sister, including in the series. (Ronan Farrow, an investigative journalist who has reported extensively on sexual misconduct, has a deal with HBO to create investigative documentary specials, though he was not on the production team for “Allen v. Farrow.”)

Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn call HBO docuseries a 'shoddy hit piece'

home-box-office

Home Box Office, News on Home Box Office, stories on Home Box Office, articles on Home Box Office, Home Box Office stories at Wion, Home Box Office news, Home Box Office latest news

home box-office

TV's battle of the binge: Why the wait can be worth it

Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn call HBO docuseries a 'shoddy hit piece'