TV Mountains

I was impressed a few years back when a friend of mine watched an entire season of 24 in a single weekend. Without commercials that’s about 18 hours of TV in two days, which is a whole lot of “butt in the couch” time. Which got me thinking — in this day and age where people binge TV series all the time, if Mount Everest is the hardest mountain to climb, then what are the hardest TV series to binge?

These are the TV Mountains.

Difficulty: Easy

The Walking Dead

These TV mountains can be climbed in around a week of TV binging.

The Walking Dead: This series originally debuted back in 2010 but doesn’t have seasons that are too long so there’s only been around 100 episodes produced so far, or around 75 hours of TV to date.

Lost: Lost ended its run a few years ago at 121 episodes or around 90 hours of TV.

Difficulty: Moderate

These TV mountains can be climbed via few weeks of TV binging.

The Simpsons

The Simpsons: Airing new episodes since 1989, to date there’s been more than 620 episodes of the series produced. But since each episode of The Simpsons is just 30 minutes long, less minus commercials, you could make it through all of The Simpsons to date in about 205 hours.

Supernatural: This long-running series is currently in its 13th season and has aired more than 280 episodes or about 210 hours of TV. But like The Walking Dead and The Simpsons, Supernatural is showing no signs of stopping, so even if you finish all of Supernatural there’ll be more to watch later.

Difficulty: Difficult

These TV mountains can only be climbed via many weeks of TV binging.

Dark Shadows

Law & Order: Airing since 1990, the Law & Order franchise has produced more than 450 episodes of TV. The series is so popular new episodes are still being produced and the various Law & Order series airs in syndication on many outlets. So far there’s been about 335 hours of Law & Order created. Or, if you did nothing but watch Law & Order back to back and didn’t sleep, it would still take you more than two weeks to make it through all the series.

Dark Shadows: This classic gothic soap opera aired more than 1,200 episodes between 1966 and 1971. Each episode was only 30 minutes long, minus commercials, but still makes for more than 405 hours of TV.

Difficulty: Severe

These TV mountains can only be climbed via months of TV binging.

Tom Baker as Doctor Who

Star Trek: Counting all the various incarnations of Star Trek there are more than 725 episodes of this series or more than 540 hours of TV and counting. To put that number into perspective, doing nothing but watching Star Trek 40 hours a week it would take you more than 13 weeks to finish. Assuming you’d be able to make it through the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, that is.

Doctor Who: There’s been more than 835 episodes of Doctor Who created since the series began in 1963 which makes by my estimation more than 555 hours of time and relative dimension in space TV viewing.

Difficulty: Extremely Severe

This TV mountain can only be climbed via years of TV binging.

General Hospital

General Hospital: General Hospital is the longest running US soap opera and has been producing new episodes on a weekday basis since 1963. Back in 2014 it entered the record books as having the most episodes of any TV series at more than 13,000, or, around 8,600 hours of TV. If Star Trek would take you 13 weeks to finish at 40 hours a week then General Hospital would take you more than FOUR YEARS to finish at the same rate!

The most difficult part of watching all of General Hospital, the Mount Everest of TV shows that’s still growing, would be finding all the episodes. My guess is that in the intervening more than half-century since the show debuted some of the early episodes would have been lost because of time and shortsightedness. But even if most of the episodes are still around finding them would be difficult. First is the huge amount of episodes, so at some point cost acquiring them is going to be an issue. Then there’s the fact that for the most part only seasons of General Hospital that are just a few years old are available making full seasons that aired even prior to 2010 hard, if not impossible, to find.

I take it back, General Hospital isn’t the Mount Everest of TV series, it’s Mount Impossible of TV series!

Screaming for attention: 400 TV shows and counting

Late last year researches at FX Networks found that there were more than 400 scripted TV shows in 2015. Not 400 HOURS of scripted shows, but 400 DIFFERENT shows. Let that sink in for a minute. If there’s 400 scripted shows and each show has on average 10 episodes, some would have more and some less, that’s something like around 4,000 hours of NEW TV produced last year. To put that number in perspective, with that amount of content you could watch nothing but new TV shows 24 hours a day from December to mid-June.

Humans on AMC
Humans on AMC

And that’s not including news programs and game shows and variety shows and reality and TV movies either. That’s 4,000 hours of scripted dramas and comedies.

Part of why there’s so much “stuff” out there is that every channel wants to have a hit series that draws in viewers, which might turn a channel very few are watching, and therefor getting less ad dollars, into something many are watching and talking about and getting lots of ad dollars. Case in point AMC. A decade ago AMC aired classic movies, hence the name; American Movie Classics. Then in 2007 they launched Mad Men to great acclaim and have since launched other popular series like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Before, AMC was a channel that hardly anyone watched. Now, AMC is one of the most watched spots on TV and one that now makes a lot of money.

And with viewers “cutting the cord” as it were online services are also trying to get in with scripted shows too. Netflix and Amazon have have been creating series specifically for their service for a few years now and now other platforms like Hulu and YouTube are getting in on the game too with content of their own.

Jessica Jones on Netflix
Jessica Jones on Netflix

I watch a lot of TV, probably too much. And even with my prodigious TV habit I couldn’t watch everything last year that I probably would have in years past. For example, the series Humans on AMC looked interesting enough but I had too many things to watch at that time and never got around to it. And with a show like Jessica Jones on Netflix I did watch the first episode but when it didn’t immediately connect with me I moved onto something else.

Now I’m not saying that I’ll won’t go back and try and watch Jessica Jones or Humans again this summer when there used to be fewer new things to on, but I can’t guarantee it since nowadays there are just as many new and interesting series premiering during the summer as there are in the fall/winter months.

New shows last summer like Halt and Catch Fire, True Detective and The Carmichael Show, all of which I enjoyed a great deal, took whatever time I would normally have to checkout things I’d missed during the fall and instead put the focus on them. In fact, the only show I did catchup on last summer was Fargo, and that was only because a friend highly recommended it.

Maron on IFC
Maron on IFC

Which makes me wonder, what am I all missing? Years ago I was only ever able to get into The Wire when I caught up with it after HBO aired the first few seasons before the start of the third. Up until then I’d watch a few episodes at the start of each new season and give up. It was only because I had the time to catch up on it that I was able to be sucked in by that wonderful show.

But the last few years that really hasn’t been happening for me. I tell myself that I need to watch the latest season of House of Cards or Justified or Maron and something else new will appear on my pop-culture radar and I find myself putting off things for one more season.

I suppose the solution to all this is to count my blessings, too much of a good thing is better than nothing, and wait for the day that the eventual collapse of all this good stuff which is inevitable. There’s no way that all the networks and cable channels and online services can be pouring BILLIONS into these new shows with all expected to make back any money.

Maybe what I need to do is to get a colossal DVR and record EVERYTHING I might be interested in when the day comes after the pop-culture collapse when the only thing on to watch are reruns of The Big Bang Theory and episodes of Redneck/Swamp-Truckers/Fishermen/Miners/Pawn on The Discovery Channel.

Fear the Walking Dead numbers game

The series The Walking Dead is one of the most popular shows on TV with up to 17 million people watching each episode. Over the last five seasons we’ve learned a lot about what happened after the zombies came to dominate the planet but not much of what lead to their takeover.

fear_the_walking_dead_ver3We do know that at some point between the time character Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) was shot and wounded on a seemingly normal day and awoke a few weeks/months later in an abandoned hospital is when society fell apart and the ghouls with a taste for people took over. And other than a few flashbacks in other episodes that’s it.

Now the new The Walking Dead spin-of series Fear the Walking Dead is set to go back and tell this missing history of how the zombies ate their way to world domination from the very first bite.

Which got me thinking; if what happened in The Walking Dead happened in real life how would it go down?

First, let’s assume that at some point at the same time all over the planet the virus in The Walking Dead that turns anyone who’s died for any reason into flesh eating zombies strikes. And from that point on anyone who dies will reanimate and come looking for lunch. Which would be bad news for us since 56 million people die each year which means at a minimum there’s be 56 million zombies on the planet!

Well, actually no.

Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia, Frank Dillane as Nick, Kim Dickens as Madison, Cliff Curtis as Travis, Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza, Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris, Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar, Patricia Reyes Spíndola as Griselda Salazar and Mercedes Mason as Ofelia - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC
Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia, Frank Dillane as Nick, Kim Dickens as Madison, Cliff Curtis as Travis, Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza, Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris, Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar, Patricia Reyes Spíndola as Griselda Salazar and Mercedes Mason as Ofelia – Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery – Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

It’s true that on average something like 56 million people die every year but that’s over the course of an entire year. In a month about 4.6 million people die, in a day around 153,000. Which again is a lot, until you look at the population as a whole.

Currently, there are more than 7 billion people on the planet. And that’s 7,000,000,000 people who’d be against 153,000 some zombies the first day. While the zombies might have surprise on their hands since I’m assuming that in the universe of The Walking Dead there’s no movies like Night of the Living Dead to prepare the populous on how to fight and destroy the beasts (“If you have a gun, shoot ’em in the head. That’s a sure way to kill ’em. If you don’t, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat ’em or burn ’em. They go up pretty easy.”), my guess is that 7 billion vs. 153 thousand would be able to take care of the zombie plague relatively quickly.

Especially since zombies aren’t smart or cunning. Once a zombie is created it doesn’t go around looking for other zombies to start building an army in secret, it goes out looking for regular people to bite. Regular people who probably don’t want to be bitten. Regular people who’d fight back.

fear_the_walking_dead_ver2_xlgAnd again, 153,000 might sound like a big number but that would be the total amount of zombies created world-wide on the first day + any people unlucky enough to be offed by them. To put that number into perspective, there are about 8.4 million people living in New York City where we’d see about 150 zombies created on the first day. Again, 8.4 million vs 150 is no match.

Looking at the numbers I just can’t see how the zombies took over in The Walking Dead? Maybe it was some crazed politician who outlawed killing zombies because he or she was afraid of losing votes? Or maybe people tried to ignore their dead friend’s pasty completion and penchant for cannibalism too long before the zombies started taking over?

I just don’t get it.

Realistically, I could only see something like in The Walking Dead happening if something else happened along side it. Like say a something like World War 2 where tens of thousands of people were dying every day in certain places where the population was already displaced and dislocated and not able to effectively fight the zombies. Or if something like the 1918 flu pandemic happened again that was bad enough that 25% of the population became sick, and in a zombie apocalypse wouldn’t be able to fight back, and tens of millions of extra people died as well.

Then we might be in trouble.

Otherwise, as long as we had enough heavy sticks to club the zombies with in the first weeks of an outbreak I think we’d be okay. Fear the Walking Dead is set to answer these questions on AMC Sunday, August 23.