The problem with binge-watching is the same problem with wanting it to be a holiday all the time. The more we consider a show serious, the more it feels permissible to drown oneself in episode after episode of it, to use it as an excuse to stay home sick from the world. It is logical that a show about dragons and swords would feel more escapist than most other things, and that viewers would want some larger permission to dive into that warm bath. It is not that we are all nerds so much as it is that we are all rightly scared of what is waiting outside our windows, out there where the television can’t reach, where everyone knows both that dragons are not real and that they rarely can be defeated.
