Snippet: Netflix’s House of Cards ☇

Kyle Baxter for TightWind discussing Netflix’s House of Cards (IMDb links added for emphasis):

…It’s Kevin Spacey and David Fincher together making a high quality, serial political thriller; if it were premiering on a cable channel (like, say, AMC), there’s no doubt it’d have a huge audience.

But it’s not. It’s Netflix’s show, and it’s only available there. It shows; rather than “broadcast” a new episode each week at a certain time on a certain day, all thirteen episodes of its first season became available today. If you’d like, you could sit down right now and watch the entire first season—on its first day. Or you can space it out. Whatever you want, just like we’ve all been watching TV series on Netflix that we missed when they originally aired. And because they are intending the show for people who will watch one episode after another, there are no recaps at the beginning of each episode, either.

I’m looking forward to giving this a try. I know a lot has been written about this show and Netflix’s distribution model, and I can completely understand the appeal. Usually, I’ll wait and watch many of the shows that normally air on HBO or Showtime when they come to DVD, especially since this eliminates the need for a year-round subscription to these channels. A season for shows like Girls, Homeland, or Dexter can easily be knocked off in a weekend.