How to Catch Up on TV Over the Weekend

by Logan Sachon

This post is brought to you by Hulu. Sit back and catch up on all of the shows featured in this post and more on Hulu ahead of the season finales!

My brother and I each took turns living at home as adults.

Our gap years in adulthood came a few years apart, but they both had a few things in common: 5 p.m. happy hours on the porch with my parents (they are retired, and very good at it); rude weekend wake ups from my dad when he’d decided we’d slept too long; and rollicking family nights around the TV watching The Voice.

Have you ever watched The Voice? It’s great, especially when you watch with your parents. I cannot recommend it enough. We’ve all become experts at performance and presentation. My mom has watched it so much that she is now basically a world-class vocal critic and knows what each judge will say before he says it. It is incredible. Because of The Voice, I have only ever felt deep affection for Adam Levine and will listen to otherwise unlistenable songs on modern country radio just in case it is Blake Shelton singing.

But: It seems The Voice comes on practically every night of the week, so no, I don’t watch it live now that someone isn’t fixing me snacks and pouring me wine each Monday and Tuesday at 8/7 central. (Now I catch up on all missed episodes on Hulu.) But it’s still something special that our family shares. I call my mom and she gives me the play-by-play on what happened, who did well, which performances I absolutely have to see and then every few weeks I catch up and call her, wanting praise for catching up, and she’s like, not really impressed. But it’s work, catching up on TV. It takes stamina, it takes planning. And I’ve perfected it.

As a person who watches The Voice, The Blacklist, Dancing With the Stars and all other TV exclusively in marathon watch sessions, here is my personal guide to watching a lot of TV in a long sitting. (Maybe it’s weird to present a TV watching guide right as spring is about to get sprung. But don’t worry! We’ve got like, two weeks max before it gets disgusting outside again and we have to stay in bed in front of the air conditioner.)

My two favorite times to marathon TV are Friday night or Saturday day, or preferably, perfectly, both.

Friday Night
Catching up on Friday night is fantastic. Fridays are a horrible time to go out and be with people. All I ever want to do on Friday is be alone. If you want to attempt this method, simply say no to everyone who asks you to do anything and then rush home after work and order takeout and open a bottle of wine and sit on the couch eating takeout and drinking wine and catching up on your favorite shows and that is it. That’s the guide for that. Maybe have a second bottle of wine on hand; I don’t know your life.

Watch until you pass out or are sick of watching, which sometimes never happens! The only sunrises I see are when I’ve stayed up all night watching TV.

Saturday Day

If you’re spending your Saturday watching TV, the key is to start early. Set your alarm for an hour after you normally wake up, give yourself a little cushion there, a little treat. The alarm will go off and you’ll be like, “WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS SATURDAY,” and then you’ll remember, “Oh, it is Saturday.” Then you will be happy and energized enough to get out of bed and make some tea or coffee and then head to the couch or back in bed. (If you don’t have a TV in your bedroom but are a Hulu subscriber, you can stream all of your favorite shows from your mobile devices.)

A bagel and a latte while you catch up on your shows might sound like a good idea, but I’m going to advise against it. Don’t go outside. You should probably avoid the windows, too. You will see people out in the world and you will wonder if you should be out in the world, too. Nope! You can go out in the world tomorrow. Tonight, even. But not today. Today is for TV.

So. You’re in your house. The shutters are drawn. Scrounge some food for breakfast. Leftovers are good Saturday morning TV-watching breakfast. Cold Thai food is pretty great if you’ve got it. Or maybe you’ve got cereal, that’s nice. Don’t cook anything, God no. Lethargy is the goal of this day, no sudden moves. If you cook eggs, which is work, you’ll have to do the dishes, which is more work. Or you won’t do the dishes, and then you’ll be thinking of them all day instead of what you should be thinking about, which is TV. I’m getting stressed out just thinking about it! No cooking. No dishes. Get comfortable. Start watching. Then, once it’s noon, you can think: “It’s only noon, and look what I’ve accomplished! I’ve already watched so many episodes! To think I could be sleeping! This feels great.”

When you get hungry, you can order lunch, which might be a little bit hard. A lot of the best and classic takeout is not available at noon on a Saturday. This is actually a real problem for me, because I want to eat Indian and Thai food at all times, but it is not available at all times. Maybe you can hold out on eating until 4 p.m. when chicken korma and papri chaat are available. Sometimes I can. If not, hamburgers are nice. Hard to mess up a hamburger. Fries. Ask for extra ketchup, learn from my mistakes. Maybe get a deli smoothie, a deli salad, for health. Deli chicken fingers. Lots of options. Don’t despair. Or maybe you have food in your house. What is that like? Eat some of it. But remember: no cooking. No dishes.

After you eat your food, it’s getting to be time to be aware of your deadline, the time when you have to leave to do whatever you’re doing, you know, like, out in the world. Do you have time to watch another episode? Do you really?

Friday Night and Saturday Day
This is the real deal. This is how you do it. I’d take a Friday night/Saturday day combo once a month over more frequent viewings every time. What a joy, the Friday night/ Saturday day combo is. With real indulgence comes real accomplishment.

Friday night goes exactly like it would if you were not also planning to spend all of Saturday watching TV, except you need to double up your supplies. Buy two (or three) bottles of wine. Order double the amount of takeout. “But I can just order more takeout tomorrow,” you might say. That’s not always true. What have we learned about the availability of premium ethnic foods during the daytime? Be prepared for anything. Order an extra thing of drunken noodles, another thing of fried rice, a chicken tikki. Go wild. “I just spent $40 on takeout for one person,” you might think. “That seems excessive.” It’s like ten meals. It’s fine.

So: Friday you eat half the takeout and drink half the wine. Don’t kill yourself staying up all night. Or do. If you do stay up, let yourself wakeup naturally. If you go to bed early (“early”), set that alarm. Don’t sleep through your TV time! You only live once, make sure you’re spending it watching other people’s lives on a small (or really small) screen. Wake up, watch an ep. Breakfast is cold takeout, perfect. Lunch, more cold takeout. Or maybe microwave it, be gourmet, you foodie! Two p.m. is a good time to start drinking wine on a weekend, uncork it. Do you still have takeout? Just keep eating it all day, why not.

When it’s time to go, go. If you haven’t finished, you need to be spending more time watching TV. More frequent marathons, that is my prescription. See a friend. Ask them how their day was. They probably did a lot. Smile and nod. And what’d you do? You watched TV. Say it loud, say it proud. Don’t say you read, don’t say you worked out or worked or did chores. You had a great time. You watched TV, and you watched it right.