The familiar small black box appears on my laptop’s screen. “Continue playing?” reads one of my clickable options.  The answer when watching Netflix’s original series Orange Is The New Black is always “yes.”  And when season 3 premieres Jun 12, I will be blissfully ignoring all responsible adult practices to binge-watch the entire season.  

As college students, we are not strangers to the binge-watching craze.  Binge-watching, or watching multiple episodes of a television series in one sitting, is a new cultural phenomena streaming sites like Netflix have made an incredibly easy and popular activity to partake in. Whether you’re indulging in a show that has been off the air for years now or catching up in a series, binge-watching appeals to a majority of Netflix users.

“I prefer binge-watching to watching a show on television. I don’t even have cable connection,” Sophia Truzzi, a DePaul communications student, said.

According to a Netflix study conducted in 2013 with cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken, 61 percent of adults binge-watch regularly.  The ordeal of binge-watching is so popular among adults that 80 percent confessed they would rather stream a good television show than read a friend’s social media post.

Viewers say that watching a full television series at their own pace gives them a sense of control.  Rather than having to wait, binge-watching plays on the need of instant satisfaction.

“We’re millennials; we want what we want, and we want it now,” Marissa Gaston, 20, a college student studying creative writing said. “Everything is available at the swipe of a finger, so why not our television, too?”

This feeling of control is what makes the Netflix’s original series “Orange Is The New Black” so successful.  Like the show’s previous seasons, the entire third season will upload to Netflix on the release day.  Some argue that the show would gain even more success if only one episode per week was uploaded onto Netflix.  However, the binge-watcher loses their sense of control having to wait each week for a new episode.  This waiting game is identical to watching a television show during primetime.  With “Orange Is The New Black,” the viewer can watch how many whenever.

“I don’t think “Orange is the New Black” would be more successful if one episode were released once a week.  It all comes back to convenience and availability,” Gaston said.

As for June 12, binge-watchers including myself will be fixed on our laptops taking in as much of season three of “Orange Is The New Black” as the laptop battery will allow. Considering the last season left viewers refreshingly satisfied, with Rose avenging the evil runaway Vee, and a trailer featuring a sassy and confident Red, my expectations are high.  Here is what I’m expecting from the new season:

What to expect:

Season three is colliding the old and new.  With season two consistently building with intensity, it is time for the show to regain some of the brilliantly subtle and character-driven comedy that makes this show so special.  After viewing the trailer I am expecting new inmates to shake things up a bit, new hairdos (Has Boo gone glam at the hands of Sophia?!) and the timeless kitchen standoffs are back.  But most importantly Alex is back.  I think viewers are in for shifting alliances as Piper and Alex try to figure out what exactly their relationship is going to be.

What the fans are hoping for:

“I know it sounds bad, but I hope Vee is dead, and if she isn’t then she needs to stay far away from Litchfield. I would also love a Pennsatucky backstory. Something tells me there’s a lot hiding behind that new set of teeth.” –Marissa Gaston

“I have to know what happened to Vee. But I trust them [the writers] and I’ll just let them lead me down the path of ‘Orange Is The New Black’.” –Sophia Truzzi

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