To make things not for grazing but for deep engagement required a new set of narrative strategies, though it was possible to make such television at various levels of quality and sophistication, depending on what the viewer sought. So it had been, too, with the new idiom's progenitors, feature film and even the Victorian novel. While House of Cards might have made binging mainstream, in the decade before, writers of shows were inventing what Vince Gilligan (of Breaking Bad) termed the “hyperserial.” Unlike the dramatic series of old, this kind made sense only to those who committed to every episode and indeed multiple seasons of viewing.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 1110