Screenshot courtesy Netflix
If you’re like most people, you didn’t get truly invested in Stranger Things or The Get Down until the second episode. According to Netflix’s latest data, as spotted by Complex, that was the episode that turned most viewers from casual to addicted. About 70 percent of viewers who finished the second episode have ended up watching the full season.
Other series tend to be more of a slow burn. Most people watch three episodes of Narcos or Prison Break before committing to the first season, while Making a Murderer and Fuller House both take about four episodes to get people really hooked. Gilmore Girls and Jane the Virgin, meanwhile, both take around seven episodes to get people invested.
Netflix has previously broken down the same data with some of its other popular shows, like Breaking Bad (two episodes), Pretty Little Liars (four episodes), and Mad Men (six episodes). This latest version includes data from January 2015 to August 2016, from viewers around the world.
Across shows and international borders, viewers get hooked by a lot of the same plot lines and themes, according to Netflix. People tend to get invested when there’s a love story (Rory’s first kiss in the seventh episode on Gilmore Girls or a sexy elevator scene between Meredith and McDreamy in episode two of Grey’s Anatomy) or when there are mysteries to be unraveled (episode two of Stranger Things includes two missing persons and a mysterious monster).
“Regardless of whether they live in Argentina or Japan, members are not only getting hooked on similar episodes, but identifying with similar storylines,” the company argued in a press release on their data. Who knew that by obsessively watching all of Narcos in one weekend you were revealing something universal about humanity?
[h/t Complex]
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September 22, 2016 – 11:45am