, looks at the new batch of classics that have emerged from an evolving era of entertainment.
The idea of marathoning TV shows existed before the advent of streaming, but Netflix turned it into a model. Though the term began popping up in the 1990s, the streaming service popularized “binge-watching” in 2013 once Netflix rebranded from a TV-on-DVD mail service to a platform producing original content. In the years since, this model has changed not only the way we as consumers and fans watch television, but arguably also how it’s created and written. More and more shows feel designed from the jump to be binged in one sitting or at least in batches of multiple episodes with changes to traditional pace and structure making the next episode almost imperative to understand what is going on.
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Sara Bareilles as Dawn, Busy Philipps as Summer, Ashley Park as Ashley, Erika Henningsen as Young Gloria and Renée Elise Goldsberry as Wickie in “Girs5Eva.” (Heidi Gutman/Peacock)
Middle age hasn’t been kind to the members of the girl band Girls5Eva. Wickie, the diva of the one-hit-wonder group, is paying the bills by shooting geese at an airport. Summer misses her celebrity husband so much that she purchases a Cameo greeting from him. Gloria’s current claim to fame is that she’s one-half of New York’s first gay divorce. Ashley died in an infinity pool accident.
The songs come nearly as fast as the jokes in “Girls5eva,” Peacock’s just-launched streaming sitcom about a B-list late-’90s girl group that gets back together when a present-day rap star named Lil Stinker samples its biggest hit.