It is the difference between buying a 55-inch LED for the living room because "we only watch the news," versus buying a 77-inch QD-OLED because "I want to feel the dust storms of Arrakis in Dune ."

The last decade has seen the normalization of binge-watching, but a more extreme variant—what we call TV splurge —has gone largely untheorized. TV splurge refers to consuming three or more complete series (often of 8–13 hours each) within a compressed timeframe (e.g., two weeks). Unlike focused bingeing of a single show, splurging involves rapid serial migration across fictional worlds. This paper asks: How does TV splurge affect narrative absorption, memory consolidation, and the cultural weight of a series?