 Adrienne C. Moore as Black Cindy, Danielle Brooks as Taystee and Uzo Aduba as Crazy Eyes in “Orange Is the New Black.” (JoJo Whilden/Netflix) NPR’s Lynn Neary has an interesting piece about publishers, including friend of Act Four Julian Yap’s Serial Box, who are trying to meet readers where they are and harness the kind of excitement that builds around big television experiences by going old-school and releasing novels or series in serial formats. As someone who reads unusually quickly, fitting novels into my hectic schedule has never really been a concern. But there is something else about this idea that appeals to me: For all we live in a moment of vigorous conversations about pop culture, the rise of binging sometimes makes loving culture an alternately lonely or impatient experience. I totally understand why people want to see their favorite shows all at once, in the same way they might have sat down and raced through the latest installment of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels. But the upside and the downside to this approach are the same: We end up watching things on our own timetables, rather than together. As a critic, this presents two challenges. First, I don’t know when enough of you will have watched the latest season of a streaming show such as “Orange Is The New Black” or “Transparent” and be ready for a discussion. And second, if I don’t watch a streaming show the weekend it comes out, I’m already hopelessly behind; there’s less room than there is with episodic shows to catch up and jump back into the stream of conversation. And as fans, I assume this presents a similar challenge. You may be ready to discuss something long before anyone else is, or find that once you’ve caught up, the conversation has moved past you. Our private pleasures come at the expense of our communal experiences. The debates over a show such as “Game of Thrones” may be overheated and shot through with antic theorizing. But at least we’re participating in them together, and the conversation is better for it. I don’t know that serialized fiction will catch on, or if it does, that any single story will be the sort of breakout hit that “Game of Thrones” has been, or that Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in their days. But at a time when the culture we love sometimes feels like it’s taking us further and further apart from each other, I’m all for attempts to put us on the same page, or at least the same chapter. | 
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