These days, TV shows seem to assume everyone will have seen every episode. But it’s not necessary to approach a show as if you were cramming for an exam

I have a confession to make: I never watched the first two seasons of Mad Men. This may not seem like such a big deal, but back in 2009 I started a new job where my editor just assumed that I, a television journalist, obviously watched this Emmy-winning show and so assigned me to write recaps of every episode. I didn’t want to shatter his illusions, so on that Sunday night I set my DVR for a season pass and not only picked it up right there in the middle of its run, but suitably blogged about it. None of the readers seemed to rumble that I hadn’t seen the first 26 episodes.

My professional malfeasance aside, picking up a show midstream is increasingly rare in our current television climate. I often hear friends lament the fact that they “missed the boat” on a popular show like The Good Wife or Scandal, and don’t want to get on board now because catching up would require watching hundreds of hours of television.

But really, who cares? If you want to watch a show, just watch it. These days, convention dictates that to enjoy a television show to the full, one has to have seen every single episode in order. But that’s totally erroneous.

The convention stems from two parallel strains running through the zeitgeist, both of them good – though problematic when combined. The first is that the culture at large is starting to judge television not as a brain-numbing time-suck but an art form on par with, if not sometimes better than, movies. Because TV programs like The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men have been routinely compared to novels, people think they need to start at the beginning. You would never read A Tale of Two Cities by only reading about the second city, would you?

The second reason behind this compulsion to binge is, of course, simple availability. Thanks to the proliferation of TV content on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and iTunes – and the release of DVDs of every season of a show imaginable (DVDs, how last century!) – there is an increased impetus to be a completist. This abundance of quality viewing on demand is, of course, a great thing, but just because it’s there doesn’t mean you are compelled to watch the whole lot, like eating an entire pint of ice cream just because it happens to be in your freezer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Empire: when the characters don’t seem to care about events in previous weeks, why should the viewer? Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

All this means that picking up a new show has become something of a lost art. Back in the day, if you wanted to start watching Dallas in its fifth season, you would just start watching Dallas. Those who were late to Twin Peaks had to just take it up and try to unravel the mystery on their own. That was just the reality of it – and perhaps part of the fun.

I remember picking up soap operas when I was a teenager which had been running for decades. Yet I figured out the characters’ backstories – their current and former relationships – just through watching the show avidly, and occasionally asking friends who were long-term fans. In the way you might watch an HBO movie at 2am when you get home from the bar, you can use your innate understanding of how narratives unfold to fill in the blanks yourself.

Indeed, these days it’s actually easier to throw yourself into a TV show midway through than ever before. Were you to start watching Empire right now, you’d have countless recaps, explainers, fan pages and Wikipedia synopses to get you up to date. If you don’t understand why Cookie is so mad about a character’s death, just Google “Empire Bunkie” on your phone while you’re watching and all will become clear. Don’t feel burdened by the obligation to catch up. Skipping a handful of episodes, or even a whole season, isn’t as big a deal as modern television snobs would lead you to believe.

Admittedly, there are some shows where getting up to speed is harder. Shows with a byzantine mythology are best watched from the beginning: for instance, Orphan Black would be impenetrable for someone late to the party. Some prestige dramas also make it deliberately difficult to hop right in, especially ones like House of Cards, which are designed to be gulped down in giant chunks rather than nibbled week to week. Netflix wants you to start from the beginning so badly that there isn’t even a “previously on House of Cards” at the start of each episode to remind viewers of key events to keep in mind.

Even programs that disbursed in the classic one-episode-per-week format, I feel, refer to past events in the scripts less often than they used to. These days, writers and showrunners assume everyone has seen every episode and are less likely to refer obliquely to past events in the script to remind people. Back in the day, shows like Hill Street Blues often reminded new viewers of things they might have missed. That said, you could easily jump into season two of The Knick if all you knew was that Clive Owen plays a drug-addicted doctor who used to sleep with a nurse. The rest will become self-evident after an episode or two. And failing that, there’s always the internet.

You don’t need to watch comedies from the beginning, even serialised ones. I picked up The Last Man on Earth three episodes into season two (after watching the premiere when it aired) and haven’t felt compelled to look up one thing. Indeed, I’ve have been enjoying television’s most inventive comedy immensely.

Hectic soaps like the aforementioned Scandal, Empire, or even How to Get Away with Murder, should, in theory, be hard to pick up due to their wildly complicated plots. In practice, the OMG moments come so fast and furiously that you don’t really need to know what happened two seasons ago. The characters certainly seem to have forgotten about it, so why should the new viewer care overmuch?

So which shows airing right now should you jump into in midstream? If you need something else to watch on Sunday nights, try getting into new hit Quantico, a surprisingly satisfying sudsy potboiler only a few episodes into its run. If you start to love it, go back and watch the rest. Or don’t. Like I say, I functioned as a Mad Men expert without seeing Peggy give birth or Betty shoot at pigeons, and it never spoiled my enjoyment of the show. Maybe The Tale of One City wouldn’t be such a bad book after all.