Throw weekly TV dates: Sundays = zombies, friends, and food

Guest post by Mich
#Entertaining#Pop Culture#friendships#great-ideas#party#tv#zombies
This is all you need to throw a weekly party. © by nist6ss, used under Creative Commons license.

Every Sunday night, six close friends all get together to watch “The Walking Dead” TV series. We’ve done it for all the past seasons as well. The basic plan is simple:

  • There’s three participating couples, so we do a weekly rotation of whose house to go to.
    Brain cupcakes by Mich
  • The hosting couple provide snacks and drinks (snacks start simple like chips and dip but always seem to get more elaborate and competitive as the season continues).
  • We show up just after 8, watch the show at 9 and leave when it finishes.
  • You can show up in your PJs if you want!

It’s hassle free, so much fun, we get each others’ company weekly, and have great banter commenting on the show. (For some reason we renamed Norman Reedus’ character “Cleatus” and it stuck!)

Does anyone else have a weekly TV show date with friends?

Guest Post By: Mich

Mich is a frequent Offbeat Home contributor. She's a quirky, goth(ish), learning disabilities teacher/nanny who likes octopuses, zombies, baking and sewing.

Comments on Throw weekly TV dates: Sundays = zombies, friends, and food

  1. Hubby and I use The Walking Dead as a date-night of sorts. Usually homemade popcorn or a hot beverage and blankets and get all cuddled up. That 8 month stretch between seasons was killer LOL.

    • That’s what my hubby and I usually do for The Walking Dead and Grimm.

      I kinda like the idea of a party for watching it with friends though. Might be a fun way to incorporate zombie/Halloween themed foods year round. XD

  2. I used to do this with friends, back when “Alias” was on the air! We’d rotate whose house we went to, and the host would make dinner, so we’d meet up around 6, watch the show at 8, and go home. It was great! I’ve moved since then to a different state, and I wish I had a weekly tv date group here.

      • It took me a loooong time to find my go-to group when I moved here, even though I moved to within an hour drive of my (at the time) 2 best friends. But one of them moved half a continent away, and the other cut me out of her life. I’ve got great friends now, from three different sources – volunteering in town, getting involved with a college alumni group, and meeting up with some internet friends who are (somewhat) local. I still miss the weekly Sunday dinners though. My single friends are all too far away to want to do that on a work night, and my in-town friends are all married with kids. I’m sorry to hear you haven’t found your Team Me yet!

  3. We just started this up with a couple we know. We don’t really bother with snacks–we’ll put something out if we have it, but they don’t seem too interested, either way.
    Does anyone catch Talking Dead after? We always want to watch it, but it’s SO ANNOYING that they replay the episode before.

    • I’d like to watch it, but I usually have to go to bed right after Walking Dead is over (5am mornings!) and I know if I PVR it, I won’t end up watching it. I caught a few shows last season though.

      • Our friends always start to stick around to try to catch Talking Dead, but it just feels like the night is dragging on in that hour wait. It’s hard to find something to do for that hour because I either a.) want to go to sleep or b.) there’s nothing else to watch/do so we just end up rewatching the episode.

          • I totally have no idea why but it’s like WE MUST WATCH AT EIGHT BECAUSE THAT’S WHEN IT’S NEW.
            And sometimes, they just go home right after because they’re tired, too. (It’s kind of a long drive from our house to their’s.) But on the weeks when they want to stick around, it’s just annoying.
            I wish we were board game people. Haha

  4. When I was in college (late 90s – yikes) we always had Buffy night at our place. We would end up with about a half-dozen girls over and everyone loved it.
    Also, side note, my college roommate and I used to “sing” the X-Files song. I had the background music and she had the melody. I don’t know how it started, but after that, we always had to watch that show together.

  5. We do this for Breaking Bad. It’s kinda killing us that the second half of the final season is still MONTHS away! Similar deal, everyone shows up a bit before it begins and we all leave pretty soon after it’s over. One of the friends won free Krispy Kremes for a year, so we were eating a LOT of donuts on Monday nights! It’s an awesome way to see each other regularly.

  6. My friends and I have had weekly Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie nights for seven years. (Holy cow, has it been that long?!) Attendance ranges from five to fifteen, and there’s usually baked goods and adult beverages. 🙂

    When in season, movie night is extended into Doctor Who + MST3K or Game of Thrones + MST3K.

  7. Every Wednesday we go over to a friends house and play Mario kart and watch whatever show is popular opinion at the moment but everyone is free to divulge in eucre, laptops, skyrim, monopoly. Its a blast. We normally show up around 7 pm and leave at 6 am.

  8. When I lived back home in FL a couple friends and I had a standing Thursday night date for Grey’s Anatomy & Private Practice for years. I’d get to their house around 6 and leave around 11 after dinner, shows and hangout time. We alternated who bought dinner supplies and cooked together, which was so fun. 🙂 Even now when I’m home for a visit it’s considered a given where I’ll be on Thursday nights. TV dates are great. I have them with my hubby too.

  9. We have an ongoing Wednesday night tv date with our geighbor. We generally watch one of the following:
    * Glee
    * So You Think You Can Dance
    * RuPaul’s Drag Race

    It’s a “show up in your pajamas” kind of event, although sometimes we’ll bring wine. I love the low-key socialness of it… we do lots of gossiping and catching up during the ads.

  10. For the past few years, my friends and I have had Hell’s Kitchen Night during the summer. We make dinner, with the host house making the main dish and guests bring sides/dessert, then watch back-to-back episodes of Gordon Ramsey freaking out on people.

    I end up hosting about 2/3 of the time simply because I have the most group-friendly space (big dining table, lots of tv seating) and tend to already have dinner ideas more often that not. We often keep it simple, but having people over has often been the excuse I need to try out an elaborate dish that I might not make the effort to do if it was just me and my boyfriend.

    In years past, I’ve also had weekly Project Runway dates with friends, but all the friends who were into it have since moved. Even then, I’m not sure we would still do our get-togethers — most of us can barely stand to watch the show anymore.

  11. Game of Thrones nights became a weekly thing with a few friends of mine during Season 1. It’s gotten to the point where now that I have to move 3 hours away for my job, we’re still making plans for at least monthly GoT nights when possible, because these sorts of things are so awesome.

  12. My boyfriend and I do this with Dexter and Homeland at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. The shows come on an hour after the kids go to bed. Sometimes we come early to spend time with the little ones, other times we quietly tiptoe in while they’re putting the kids to bed. We have a half-hour to an hour of grownup time before the shows start, and we usually hang around for awhile afterwards talking about what happened, whether it’s trading theories or just OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE X HAPPENED?!

  13. When I was in college there was a regular gathering of friend watching The X-Files (in the dark, of course) at the house where a bunch of my friends lived. Sometimes there were so many people we had to sit on laps and the floor. That was always a lot of fun.

  14. When I was in first year at uni, we used to do Grey’s Anatomy night in halls. It would be three or four girls, three or four bottles of wine and a few episodes of Grey’s on DVD. By the third one we usually weren’t paying attention any more but it was ace. Then in third year me and my best friend instituted Glee night after orchestra, so we would basically walk home, pick up some food, argue over who has to cook it, and then eat it in front of Glee. Marvellous.

  15. One of my friends has been hosting these for various shows since we were in college, about 10 years ago. His dedication to it is actually kind of amazing 🙂

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