Why Did Netflix Decide To Give ‘Insatiable’ A Season 2?

Last night Netflix made the rather shocking announcement that they were renewing Insatiable for a second season. The series stars Debby Ryan as “Fatty” Patty, an overweight girl who becomes a svelte, vengeful beauty queen after a fist fight with a hobo (over a candy bar!!!) leaves her with her jaw wired shut. Insatiable was rightfully maligned by critics and lambasted by advocacy groups for being “body shaming.” (In this critic’s opinion, it wasn’t just offensive, but tasteless, poorly written, and inane.)

So how did Insatiable get a second season order if it was so terrible? Do people really like this show? And did the backlash actually help it? There are three possible reasons why Insatiable turned out to be an unlikely hit.

Hate-Watching Is Still Watching

Netflix is notoriously tight-lipped about how they make their programming decisions, but they gave up some insight in a big, splashy piece in Vulture this summer. Basically, they divide up people into “taste clusters” and ratings are defined how often people watch an episode to completion and how many episodes are watched in a row.

What that means is that if you’re hate-watching a show, you’re still…watching that show. Netflix doesn’t hear your catty comments on the couch. They’re just looking at how many episodes you’re watching, and if you finish. So if you checked out Insatiable to see what all the fuss is about…Netflix took that as a win. If you kept watching to see how bad it got, Netflix saw that as minutes spent enjoying their programming.

Netflix doesn’t care about the critics as much as it does about these taste clusters, so that’s one reason why Insatiable might have galloped on to a second season. 

Insatiable‘s Bad Hype Was Still Hype

In the days leading up to Insatiable‘s premiere, a number of well-known critics and respected writers weighed in on the show’s controversy. Roxane Gay called it “Lazy, Insulting” in a scathing op-ed in Refinery 29, while NPR‘s Linda Holmes said the show was “lazy,” “tone-deaf,” and a “slog.” In fact, there was a flurry of hit pieces from nearly every reputable outlet. The furor over Insatiable was so intense that creator Lauren Gussis told The Hollywood Reporter that it bordered on censorship.

But criticism is not the same as censorship. In fact, if anything, the very public conversation about Insatiable‘s numerous misguided moments put more attention on the show. Twelve Netflix Originals were added to the service on August 10, 2018. Among the bunch were a charming romance (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society), an addictive reality competition (Million Pound Menu), and a family sitcom starring Reverend Run (All About The Washingtons). But we’re not still talking about those shows a month later. In fact, we weren’t really talking about those shows on the weekend they came out. (I mean, I was telling everyone about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, but all anyone wanted to ask me was if Insatiable really was that bad.)

The sad truth is that many people might have watched Insatiable because they were curious to see if it was that bad, or they might have clicked on it because they recognized the name as a new show on Netflix. Bad hype is still hype.

A Lot Of People Really(!) Liked Insatiable

Perhaps the critics were disgusted with Insatiable, but that doesn’t mean all of Netflix’s subscribers were. If you want a peek at how divided Netflix’s audiences were on the show, just check out the mentions on the tweet announcing the second season pick up. Sure, it’s filled with anger, but it’s also full of people earnestly excited for the show’s return and happy to defend it.

Netflix doesn’t release viewership data with the public, but we have a few more clues that Insatiable was actually a hit for the streaming service. In Deadline’s report on the show’s pick up, they mention that “Insatiable has attracted both strong viewership — judging by available streaming data.” Insatiable is also a popular show based on Google trends. Looking at the last five weeks, Insatiable was easily one of Netflix’s most popular original series. Only the established Netflix hit Ozark came close to its search traffic.

While Google trends don’t reveal if someone’s searching something for a positive or negative reason, they do make a compelling case for Insatiable‘s pop culture dominance.

So Insatiable is coming back, folks! And if you don’t like it, it might be smarter to be quiet about it and to champion something you really enjoy. (Like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is really charming — just saying!)

Watch Insatiable on Netflix