But a week later, the David Fincher-produced political drama has raised a number of questions about the current state of television — and what impact the Netflix model of distribution might have upon it.

Spoiler Alert!

Spoiler etiquette — otherwise known as “When is it okay to openly tweet about what just happened on ?” — is a touchy subject for television fans who worry about being ruined for a show’s best twists. A few months ago, Sam Biddle at Gizmodo proposed the following rules, which work well for serialized fare:

1. A seven day grace period for new episodes.
2. Putting major spoilers on Twitter is a no-no.
3. If it’s off the air, it’s fair game.
4. Even outside of the grace period, a heads up about spoilers in mixed company is polite.

But how does the grace period work when everyone’s watching at their own pace? If, a month from now, I tell someone why the ending of House of Cards‘s “Chapter 7″ is [SPOILER ALERT] very creepy, would they have the right to be upset?

Informally, many I’ve talked to are about halfway through the first season — and even if a friend says to me that they just finished Chapter 5, one of the consequences of binge-viewing is that episodes have a habit of blending together: Only the most attentive of viewers are able to remember exactly which episodes contain which plot developments (though the creepy sex scenes do stand out).

There’s no good answer for this yet, which means for the duration we’re probably going to see a lot of articles like Aymar Jean Christian’s at Televisual, which goes into detail about a character revelation from “Chapter 8,” but only after being heavily couched with spoiler warnings.  It’s not terribly efficient, but ultimately the prudent approach — unless you want to be Miss Know-It-All from Netflix’s own ads.

Binge-Viewing: Bad for television?

The Onion AV Club, that sprawling nexus of television commentary, is approaching House of Cards with a two-pronged approach: Reviewing episodes on a week-by-week basis, while allowing commenters who have already binged a spoiler-soaked forum for discussion.

But the AV Club also ran a piece this week entitled “Could Netflix’s programming strategy kill the golden age of TV?”, in which TV editor Todd VanDerWerff observed that he may have liked House of Cards less if he was watching it on a weekly schedule:

Binge-viewing has advantages over watching episodes one at a time… Individual episodes’ flaws become magnified when viewers have a week between episodes to stew over them, but in the middle of a binge, those flaws are diminished, simply because it’s always time to move onto the next thing…  I wouldn’t give any of the seven House Of Cards episodes I’ve watched higher than a B+, but I also wouldn’t go lower than B-. The show neatly splits the difference between being just good enough and never trying anything risky enough to turn off large portions of its audience.

A counterpoint by critic Jaime Weinman suggests that the new world order pushes us to evaluate shows as complete seasons, rather than on an episode by episode basis, which may ultimately create a stronger viewing experience:

After watching something for 13 hours, it’s difficult to know what the good parts or the bad parts are, or even to follow anything beyond the basic plot; everything blurs together. Yet that in itself is a possible argument for binge-viewing. Watching an episode a week tends to inflate the importance of every episode, sometimes beyond what a single TV episode can sustain. This, I think, is part of the reason that we’re more likely to be disappointed by new episodes of a series when they appear once a week, and why seasons often look better when they go to DVD or to daily syndication. The shorter the wait between episodes, the less of a life-or-death proposition every episode becomes.

But what definitely suffers is be the discussion of television online (which is probably one of the Top 10 internet recreations, right after pornography, fantasy football and cat videos). After all, it’s tough to talk about a show when everyone’s on a different episode — controlling their individual viewing, but at the expense of the communal experience.

House of Cards: Available on DVD and Blu-ray?

Speaking of internet commments — the question I’ve been seeing a lot of places is will the first season of House of Cards be released in disc form anytime in the future?

While yes, the market for physical media may be dying, it’s not dead yet: In 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times, DVD/Blu-ray sales actually increased (by a fraction) to $18 billion. People without Netflix subscriptions, whose binge-viewing is enabled by box sets, still exist — even Netflix still makes 50.1 percent of its profits off the DVD rental side of its business.

According to a Netflix spokesperson, Netflix currently has the first window of exclusivity for the series, but when that window is complete, Media Rights Capital (the production company behind the series) will also be able to pursue a home video release for the show. So, the odds are good that you’ll be able to give your thriller-loving grandparents Season 1 on Blu-ray as early as this summer.

This is just the beginning of Netflix’s 2013 of original content, and at the very least House of Cards is an exciting way to kick it off. Because love it or hate it, one thing is definitely true: It’s got people talking.

House of Cards, created for Netflix by Beau Willimon and David Fincher, is an adaptation of the British novel and miniseries of the same name, with Kevin Spacey starring as the manipulative Francis Underwood. It has a solid cast, premium cable production quality, and plenty of political intrigue to play out over the first 13 episodes, which went live at midnight Friday.

And as soon as it went live, I started watching. I made it through the first two episodes last night, then fell asleep around 2:30 AM watching Chapter 3, which I then resumed watching around 7:30 AM. Over the following five and a half hours, I was able to get to the beginning of Chapter 9, then took a two-hour break to run some errands and remember what fresh air smelled like.

By 6:30 PM, nearly 18 hours later, I’d consumed the entire first season, all 13 episodes. It was a pretty long day.

Complicated, grim, nasty and engaging

I’ve marathoned television before — in fact, Netflix’s recent acquisition of The West Wing has been a major obstacle in my productivity lately — but usually I know what kind of show I’m in for. So the first part of the experience was discovering that House of Cards was complicated, grim and alternately nasty and engaging. Kevin Spacey goes full-on anti-hero, while Robin Wright, as his chilly wife Claire, proves to be his equal. Spending a day in their world was intense.

The big thing I feel about binge-viewing is that it makes you conscious of what parts of the show really engage you. Chapter 8 was an interesting episode from a number of perspectives: Just past the halfway point in the season, the episode focuses on Spacey paying a visit to his alma mater for a library dedication; most of the action is devoted to Underwood and his old school friends paling around.

It makes for a nice calm before the storm — however, Kate Mara’s reporter character doesn’t show up at all in Chapter 8, which is disappointing because the twisted relationship between her and Spacey, I felt, lead to some of the show’s most fascinating scenes. Chapter 8, in which they don’t interact at all, was disappointing from that respect.

Fortunately, instead of waiting a week for a new episode to address that, I just had to queue up the next episode. Which was convenient. And then, the back half of the season really takes off: Chapters 9, 10, and 11 each end with solid cliffhangers, and the show settles into a nice momentum up to the finale.

Binging doesn’t give you time to mull things over

However, the consequence of that momentum might be a loss of nuance. There are many elements I feel I didn’t comprehend as well as I might have, because of marathoning the show: It makes you conscious of the fact that with conventional dramas like Homeland and Game of Thrones, waiting a week between episodes creates an opportunity to mull over storylines that might get drowned out by bigger events.

For example, there’s a subplot involving Robin Wright’s growing interest in origami that doesn’t really affect the major plot at all, except when serving as punctuation in a couple of key scenes.

The origami thing lead to some intriguing character moments, but the only reason I remembered that it happened, at the end of the day, was because I’d made a note about it. The big events of the show stand out clearly in my head, but if I were to go back later and rewatch at a slower pace, I’m sure I’d discover new details.

Watched all at once, also, meant that things like the heavy product placement for Apple products and Sony video games stood out distinctly.

A game-changer, or just too dark?

Not only did Netflix publicly announce at midnight that the show was live, but throughout the day it encouraged viewers to marathon the show — cheering them on via both the Netflix and House of Cards Twitter accounts.

It's okay if you called in sick today. #HouseOfCards—
House of Cards (@HouseofCards) February 01, 2013

People have called the series a game-changer for Netflix, the subscription service’s equivalent to AMC’s Mad Men or HBO’s The Sopranos. But I’m not convinced that substituting the buzz that those shows acquire over the course of a season for the buzz of binge-viewing will pay off. It’s hard to watch television this way. Especially a show as dark and serious as House of Cards is.

If it wasn’t for the challenge of the assignment, to be honest, I don’t think I’d have gulped down House of Cards in a day. It’s heavy stuff, without much levity, and as mentioned above I think there are elements of it that I would have enjoyed more with a little distance and time.

That said, as the credits rolled on Episode 13, this was my first thought: “When does Season 2 start?”

Show notes for this episode:

• Netflix is going to release the entire first season of House Of Cards on Februar 1. Check out the show page on Netflix.com for more details.
• You can read our previous House of Cards coverage.
• Check out our e-book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable to learn more about various devices that House Of Cards and other Netflix content is available on. The book is available for $5 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.

Are you going to watch House Of Cards? Is original programming like this making Netflix more valuable for you, or would you prefer if the company spent its money on other content instead? Please share your thoughts in the comments, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com. Also, please check out our new Google+ Cord Cutters community!