What's the best way to watch them? How do you do it?
Personally, I prefer 1 or 2 at a time if I have a whole series of something. I like to stretch out the experience and slowly enjoy the shows, taking a break after them. Maybe I wont watch the next one or two till two or three days later, maybe a week, maybe more. I love doing it that way, whether it's a downloaded anime series, TV series on DVD...

But with video, when most of them are all on one tape like The Office (original version), it's easier just to watch them all in one go. Stupid video...
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With friends we'd always watch every single episode in every series of a show straight, for HOURS, even if it took days to get through. And that really is a shit way to watch, no matter how many jokes you crack, how much pizza you eat or whatever- I found I never got as much out of the shows doing it that way.
In the end you get sick of it and it's just about endurance. Even with those teen sex B-movie comedies you'd rent out get as a kid. :)

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So how do you prefer to plough through them?

What's more fun then to say "I haven't slept for three days!" because of watching some show? I do it all the time, with someone occasionally bringing me food and water. Allthough it's been a while now... last time I watched through a whole show in one go was the first season of Reaper

I prefer to sit alone, though. And without snacks. And a whole bucket of vodka. (what's more fun than making a drinking game out of the show?)

Depends on the show for me. Episodic shows I prefer not to sit around and watch straight through. Some shows, however, have a continuing storyline across a season and end ever episode on a cliffhanger. I don't mind losing some sleep over those and I tend to get more out of the show if I don't space it out as much. Typically, it's easier for me to remember past episodes if I just watched them a couple of hours ago.

With movies, I don't really do the whole marathon thing. I did the 12-hour Lord of the Rings thing with some friends when the special edition of Return of the King came out, but when I'm on my own, I only tend to put on movies in sequence like that if I'm working and looking for a particular tone in the background noise.

When on DVD, as many of the shows I watch are, I space them apart very, very widely, often watching up to three different series at once. Right now I'm heavily into MacGyver, The Pretender, and Xena and I alternate. On one free night I'll watch an episode of MacGyver, then to The Pretender, and then to Xena. It'll usually take me at least a month to get back around to a particular show, sometimes longer if I get busy.

The only time I break with this pattern is when a show has two episodes that absolutely must be watched in sequence. Like two-parters. I don't tend to watch a lot of shows that focus heavily on a continuing plotline like Lost, although when I do I find I have no trouble spacing and enjoying the episodes.

First, I rarely watch things alone. At this point sometimes I have problem sitting through a 10 minute youtube vid, not to mention a full lenght movie. But if there's someone around, I can watch. I guess it comes from the fact that I like to work on things when I'm alone, so sitting just watching stuff feels like wasting time.

So, I generally watch stuff with friend and we usually do an episode or two a day (and sometimes take a couple of days off, depending on his shifts). If it's some 13 ep anime we try to do one a day, if it's 26 or longer, then we do 2 a day. This way Full Metal Alchemist lasted for over a month :D And luckily there was something happening in every episode so it didn't drag on for eternity. *looks at some other shows that attempt to convert a 20 page chapter into a 20 minute episode*

So yeah, one or two a day.

Oh yeah, I also never mix series. I'm either finishing the one I'm on, or abandon it (like the last four eps of Gantz, ugh, what a disaster of a show).

At work I have a dual-monitor setup. It's not uncommon for me or my coworkers to have a TV show or movie playing in the corner of one of our screens as we work. We just make sure it doesn't impact our productivity. Because there's such a huge collection of DVDs between all of us, I've seen dozens of TV shows and movies while I work. Maybe "see" isn't the best word, since I'm basically listening to it and glancing over whenever I'm waiting for the computer to do something.

I like to do a few episodes of a show every few days, I just recently started watching anime again because my wife loves it so much. We did the whole Fruits Basket series in about a week and a half, the first two seasons of bleach in three weeks, and we are now working on Inuyasha and Spiral. Soon I hope to get Full Metal Alchemist.
Back in my red eye teen days we would watch marathons of shows for days like South Park, Futurama, Greg the Bunny, God the Devil and Bob, Mission Hill. Never really did the long tv series like Buffy, or Lost though.
Did the Indiana Jones and James Bonds marathons frequently though and one long week we did every Godzilla and Godzilla related movie ever made including the ones you can't get here, and at the end we threw in the Dragon Ball Z live action Japanese movie in Spanish with English Subtitles... it took a lot of *patience* to get through all these.

So I guess depending on the mood or mental state at the time it could go either way
a few a night or a long long marathon lasting days...and probably the quality of the show if its a better show drag it out to enjoy it.

I don't always mean to, but once I get started, I tend to do a marathon of watching, as much as I have time for. Sometimes, I end up glancing at the time and notice I've watched literally all night...

Fortunately, this doesn't happen often, and if a series isn't engaging enough for me, I'll usually give up and stop watching, or spread it out a bit more.

If it's a show I really like, I'll watch it all night. I especially like doing that for shows like Veronica Mars, because if you watch a show with that many details and stuff with big breaks in between you start to forget things and get confused.

I am horrible at this I had never watched the show 24 before and had bought the first 2 seasons I watched both seasons within a week and loved them. Then I bought season 3 watched 10 minutes of one episode then put it on the shelf and haven't touched it since. The moral is don't watch too much or if you like me you'll get sick of it.

All at once at four in the morning, so that you don't actually remember any of it and therefore can watch it again as many times as I like.