It's really never made sense to me. Sure, play two in a row, but why would Netflix keep playing episodes any incur the royalty costs when people fall asleep watching a show, don't turn off the service when they turn off the TV, just plain walk out with the show playing, kids shows keep playing with no one watching?

I assume they incur royalty costs, or is there some incentive for them to somehow boost the number of hours of content played? Is this one of those cases where they are trying to inflate their numbers to look good to investors?

It will play 2-3 in a row without any user interaction, but if you haven't taken any action in a while it'll stop and give a modal "Continue Playing?" message