Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Reruns have been around almost as long as TV has, with stations running them as a way to fill time between first-run shows. And for decades, people watched reruns in a passive way: when I Love Lucy or M*A*S*H came on your local station, you watched it. Complete series DVDs changed things a bit, but the main way people rewatched a show they had already seen was the same: that Cheers, Seinfeld or Frasier rerun at 11 PM every night.
Streaming has changed the rewatching game, though. Now, instead of waiting for that Big Bang Theory rerun to pop up on TBS, you become the programmer, binge-watching long-running shows from beginning to end, no matter how many times you’ve seen the show before.
More people are rewatchers than you might think: When I put out a call on my Facebook feed for people to talk about their rewatching habits, I got dozens of responses.
One question comes to mind, though: Why? Why would a person sit down to binge watch a series like Friends, that aired over 200 episodes, from beginning to end when there are so many new shows to watch on the various streaming and cable networks?
Comfort Food Rules
The first reason is the most obvious one: people like their TV comfort food, shows that have given them pleasure in the past are ones that they’d more likely devote a big block of time to now.
While the list of my friends’ rewatched shows varied a bit – one mentioned Impractical Jokers on his rewatch list, for example – the ones that overlapped were no surprises: Friends, 30 Rock, Gilmore Girls, Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU. These are well-loved shows whose episodes go down easy. So easy, in fact, that people sometimes put these episodes on while they’re doing something else.
“There’s something comforting about familiarity–you can fall asleep or go get some food without thinking like you’ll miss something,” says Claire Zulkey, a Chicago-based freelance writer (who has written for Decider, among others). She and her husband just finished a rewatch of Friends, from the first moment a wedding-dress clad Rachel Green burst into the door of Central Perk to the moment new parents Monica and Chandler left their New York pad for good.
Kristen Hains watched Gilmore so much, she wore out her DVDs. “I actually subscribed to Netflix to keep watching it,” the Michigan-based editor says. Ironically, she didn’t start watching the 2000-07 original run of the show until 2013. “I just really love the story lines. I suppose being a single mom there are many themes that resonate with me and that might be part of the draw. But I literally never get tired of watching the show.”
Paralysis of Choice
As the folks at FX so famously noted, 455 scripted shows aired new episodes in 2016, and there are no signs that that pace will slow in coming years. To some, there are just too damn many shows to choose from —now’s a good time to mention that the site that you are currently reading is devoted to helping you solve this very problem— so they just settle into a show that they know will entertain them.
“I used to love to watch new things. Now my time is limited,” says Tom Monica, a mortgage underwriter from New Jersey who cites The Big Bang Theory, Everybody Loves Raymond and The King of Queens among his rewatching favorites. “I honestly try new shows from time to time. I just can’t seem to get invested in them. All of the Netflix Marvel series I should love and I just don’t. I can’t get into them. I prefer to just watch a movie. Two hours and done.”
Marjorie, a former TV critic, watches L&O and SVU. That’s thirty-eight 22-episode seasons, and yet she feels that’s a more worthwhile use of her time than starting a new show. “I suppose there is a less of a perceived ‘risk’ of wasting my time or I just want to watch something where I know where it’s going to take me emotionally,” she says. “There is something comforting about that, especially with formulaic shows like procedurals, which require less overall investment.”
Committing Time to a Show You End Up Hating Just Sucks
The serialized nature of most new scripted shows means that you can’t just dip in and out of it, or pick it up in Season 2. My wife and I are having this problem right now; we stopped watching Orange Is The New Black because the third season bored us so much. But now with Season 5 available, we’re wary of getting back into the show knowing we need to complete Season 3 to get to the better episodes we know are coming up.
This time commitment, and subsequent fear of having your time wasted by a less-than-stellar show, seemed to be on the minds of everyone who talked to me about their rewatching habits.
“Starting new shows requires a ‘trial period’ often (how many shows get it right on the pilot?) and most evenings I just don’t want to spend time watching something I might like,” says Zulkey.
After a full day of work, commuting hell, and (if you have kids) putting your kids to bed, the last thing you want to do is have to concentrate on a snippet of whispered dialogue that explains the following twelve episodes, which is what many of today’s new scripted shows demand. “Sometimes I’d rather watch something that I know I will enjoy, as opposed to starting something new and getting bored,” says Clayton Lust, a history professor from Houston. Among his rewatching favorites: Miami Vice. “I have a far different perspective on the politics playing out on the screen than I did when it aired, so it has a whole different sensibility to me.”
Beyond the odd rerun of Big Bang or The Middle, I’m not a huge rewatcher these days. I definitely don’t queue up a 10-year show to watch from beginning to end, even though I’ve already seen it. But after talking to my rewatching friends, I can understand why they do it. My wife and I are in the middle of watching Netflix’s Ozark ahead of its premiere (one of the fun things about my job). While it’s entertaining, it’s relentlessly dark and requires all of our concentration to follow the plot threads. And while I enjoy the opportunity to watch it, there are days where a Cheers marathon sounds like heaven.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
