In Praise of the Same Five Shows: A Defense of Watching Nothing New

There's a moment of quiet judgment that happens whenever I admit this out loud: I have watched Parks and Recreation roughly nine times through. Not clips. Not highlights. The whole thing, front to back, including the season where everyone hates the plotline everyone hates.

The person I'm confessing to usually nods politely, the way you do when someone admits they eat cereal for dinner. And for years, I nodded along with my own internal critic too. Shouldn't I be watching the new prestige drama everyone's arguing about? Shouldn't my Letterboxd be longer?

Then I did some reading, and it turns out my brain isn't broken. It's actually being very smart.

Your Brain Loves a Rerun (And It Has Good Reasons)

Researchers who study media consumption have a name for the comfort we get from familiar stories: they've found that rewatching taps into something called social surrogacy — the way fictional characters can fulfill some of the emotional functions of real relationships. When you put on The Office for the eighth time, you're not just killing time. You're checking in with people you know.

There's more. A 2012 study out of the University at Buffalo found that people gravitate toward familiar media when they're feeling stressed, lonely, or drained — not because they're lazy, but because familiar stories require so little cognitive effort while still delivering emotional payoff. It's the difference between cooking a new recipe and making the pasta you've made a hundred times. One is an adventure. The other is a hug.

Psychologists also point to something called the repetition paradox: we actually enjoy familiar things more on repeat, not less. The tension of not-knowing is gone, which frees you up to notice everything else — the line deliveries, the background jokes, the little character beats you missed the first six times. Rewatching isn't passive. It's deep reading.

The Lineup, In All Its Glory

Since we're being honest with each other, here are the five shows I return to like a moth to a very warm lamp:

1. Parks and Recreation. My default setting. Leslie Knope's relentless optimism is like a multivitamin. When the news is doing what the news does, I watch a woman fight for a pit and somehow feel better about everything.

2. The Office (US, obviously). I know every cold open. I've memorized Michael's dinner party chili... wait, that's Kevin. You see what I mean? I know it so well I make mistakes about it with total confidence.

3. Frasier. Yes, the one from the '90s. Yes, I'm 30-something. The writing is a masterclass, and Niles Crane crushing on Daphne for seven seasons is the slowest, most satisfying burn in sitcom history.

4. New Girl. Nick Miller's panic about everything is weirdly regulating. Also, I have learned that watching other people fail to be functional adults is deeply soothing when you are a functional adult who is tired.

5. Gilmore Girls. Fast talk, small town, coffee as a personality trait. It's autumn in TV form, and I put it on in July.

The Guilt Is the Only Problem

Here's what I've decided: the shame around rewatching is the actual waste of time. We treat new content as virtuous and familiar content as lazy, which is like saying you should only eat foods you've never tried before. Some nights you want adventure. Some nights you want mac and cheese.

There's also a real argument that rewatching is how you learn to love stories, period. Every writer I admire got that way by consuming the same things obsessively — watching their favorite movie eleven times, quoting their favorite show until their friends staged an intervention. Familiarity breeds intimacy, and intimacy breeds taste.

So consider this your permission slip. Rewatch the thing. Watch it again. Notice what you notice this time.

And if you want to make me feel better about my nine viewings of Parks and Rec, tell me yours. What's the show you've seen more times than you'd admit on a first date? I genuinely want to know — my comment section is a judgment-free rerun zone.