In Defence of Reruns - Optus Hype June 2018
I don’t believe we should use the term ‘guilty pleasure’. Why shame yourself for indulging in something you enjoy? No one needs that kind of negativity. But it’s exactly that feeling of shame that keeps me from admitting my deepest joy: I’ve been watching Friends from start to finish on repeat for years. Years.
Occasionally I take a break to do the same thing with Seinfeld, Gilmore Girls and, most recently, Broad City. People always claim to be obsessed with these shows, but my rerun addiction has crossed the line. I am no longer capable of watching something new unless someone else has control over the streaming. Left to my own devices, I peruse Netflix, Stan and that hard drive someone once loaded up with movies for me. But I know it’s going to end with The One Where Alex Is Kidding Herself.
In fact, it’s this knowing just how something is going to end that keeps bringing me back to episodes I’ve seen hundreds of times. We can probably all agree that the world is a steaming hot mess right now. Everything is unpredictable: Trump, the climate, house prices, North Korea … you don’t need the list. And while I don’t think of any particular world crisis while Stan loads my next episode, there must be something happening subconsciously. The world is getting scarier, hotter and harder to navigate, and there is definitely a shift in my mood when I see that velvet couch and the giant coffee mugs at Central Perk.
In a world of limitless entertainment options, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by choice and fall back on what we already know we love and will enjoy. I know which episode of which show will satisfy the mood I’m in. There’s none of that anxiety of committing to something that could turn out to be awful. Unlike being an adult in the real world, there is no risk, only comfort.
It turns out that I have no reason to feel guilty about this pleasure because there is science to back me up. Studies into why humans love repetition usually lead to reports about habits, addictions and rituals, but as Cristel Antonia Russell and Sidney Levy discovered, watching something on repeat taps into something else. Their study (which I have not read because – well, you know why) is called The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences. Aka, why do we do that one thing over and over again? They came up with a few reasons and, thankfully, Derek Thompson broke down the jargon for The Atlantic.
Reason one: “Psychologists have found that repetition breeds affection. Familiar fare requires less mental energy to process, and when something is easy to think about, we tend to consider it good.”
Reason two: “We like repeating pop culture experiences because they help us remember the past.… It's using entertainment as a time machine to revisit a lost memory.”
Reason three: “New TV shows can deliver spectacular thrills, but they can also waste our time and disappoint us. Old [shows] never disappoint us. … We'll get exactly the emotional payoff we're looking for — no surprises.”
I have been making a genuine effort to broaden my viewing horizons. This month alone, I have made it through The Godfatherparts one and two (although it did take me about a week to get through each because after 23 minutes, my attention span begins to wane). If I could only shake the feeling that I need to watch them again...
This story originally appeared on Optus Hype in June, 2018.
Main image: Getty Images.