Why You Keep Watching The Same Show Again And Again

Somewhere between the end of a long day and the beginning of the next one—when I’ve mentally signed off but can’t quite go to bed—I do what most people I know do. I give up. I stop pretending I’m going to discover something new and important and brilliant, and instead, I crawl back to the familiar. I press play on The Office. Season 4. The dinner party episode.

I know exactly when Michael’s going to scream “That’s what she said,” and still I laugh like it’s a surprise. I’ve watched this episode so many times I can smell Jan’s candles before she lights them. It doesn’t matter. I watch it again.

I’m not alone in this. You’re probably reading this with Friends reruns playing in the background. Maybe you’re a New Girl loyalist. Maybe you cycle through Mad Men like it’s a form of self-care (and, depending on your level of existential dread, maybe it is). One friend of mine has watched Grey’s Anatomy from start to finish eight times. That’s 400+ hours of heartbreak and scalpels.

So the question is not whether we rewatch. We do. Religiously. The question is: why?

The New Religion of Repetition

We live in the golden age of streaming—a bottomless buffet of everything ever made, served to us by platforms designed to read our minds. And yet, we still reach for the thing we’ve seen before. Comfort food with a plot.

This is not because we lack taste. Or adventure. Or better options. It’s because we’re tired. And overstimulated. And increasingly allergic to decision-making. We spend our days making choices—big, small, ridiculous. Which toothpaste to buy. Whether to break up. Whether to text back. Whether to keep existing. And by the time 10 p.m. rolls around, we don’t want new. We want known.

Unsplash

Dr. Sohini Rohra, a psychologist who sees this pattern constantly in her clients, explains it cleanly: “Familiar narratives offer a soothing rhythm. You know what’s coming—the plot twists, the emotional arcs. That certainty becomes an anchor.”

Translation: The world is a mess. So we find control in Ross yelling “We were on a break.”

Nostalgia: The High We Pretend Isn’t One

Let’s be honest: we’re not just watching TV. We’re chasing ghosts.

Every time I press play on Schitt’s Creek, I’m not just watching Moira butcher the word “baby.” I’m rewatching myself, blurry around the edges—sitting in my first apartment, fresh out of a breakup, knee-deep in Pringles and delusion. That version of me was more hopeful. More wrecked. More open.

"Nostalgia plays a huge role too," Rohra adds. "We’re’re reconnecting with who we were when we first watched it. The first apartment. The late-night snacks. That heartbreak we were recovering from. That version of us that is more innocent, more hopeful and more open gets revived each time. We’re often not clinging to the show but most likely clinging to a feeling we fear we’ve lost."

Basically, your brain likes things it’s seen before. It saves energy. But on a soul level? It’s nostalgia in action. Not the VH1 kind. The real kind. The kind that wraps around your ribs and whispers: remember who you were when this first aired?

It’s not always about loving the show. It’s about loving the you who watched it.

Binge, Heal, Repeat

What we call “rewatching” is often just emotional triage.

You’ve had a day. Your boss is a sociopath. Your mother’s voice is in your head. You’ve made dinner, deleted Hinge, re-downloaded Hinge, and now your phone is at 4%. What do you do? You turn on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Or Ted Lasso. Or *whatever show made you believe the world was only mildly cruel instead of completely unhinged.

Rewatching isn’t mindless. It’s strategic. It’s your nervous system calling for backup. Dr. Rohra calls it “a subtle act of emotional self-regulation.” Like a warm bath. Or whiskey. But cheaper.

Of course, like anything comforting, it comes with a flip side. When you’re hitting replay for the seventh night in a row, not because you love the story but because you can’t face anything unfamiliar, it stops being self-soothing and starts being avoidance.

New GirlIMDb

"We retreat into familiarity not just to feel good but to avoid the emotional labor of something new. New shows, like new relationships, require investment, vulnerability, and a risk of disappointment. When we’re anxious or burnt out, rewatching becomes a shortcut to comfort without the emotional cost," Rohra says.

It’s not just that you love New Girl. It’s that you’re exhausted by the risk of disappointment. And new shows, like new people, might just let you down.

There’s a Name for This (Sort Of)

Kierkegaard, that old brooder, said: “That which is repeated has been… but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new.”

He probably wasn’t talking about reruns of Sex and the City, but maybe he was. Maybe watching Carrie Bradshaw make the same bad decision for the 11th time is, weirdly, a kind of rebirth. Not for her—for us. Because now, this time, we know better.

That’s the magic of rewatching. It’s not static. It’s layered. The show stays the same, but we change. The heartbreak hits different. The jokes sharpen. The episodes age like wine—or like you.

Rewatching becomes a conversation between past and present selves. A check-in. A reckoning. A sigh.

So yeah, I could be watching the critically-acclaimed Korean drama everyone’s raving about. But I’m not. I’m with Jim and Pam, again. Because I already know how it ends.

Because the soundtrack makes me feel something. Because it’s Tuesday.

And maybe that’s okay.