Whether it was a long, tiring day, a good crying session, or a silly argument with your loved one, rewatching an episode or two from your favourite TV show can make this world a bit more bearable. After the slightest inconvenience in my life, I catch myself either calling my best friend — who lives 5,500 miles away from me — to waffle for a whole hour about a five-minute situation, or launching my How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) random episode generator to find an episode to rewatch for the fifth time. For the longest time, I thought there was something weird about me for watching the same series over and over again, but it turns out to be a lot more common than I thought.
Knowing exactly what is going to happen next in an episode is probably one of the reasons you rewatch the same shows. Knowing that Lily and Marshall get back together after their one and only breakup in the second season of HIMYM, or that Elena turns into a vampire in the third season of The Vampire Diaries* (TVD), gives you huge reassurance and comfort while watching the show. You do not get anxious when the lead character is over the edge of the bridge taking his last breath, or when the cutest couple fight over what seems to be the biggest deal, because you know what happens next and you are mentally ready for it. As Tanya Percy Vasunia, a Mumbai-based psychologist and published researcher, described in one of her interviews with Vogue India: “When you know what’s going to happen, it can be extremely soothing. Using your favourite TV shows as an escape is a relaxing exercise because these characters are dear to you.”
You could experience all sorts of feelings while rewatching a show: you might joyfully kick your feet in the air knowing that this is the episode where the lead character saves the city from the horrible evil being, or your heart might ache knowing that your favourite character is about to pass away, leaving their friends and family behind. By rewatching your favourite shows, you become part of that family a little bit more with each episode that passes.
But one feeling that you are guaranteed no matter the episode you decide to watch, is nostalgia.
Some of my favourite TV shows to rewatch are ones that I first watched when I was a child. To me, these shows are a lot more than just entertainment. They bring back childhood memories; they remind me of my mom’s delicious fish soup she prepares whenever we’d gather around the television, the race against my little brother to the washroom during an ad break, and the competitive guesses with my cousins about what happens next, followed by screams of joy when one of us gets it right.
Nostalgia is such a warm feeling, defined as “a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends.” To me, it is a crazy feeling that I still cannot categorize: it makes me happy because I lived it once, but it painfully pinches my heart because I will never live it again. But rewatching a TV show makes it just a little less painful.
Chifaa Bouzid is a staff writer for the Cascade, currently pursuing a postgraduate diploma in International Business at UFV. She holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and has a keen interest in writing and social media management, blending her technical skills with creative storytelling.
