There are thousands of new shows and films available tonight, and a lot of people will pick one they’ve already seen five times. Not because they’ve forgotten what happens, but precisely because they haven’t. That’s the comfort re-watch, and it’s often treated like a guilty habit, as if everyone owes the world something new. At Curio & Co., we’re notorious re-watchers, up in the double digits on some films and shows. On a few, we’ve lost count entirely, knowing them so well that we mouth the lines slightly ahead of the characters, like a very niche form of karaoke. (Rocky Horror fans show up in costume. We show up in pajamas.)
We think these deserve a genre of their own. We call them “mashed potato” films and shows, because they are as comforting as you can get outside of starchy carbs. It’s the only genre with no rules about genre, and like mashed potatoes, it’s always best to have a second helping.
Knowing the Ending Is the Point, Not the Problem
When you ask people what they look for in a story, they usually say surprise twists, or unexpected connections that expand their ideas, or just a journey where they don’t know how it will end. And yes, people definitely want those things, sometimes. But if you ask them what they watch when they’re tired or cranky, the answer is almost never something new or challenging. (Nobody ever puts on The Wire when they’re anxious, right?)
Anxiety is mostly not knowing what comes next: the news, the group chat, the email from your boss that just says “quick question.” But the comfort re-watch gives you all the spoilers. Since you already know what’s coming, down to the moment the action changes or the specific look shared between characters, you can brace for it. You can still feel all the feelings, but you can pace yourself, only feeling so much and not more.
In fact, the anticipation can be the best part, even if the characters might not see it that way. For Cesare, this is true of a specific motorcycle crash early in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. He knows a car is about to come out of nowhere and catch Ethan Hunt off guard, and he knows exactly when. (The chase starts at 48 minutes in, if you want to go watch it.) Credit goes to the film’s editor, Eddie Hamilton, who timed that moment so precisely it still works on the twentieth viewing. Cesare braces for it every single time, determined that he won’t be the one caught off guard, and shouts anyway, usually followed by “Damn, that’s good editing.” Every re-watch, he bets he won’t flinch, and every re-watch he’s delighted to lose.
We Never Stop Needing a Security Blanket
Gilmore Girls is very “fall-coded,” what with all those changing leaves in Stars Hollow and back-to-school vibes, and for a lot of people, it’s one of those shows that comes around every year for a cozy re-watch. I absolutely get that, even if I haven’t seen much of the show.
The fact that Gilmore Girls isn’t my show doesn’t say anything about the quality of the series. It’s just that I already have a show, and no matter how great another one might be, it’s never going to take the place reserved in my heart for the one I watch when I’m sick or stressed. Because there can be only one. (It’s the Australian mystery-of-the-week, Mr & Mrs Murder. Who says homicide isn’t comforting?)
Small children with a favorite toy understand this instinctively, and their parents know it thanks to a guy named Donald Winnicott, a pediatrician and psychoanalyst who made a career out of blankies and teddy bears. He called them “transitional objects” and found that children will return to them for security and reassurance, so long as it’s the exact same blanket or bear. (Don’t ever wash it, and don’t ever recast Darrin.)
Comfort shows work the same way. Even when shows seem interchangeable on paper, they’re not. If The Office is your show, you can’t just switch it for Parks and Rec, even though they’re pretty close in format, cast size, tone, and subject matter. Both are great shows, but only one of them is your show.
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Once you can recite the plot, what’s left is the people, and sometimes what you’re really watching for is the company. Shows like Friends or Schitt’s Creek are about communities with a strong gravitational pull. These are groups of people who have history together, who show up for each other, and who belong to each other. So you’re not watching what happens to them, you’re experiencing what it’s like to be part of a group like that. Best of all, they don’t ask anything of you: you don’t have to remember their birthdays (although you do), they don’t have opinions about your career choices, and they’re not upset that you haven’t seen them in a while. It’s all the benefits of friendship, and you never have to help them move.
And when you’re sick, stressed, or three days into the same pair of sweatpants, that’s exactly the kind of company you want. So no, we don’t owe the world something new, at least not tonight. There’s a chase waiting at minute 48, and Cesare is sure this is the time he won’t shout.
