We Keep Rewatching the Same Old Shows — And Maybe That's Actually Okay

Let me paint you a picture. It's 11 PM on a Tuesday. You've had a long day, your inbox is a disaster, and the news is doing that thing it does where it feels like the world is actively trying to stress you out. You open Netflix, scroll past fifty things you've been meaning to watch, and land on — Friends. Again. For maybe the eighth time.

And somehow, that feels like exactly the right choice.

If that scenario sounds familiar, you are in very large company. Across the United States, a growing number of people are gravitating toward what psychologists and cultural critics have started calling "comfort media" — the deliberate revisiting of beloved TV shows, films, books, music, and aesthetic worlds from the past as a way of managing stress, anxiety, and the general heaviness of modern life.

It's not passive. It's not lazy. And increasingly, it's not considered embarrassing. In fact, it might be one of the more nuanced self-care strategies we've collectively stumbled into.

The Science of the Rewatch

Here's something that might surprise you: there's genuine psychological research behind why rewatching familiar content feels so good. Dr. Cristel Antonia Russell, a consumer psychologist who has studied the phenomenon extensively, found that revisiting familiar media serves as a form of psychological replenishment. When cognitive resources are depleted — which, in 2024, is basically always — familiar narratives provide comfort precisely because there are no surprises. You know what's going to happen. You know these characters. The uncertainty that makes real life so exhausting is completely absent.

"There's a sense of control in revisiting something you already know," explains Dr. Priya Nambiar, a licensed therapist in Los Angeles who works primarily with millennial and Gen Z clients. "When everything outside feels unpredictable, stepping into a world where you know the outcome can be genuinely regulating for the nervous system."

This isn't just comfort-seeking for its own sake. It's the brain actively using a known resource to stabilize itself. From that angle, it looks less like avoidance and more like intelligent self-management.

The 90s and 2000s Are Having a Moment (Again, Still, Forever)

The nostalgia angle is particularly interesting right now because of which eras people are returning to. Content from the 90s and early 2000s — think The Office, Gilmore Girls, Lizzie McGuire, Boy Meets World, early seasons of The Simpsons — is experiencing a cultural renaissance that goes well beyond mere trend cycles.

For millennials, this content represents a pre-9/11, pre-financial-crisis, pre-pandemic world that felt, in retrospect, relatively stable and hopeful. For Gen Z, who grew up with these shows as ambient background noise, they carry the warmth of childhood without the specific baggage of lived adult memory.

"There's something about that era's aesthetic that feels genuinely gentler," says Marcus Chen, a cultural critic and media analyst based in Brooklyn. "Lower production values, slower pacing, storylines that resolved in 22 minutes — it's the opposite of everything about modern media consumption, which is relentless and high-stakes and algorithmically optimized to keep you anxious."

The Y2K aesthetic revival in fashion, the resurgence of flip phones as a fashion accessory, the popularity of disposable camera filters — these aren't random. They're part of the same cultural pull toward a moment that, real or imagined, felt more manageable.

When Comfort Becomes a Crutch

Here's where it gets complicated — and where honest conversation requires acknowledging the less flattering side of this trend.

For most people, revisiting comfort media is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life. It's a tool, not a lifestyle. But for a subset of people, the retreat into familiar fictional worlds can start to function as a genuine avoidance strategy — a way of consistently sidestepping difficult emotions, uncomfortable growth, and real-world relationships that require vulnerability and effort.

Dr. Nambiar sees this in her practice. "I have clients who will tell me they spent an entire weekend rewatching a series for the third time, and when I ask what they were feeling going into that weekend, it's almost always something they weren't ready to sit with. Loneliness, grief, anger, fear. The show becomes a way of not being with that feeling."

The distinction she draws is between processing and bypassing. Watching a familiar show after a hard day and feeling genuinely soothed is processing — you're using a resource to regulate and then return to your life. Watching that same show as a consistent alternative to addressing what's actually wrong is bypassing — and over time, that can actually deepen the emotional backlog it was meant to relieve.

"But It Feels Like Therapy"

This is the phrase that keeps coming up in conversations about comfort media, and it's worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.

For millions of Americans who can't access or afford traditional therapy — and let's be clear, that's a significant portion of the population given how broken our mental health care system is — comfort media genuinely fills a gap. It provides emotional validation, narrative frameworks for understanding personal experiences, and a sense of connection to characters who feel like old friends.

Jessica, a 34-year-old teacher in Ohio, puts it plainly: "I've tried to get into therapy twice and both times I couldn't afford to continue past a few sessions. But I know that when I watch Schitt's Creek for the hundredth time, something in me genuinely relaxes. Those characters love each other in a way that I find healing. I know that sounds corny, but it's real."

Is that therapy? No. Can it substitute for actual professional support in cases of serious mental health conditions? Absolutely not. But is it worthless? Also no. Dismissing the genuine emotional value people derive from these experiences because they don't fit into a clinical framework seems both elitist and inaccurate.

The Parasocial Dimension

One aspect of comfort media that doesn't get enough attention is the role of parasocial relationships — the one-sided emotional bonds people form with fictional characters or even real celebrities. These relationships are more psychologically significant than most people realize.

For many viewers, characters like Leslie Knope, Lorelai Gilmore, or Michael Scott function as consistent emotional presences in their lives — sources of humor, warmth, and even inspiration. Research suggests that parasocial relationships can genuinely reduce loneliness and provide a sense of social belonging, particularly for people who struggle with in-person connection.

This isn't pathological in most cases. It's a natural extension of the human tendency to form attachments to consistent, reliable figures — and fictional characters are nothing if not consistent and reliable.

So What's the Verdict?

Honestly? The binary framing of "healthy vs. unhealthy" doesn't quite fit here. Like most things in human psychology, comfort media sits on a spectrum, and where any individual falls on that spectrum depends on context, frequency, and what else is going on in their life.

If you're using your favorite show as one of several ways to decompress and take care of yourself — alongside some movement, some social connection, some engagement with your actual feelings — then your Tuesday night Friends marathon is probably fine. More than fine, actually. It's a legitimate act of self-compassion in a world that doesn't make it easy to feel okay.

If you're using it to disappear from your life for extended periods, consistently avoiding difficult conversations or emotions, and finding that real-world experiences feel increasingly less satisfying than fictional ones — that's worth paying attention to. Not with shame, but with curiosity.

The question isn't whether you should let yourself have comfort media. The question is whether it's working for you or working against you. And only you — maybe with some help — can really answer that.

In the meantime, Gilmore Girls is right there. And honestly, Stars Hollow does look pretty great right now.