This year, I’ve watched 6,338 minutes of “Gilmore Girls.” That’s almost 4.5 full days of staring at my computer screen, joining Lorelai and Rory Gilmore in their Stars Hollow adventures.
This is all thanks to my habit of rewatching. According to a survey from Statista, 21% of Americans rewatched the same season of a TV show at least twice in 2023, and 18% of Americans rewatched three times.
I’ve been a chronic TV-show rewatcher since as long as I can remember, starting from rewatching “Dora the Explorer,” then moving onto “Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse,” then “Jessie,” and finally the iconic Dan Schneider shows (“Victorious,” “iCarly” and “Sam and Cat”).
If I’ve watched the entirety of a show and know I like it, why would I spend my valuable time looking for a new show to watch? Finding free time to sit down, relax and watch a show itself is already so hard, so there’s no need to stress myself out more in trying to find the perfect show to watch.
My sister and I would never agree on a new show while browsing on Netflix, but we can always fall back on watching another “iCarly” episode together.
When watching a show for the first time, there are almost always scenes I’ll miss from distractions. There’s also often scenes that I simply don’t understand at the moment, but when rewatching, everything starts to fall into place, and I’m able to appreciate the show even more after realizing what the writers intended.
When I rewatch “Gilmore Girls”, it feels as if I’m returning home and reuniting with my best friends. Stars Hollow feels like a place I actually know and live in, and I visit on command with the click of the play button.
The moment I hear the main theme to “Jessie,” I’m flooded with memories of dancing around my living room and jumping on the couch when I was eight while singing the song.
Even if everything in my life is going haywire, I know that when I log onto my Netflix profile, the episodes I love will always be the exact same as when I left them, waiting for me to click play and revisit them once again.
