The Year of Ambitious TV Watching

Read: ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Frasier,’ and the psychology of comfort TV

With no end to the pandemic in sight, I turned to bingeing unlikely TV shows and films to ground myself, unwittingly joining the many people who began watching old series they missed out on in real time. Whether it was The Sopranos or Survivor or Dexter, any show with a giant back catalog offered both distraction and the concrete promise of achievement, despite not being the most edifying quarantine project. Shows that once seemed prohibitively long, or intimidating because of their robust fandoms or towering critical stature, didn’t seem so inaccessible anymore. Settling on a show that ran for seven full seasons (or 40) eased decision fatigue and guaranteed at least a few weeks of blissful simplicity—if in no other arena than our TV watching.

Read: How I came to love my epic quarantine reading project

Publications noticed that certain time-consuming series drew renewed attention, sometimes breaking down how long different programs would take to binge-watch (Grey’s Anatomy: 343 hours) or analyzing a show’s unique quarantine appeal. As The Ringer’s Alison Herman wrote of the 92-episode series Mad Men in May, “There’s something both specific and paradoxical about going back to Mad Men in a time of crisis. I have the same attachment to Peggy, Pete, or Joan that I do to any fictional character I’ve spent more than a decade of my life with, but that fondness plays out against a darker emotional backdrop of ennui, anxiety, and mounting despair, whose indicative opening image is that of a man tumbling into the abyss.” The show, she added, reportedly saw a dramatic uptick in both old and new viewers during the early months of COVID-19.

Binge-watching is hardly a pandemic-specific pastime, but TV has become sacrosanct under quarantine. Streaming numbers have soared as people everywhere rely on the medium for escapism, and some audiences have apparently become more willing to commit to full series. Many viewers are discovering the sensory comforts and expansive universes of shows such as The Great British Bake Off or Barefoot Contessa. Even TV showrunners, grappling with the new realities of production, are gravitating toward the series they missed: The Vida creator Tanya Saracho told The New York Times that she binged the effervescent British rom-com Lovesick, while the prolific director and screenwriter Greg Berlanti has seen his tastes shift toward survivalist series such as the long-running quarantine favorite Alone.

Back when my life was studded with the joy of consistent human interaction, I would’ve balked at the prospect of diving into the political morass of Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing fantasyland or the eerie Louisiana bogs of Cary Fukunaga’s True Detective. Why would I want to approach my leisure viewing like yet another item on my to-do list? In March, I remember scoffing at my colleague David Sims’s recommendation to treat movie watching as a project. (Sorry, David!)