Mrs. Cardigan and I recently finished with The Crown and were deliberating on what to watch next. We both agreed it would be nice to re-watch something we know for sure we’re going to enjoy the heck out of. I suggested ‘Murdoch Mysteries’ and she replied “Oh, we just saw that one not too long ago.” I thought on it and realized we last watched the series (well, all the shows that were available) in 2018. Is three years too short an interval to watch a multi-season show from start to finish in your view? Would it make a difference if the series was ‘Firefly’?
Define “too long.” If you get bored part way through it you didn’t wait long enough. We watch Babylon 5 about every five years.
I think it depends on the type of show.
I watch ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Extended Edition every 10 years or so.
I watch shows like ‘Entourage’ or ‘Franklin + Bash’ every couple of years.
I am rewatching Deadwood for the 3rd time in 15 years. This time I am watching it with my GF who is from Mexico and had no idea who Wild Bill Hickok was when we visited Deadwood three weeks ago. I am catching all sorts of things I missed before.
And she is pissed we did not watch it before we went to Deadwood. She totally did not understand why I had to have a drink at the Number 10 Saloon.
No time is too short for me. I’ve “watched” all the Star Treks more times than I can count. I’m not really watching though, it’s just background noise to fall asleep too.
I’m currently rewatching The Orville season 2. I’m mainly doing that so I can remember everything that’s going on in anticipation of season 3.
I’ve been re-watching The Americans lately, and I too just finished watching it the first time around in 2018 or maybe even 2019. I’ve found that while some scenes aren’t quite as impactful when I already know what’s going to happen (Nina’s execution, for example), I’ve also already forgotten quite a bit, especially from seasons 1-2. And I’m noticing details that I didn’t notice the first time around.
For me, it depends on what it is. If it’s something ‘heavy’ or dramatic and has hour long episodes, I like to wait long enough that I don’t remember much beyond the main overall arcs. So, something like Six Feet Under I need a good 5-10 years between binges.
But for a good, well written, easily digestible sitcom. There’s no waiting period. When I first watched The Good Place, I immediately started right back over at S1E1. That show ended less than two years ago and I’ve watched the entire series probably 3 or 4 times now. Same for Community and Schitt’s Creek and 30 Rock.
But on the other end of the spectrum, I’m only just starting to think about re-watching Breaking Bad since it aired.
I’ve found it takes me about 5 years to forget the resolution to most episodes of something like a police procedural or whodunit series.
For example I watched all of Law & Order: Criminal Intent about that long ago and rewatched them all last month and except for a few standout episodes it felt mostly all new to me, even though I knew I’d already seen them all. I would often remember the ending right before the ending, but that’s the best part of that particular series anyways.
I don’t find myself binge rewatching series very much if at all. There’s too much good new stuff out there, and I’m not a huge TV watcher in the first place.
What usually happens is that once I’ve watched them through, I’m then open to watching them one-off if they’re on TV, without necessarily having to watch the whole thing through from start to finish.
Shows basically become drop-in/drop-out type things once I’ve watched them, and that starts immediately- I could see myself rewatching Orville episodes or SEAL Team episodes even though neither show is finished yet.
That’s something that I’ll often do as well. For example, with a show like 30 Rock (which I have binged in the past). I just set my DVR to pick up 10 episodes and keep that many all the time. If I’m bored, I can watch a few episodes (or delete ones I don’t want to watch) and the tivo will top it off the next time it airs.
It works well for a mindless sitcom where multi-episode/multi-season/series long arcs aren’t very important, if they exist at all. Psych is a good example of that.
Actually, an even better example is Scrubs. As long as you have a general idea of who everyone is, you can watch a random episode and not have to know that Carla is mad at Turk or JD or if Dr Cox and Jordan are on again or off again or why Danni is living with JD and Turk or anything else since JD will give you a quick summary.
I will also rewatch Seasons 1…N-1 of a TV series when Season N of a series comes out (for low values of N, at any rate).
I’m binge-watching the original “Roseanne” shows, it’s on regular cable most of the weekend. And also “Golden Girls”. I’ve seen both before, of course, but there is so little else of interest on, I can happily watch those shows from the beginning … Oh, and “Mom”, which lasted a season too long, as most long running shows do.
We watched Sense8 last fall for the first time. We finished it fairly quickly and then watched it again before the end of the year. Not so many episodes, and the earlier episodes make a lot more sense the second time around.
There are few shows that we’ve watched all the way through again. Like others have mentioned, I might start with a certain episode and then watch 4-5 episodes and then put it back on the shelf.
We’re currently watching season 6 of Brooklyn 99, as season 8 should be available soon. At least I hope so. So far there’s been no announcement when it will be available in the UK, which is how we watched the first run. Not sure if it will be released on Netflix here in Switzerland at the same time.
Because Doctor Who sometimes has quite a gap between seasons, we’ll often binge the previous season before the new one starts.