One more time

A still from Sex and the City Photo: Special Arrangement

Watching television shows is my way of relaxing, and I have a long list of TV shows to catch up on right now, and yet, on the days when I truly just want to kick back and let some steam out, I almost never reach for a new episode of a show I’m watching, or even a new show. I take my trusty hard disk out and watch reruns of either Friends , Gossip Girl or Sex And The City .

When I watch a rerun, I know exactly where the episode is heading. I know that Phoebe does find her soulmate, and that Chandler and Monica do end up having kids. I know that Blair will finally be with Chuck, and I don’t have to waste time thinking about who Gossip Girl really is. Most importantly, I know that Mr. Big comes back. I suppose reruns are like the visual equivalent of comfort food — they don’t require too much effort to watch, and yes, they are predictable, but deliciously so, and it is this predictability which keeps me coming back.

I had watched each of these shows at a different point in time, and they each represent a different kind of nostalgia for me.

Friends , I watched during high school.

Gossip Girl was through my CA articleship and study holidays.

Sex And The City , I binge-watched as I stepped into my twenties, although it was well done and dusted by then. The relationships that I had formed in my head with the show’s characters, as well as the way I had associated myself with them when I’d watched the show initially, was a reflection of my identity, and what was going on with me at that time. In fact, I would decide that I was a particular character from the show, and even went on to match my friends with their personalities.

When I watch a show today, I am so caught up in keeping up with the storyline, that I don’t have the time or energy to delve into a show and go to the extent of forming a relationship with a character. Reruns however, are different, because they take me back to the time I watched them for the first time, and the naiveté of my own youth when I’d thought that it was possible to lead lives similar to the characters I was so enamoured with. When I watch

Sex And The City now, for example, I think — Don’t the lot of you have jobs? How do you keep meeting each other? How do you buy a new pair of six-hundred-dollar shoes every month with a journalist’s, no, columnist’s income?

Although the shows I have grown up with and loved are dubious in many ways, the primary storyline and its characters have never stopped being charming to me. Every time I question a certain plotline’s logic, or a character’s choices, or even understand a joke that I previously didn’t (this happens all the time) it is actually a sign of how I’ve changed and grown; after all, the show hasn’t. There was an article in the Scientific American a couple of years ago on the same topic, and how reruns “spark personal growth”. They had ended the article with a quote by the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus, that I thought summed everything that I’ve felt about watching a beloved show over and over. “You never cross the same river twice — it’s not the same river, and it’ not the same you”.

Friends is presently running on Romedy Now.