Do-overs.

“You will never watch a movie twice when you’re with me,” my boyfriend always says. I believe this is largely a ploy to get out of watching the weird assortment of movies that I am enthusiastically convinced are “classics” based on a single late-night viewing five years ago on my father’s satellite movie channels. However, I applaud him for sticking to his guns. “It’s just not as much fun if you’ve seen it before,” he protests.

As a serial re-watcher of television shows and movies, I have to say that I blatantly disregard this principle in my personal life.  I say this as I flip to Bring It On (2000) playing on the WE channel. I saw Bring It On in theaters, because I was then a Pee Wee cheerleader, and then later saw it many other times in 2000, with my fellow Pee Wee cheerleaders. Now it’s on the channel for middle-aged women who are too cool for Lifetime, and I will watch it again! Not only do I watch movies and TV shows more than once, I don’t even reserve this weird habit for really (or even sort of) good entertainment.

I re-watch for the same reason I have been putting off reading Pale Fire for several years even though I really, really want to read it. Because 75% of the time, I need a break from thinking about stuff. I want to kick back and mindlessly watch some Buffy. Let me remind you, I started watching Buffy in 1997. It went off the air in 2002. I have gotten to the point where I can ‘start watching’ Buffy on any episode after a long Buffy-less spell and know exactly what’s going on. And don’t get me started on Law & Order marathons, aka the entire A&E channel all the time. Sequence and overaching plot do not matter. It’s my ultimate hangover cure.

Many would feel that this is a colossal and mind-rotting waste of time. I, in fact, feel this way a lot of the time. But then I ask myself: would I honestly rather be watching 8-1/2 when my mind can clearly only process art at the level of a teen movie re-run? Ah, let me relax from my long day with some Italian art house cinema. I mean, really. I just started a new job and am learning a new software program every other day. Grocery shopping in my new neighborhood is still a grand and complicated adventure. Wouldn’t be a waste of time to try to force myself to experience something thought-provoking when my thoughts are already done being provoked? In my experience, every time I do this I end up hating whatever it was I tried to watch, even if it wasn’t all that bad for any objective or quantifiable reason. Like 8-1/2, which I tried to Netflix Instant a couple of years ago after being dumped. I didn’t even finish it–that how much of a chance I gave that one.

I’d pontificate about this more, but it’s getting late and those vampires aren’t going to slay themselves. Adios.

• Buffy
• movies
• relaxation
• tv