By Caroline Densch

505 hours and 45 min­utes – that’s how long it takes to watch all of my favorite TV shows. Ever since the first nation­wide lock­down began in Ger­many last March, I’ve been doing some seri­ous re-watch­ing. Among the shows I’ve been bing­ing is the entire sea­son of Friends (10), Parks and Recre­ation (7), The Office (9), Mod­ern Fam­i­ly (10), How I Met Your Moth­er (9), New Girl (7), and Brook­lyn 99 (8) – and some more than once.

Accord­ing to The Huff­in­g­ton Post, watch­ing some­thing famil­iar trig­gers a feel­ing of nos­tal­gia, which has a pos­i­tive effect on your men­tal health. For instance, your mind may recon­nect with the set­ting, the peo­ple you were with, or the feel­ings you had when you ini­tial­ly watched a cer­tain episode. In my case, re-watch­ing TV shows trans­ports me back to the time before the pandemic.

I’ve always been some­one to watch a good TV show mul­ti­ple times or read a good book more than once. At this point, how­ev­er, the rate at which I re-watch a film or show has reached a new height. Why is that? And what do all those TV shows have in com­mon, apart from being suc­cess­ful Amer­i­can sitcoms?

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