Grey’s Anatomy

Listen, let’s be honest here — you do this all the time. This is not a casual rewatch, this is a calculated rewatch, this is That Old Chestnut and you are roasting yourself over an open fire. This marathon is the slippers you’re still wearing despite the small hole gathering in the heel. You may have a few lines memorized, you may have entire storylines you fast-forward through, you may have gotten into this mess because you were sick for three days, couldn’t get out of bed and well, why not check in with your friends at Grey-Sloan. You’ll be devoting about 25% of your overall attention to this rewatch. You might stop in the middle and you might start in the middle. You will end the rewatch when you feel like it. You are in a space where you need to be reminded that the logistics and technical elements of living can be accomplished with excellence even if the bigger, more emotional stuff feels impossible to tackle with such precision.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Congratulations, you’re emotionally stable! But you do have a bit of time on your hands and so, you’re here for a good time and a long time. (Also, you recently remembered a hoodie you had in the early aughts and you don’t know where it is now, or what happened to it, but you miss it.)

Killing Eve

There are two possibilities — one is that you are actually completely fine and want to indulge in something confusing but beautiful and well-paced and full of action and clever asides. You know how it ended but you want to understand how it began a little better, or to see what you missed, how you might see things totally differently this time even though it wasn’t that long ago, and nobody really understood what was happening.

The other is that you are a broken person who is three impulsive decisions away from torching your own life. You are considering benders or other forms of wild self-destruction, liable to make rash decisions and beautiful mistakes, to do what feels right to your gut and heart but leave your brain in theditch. And why not? Who’s stopping you!!!!

The “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror

Who hurt you

Glee

Your vibe is “I hate adulting.” I don’t mean that you are upset because you hate adulting, literally, but that is a metaphor for your overall personality at this time — you are in the mood for a snack and a thematic arts and crafts project and you want someone else to decide what time you should go to bed. Again, not literally, but that is your vibe. You’re not thriving but you’re not failing either. You’re feeling a little goofy, sometimes. You would like to see your best friends perform your favorite songs and then say terrible things to each other. You want to make self-depreciating jokes about your mental health on a social media platform or in a group chat. You have recently made a joke that in retrospect was in bad taste. Or you just got home from the party, you are a little high and a little drunk and you like someone so much that you just wanna lock yourself in your room, turn on sad music, and cry.

E.R.

You are over the age of 35 and you are nostalgic for a time when you did not have to decide what to watch every time you turned on the television, you would just flip through and land on something that was probably ok, if not good, and you were satisfied with that! You want to settle in for the long haul. You are not in a place to have to choose another TV show to binge at any point between Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. You need one thing to be easy and I applaud this endeavor.

Orange is the New Black

Is everything different the second time around? This question is being answered right now, by you. You want to be hurt. You want your lunch to look like a great lunch in comparison to the lunches they are eating on television. You have loved and lost and you are not sure if it was better than never having loved at all. You want to feel righteous anger, the type of anger that simmers quietly beneath you but explodes wildly when you make contact with others experiencing that same anger. You need to remind yourself that everybody is a little toxic underneath it all, including you, and that’s okay. You want to remember that life is long and people change and people get better, without forgetting that sometimes you lose the best thing you ever had, but if you’re lucky enough to keep going after that, you owe it to them and yourself to try.

Orphan Black

You’re doing well. You’re settled into the journey, not the destination. You like a solved mystery, a dynamic problem that can be taken apart and made sense of. You’ve got some laundry to fold, a group chat popping off in the distance. You like what you like! What’s wrong with that?

The L Word

I hate to say it but you are potentially deeply unwell at this time. You are seeking comfort but you are defining “comfort” broadly, like when you say “comfort” what you really mean is “familiarity.” People you love have disappointed you. Perhaps their personalities have radically changed overnight, perhaps they have disappeared forever. It started out so good, and it ended so poorly. Maybe you want to start over — maybe you want to avoid the future altogether. You want something that will remind you of who you used to be even though you don’t want to be that person anymore, you just want to look at her closely, like a rash in the mirror.

However — there are two scenarios in which rewatching The L Word is not a sign of unwellness: 1. You are doing so while listening to a hit podcast like To L and Back or Pants, 2. You are dating or otherwise close with someone who’s never seen it and are watching it with them. These are bold moves executed only by the deeply well. Congratulations and good luck.

Did you like this thing? Then you’ll love my new newsletter, What the Gays Are Watching, available to all AF+ members. Membership starts at $4 a month and supports the existence queer indie journalism! As soon as you’re signed up your added to the mailing list, with a new newsletter going out every Thursday.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!