Comfort Food For Your Brain: Reruns On Satellite Tv

While it is important to watch educational programming and to pay attention to the latest hot shows, there is something to be said about old favorites. Whether it’s a classic television sitcom that families have been enjoying together for a couple of situations or something more campy and obscure, everyone has a favorite show. Not just something that they’ll try to be home in time for, but something that they’ve sat and watched at least a season of in one single sitting. Whether or not this was during a period of bad weather or a case of the flu isn’t even the point.

Back in the days of cable, it was a little bit more difficult to keep up with your favorite reruns. After all, network channels added and dismissed programs as quickly as they tried new spin-offs for popular series (anyone remember “Joey?”). But with satellite tv, it is as though a door to one’s childhood or distant past has been opened. Forget about trying to track things down on the internet. No one wants to sit at a computer and watch some poorly-recorded version of “The Nanny.” There is something great about satellite bringing so many options. A lot more than there ever were before.

There is something really important about reruns, even if you are the most highbrow disapproving intellectual who doesn’t find the merits in shared experiences. People can measure their lives by the culture they consume. So it’s really nice to watch an old episode of “Seinfeld,” because you remember where you were the first time that you saw it, or it reminds you of something that might not have made sense when you watched it as a younger person, but that now is more obvious, because you have more life experience.

Likewise, there’s something timeless about good television. Whether you’re tuning in a couple of years or a couple of decades after the fact, something like “I Love Lucy” is always going to be hilarious and also pertinent. Classic television has mostly found its home on Nick at Nite, which is easily available to satellite tv audiences, but Nick at Nite sometimes adds things that aren’t well received, and gets rid of them just as quickly. Particular networks are getting around this trouble by rolling out a wide variety of their old popular series on demand. This means that whether you want to remember the trouble of “The Wire” or simply see “Saved by the Bell,” you can do that thanks to on demand services.

In a world where everyone is rushing to own the latest smartphone or flatscreen tv, it is sometimes really comforting to take a break from the fast pace of life and to catch up with someone familiar. While some might say it’s a form of escapism to identify so strongly with popular culture, others point out that it’s merely a fact of life. After all, the television that you consume during your formative years shapes your impression of what you think life is going to be like, while also offering something friendly and familiar to turn back to. And really, who doesn’t feel comforted by an afternoon with Betty White or, as the case may be now, Will Smith?

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