To fully understand how the 8th art is consumed in the 21st century we need to reconsider what people expect from it and evaluate if TV shows haven't already become the natural successor due to the new nature of video entertainment.
It is estimated that the beloved 90s TV show "Friends" would take about 85 hours to watch from the first episode to the last. NBC's hit show "The Office" would take about 73.7 hours to complete, Game of Thrones roughly 70 hours, Futurama 46 hours, Breaking Bad 60 hours, The Simpsons 247 hours, and Family Guy 171 hours. To put that into perspective, it would take a person three days without sleep to binge-watch The Office and ten days of nonstop "D'oh!" and "Ha-Ha!" or "Ay Caramba!" to watch all the episodes of The Simpsons from start to finish. It sounds like lunacy at first glance but for many people rewatching their favorite shows is a true form of relaxation and home entertainment. This has for many become the new way of consuming media.
Evidently, this phenomenon is not exclusive to TV shows. Long is the list of films that have been rewatched to the point of delirium: Love Actually, Shrek, Shrek 2, The Matrix, Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, Shaun of the Dead, Jurassic Park, and many more. Not to mention movies with a cult following such as The Great Lebowski, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Eraserhead, The Life of Brian, or Dazed And Confused to name just a few. Many of the above-mentioned films such as Die Hard and Love Actually have a cyclical life expectancy. Similar to that exasperating Mariah Carrey Christmas song, these two movies make their annual comeback during the month of joy and Starbucks' sugar-fueled Peppermint Latte. It can be argued that these films are simply classics and that rewatching them is yet another proof of today's lack of good content, or to put it in Tarantino's words, "The worst era in Hollywood history!" Why then don't we watch on repeat timeless classics such as Casablanca, The Godfather, Seven Samurai, 12 Angry Men, and Apocalypse Now. I can already hear the pretentious film aficionados say how they've watched these movies so many times they could recite every scene word for word (Casablanca really is fun to recite).
I'm sure this isn't something completely new, certainly many years ago cinephiles would rewatch old classics over and over. But in the 21st century with the rise of streaming services it has become all too easy to rewatch movies. What is it about rewatching shows or movies that people seem to enjoy so much? Lack of new quality content? Comfort of already knowing the end?