Give it a rest! We JUST watched the last episode. Don’t you dare press that rewatch button. Oh, but you will press it, and I will too. Why do we tend to rewatch stuff we’ve already seen, and need a whole preparation period to watch something new? I’m glad you asked.
Feeling Over Plot Twists
Hon, let’s get one thing straight. We don’t watch series exclusively to know what happened, right? Otherwise, why watch then? Read the digest and be done with it.
Nooo, we watch to get a certain feeling, to experience the full range of human emotion (hopefully). It sets us on edge and brings comfort all at the same time. Cool, eh?
Now, there are several approaches people take. Pssst, this doesn’t have a concrete connection to the story, just a sidenote observation.
There are people who treat video content, especially when you reduce video size , as an information source, they focus on the plot, not as much on the emotional side. Usually, they don’t tend to rewatch TV shows or movies.
I, personally, treat visual content just like music. There are some songs that you can listen to on repeat, right? Well, then, take my tendency to rewatch TV shows as a playlist on steroids. I rewatch favorite episodes, sometimes browse YouTube for favorite parts of episodes.
Because feeling over plot, my friend. Plot twists are what make me watch for the first time, and emotions have me coming back for more.
Comfortable Universe of Demogorgons
Fandom attachment is a big deal. We know the lore, the universe, the characters, their flaws, struggles, all that makes the human (or not). Why Stranger Things in the title? Feel free to substitute, mate. I’m just offering an example. I love Stranger Things because the show offered a level of involvement I haven’t gotten in a while.
It’s a “safe” universe for me. The airquotes, because it’s seriously not safe. But that’s not the best part of it. Like other good stories, the main interest in Stranger Things are the relationships between the characters, their personal development, and how the actors could actually make them better (yes, of course I’m talking about Steve).
Rewatching TV
Rewatching these synamics is gold, how Lucas and Max stayed faithful to each other through it all, how Dusting learned to stand up for himself and became a man in the true sense of the definition.
How El and Mike grew up and realized what their relationship truly means, and how Will was able to come to his true self, full circle. How Mrs. Wheeler truly came through for her kids, as only fierce mothers can, and how Hopper and Joyce took a secondary role, trusting the kids enough to let them take care of things on their own. Ah… Delightful.
Did Streaming Change The Game?
Kind of. Both yes and no. The thing is, streaming, in my opinion, made those TV shows more available, but didn’t really change human nature in the sense of how we choose to view content. There is much more content out there, but can we watch it all? No. Do we want to? Again, no.
I truly believe that the movies and shows we watch should have good value not only visually, but emotionally.
Yes, it is readily available, but are you sure you want to jump to a new show straight away after finishing a big chapter?
The answer depends on your personality and relationship with content in general.
IF and only if the show touched you emotionally, the probability that you’ll go on to the next one straight away is pretty low. You’ll need some closure, sure, and then you’ll need some more pondering.
A curious sidenote #2. This behaviour is typical of movies in the same genre only. Say, you have three “continue watching” shows on Netflix, right? One comedy, one drama, and one thriller.
(Do you have that system too, or is it weird?) Once you’re done with the drama, it will take you some time to move on to another drama, but switching to comedy? No problem. I think it’s because:
- Dramas are much more emotionally taxing
- Different genres live in different tabs of our attention span, suitable for different life situations.
- No additional decision required.
Now, let’s move on with the Stranger Things saga, keeping the attention locked to the last point I made.
Rewatching TV
Nostalgia Loves Decision Overload
There are too many decisions we have to make. Don’t get me wrong, but Jeez, I get tired only looking at my to-do list. If you have the chance to make one less decision, wouldn’t you take it? I think you would. Me too.
Stranger Things is familiar, I like it, I know all the ins and outs, which means I will definitely rewatch it as a part of my I’m-doing-something-else playlist. Do you have one of those?
When your hands are full, so you can’t pay 100% attention to the screen (kind of a REQUIREMENT for a new show, don’t you think?), but then again, you don’t want to keep cooking/cleaning/sorting with your playlist, you put on a familiar TV show.
At least, that’s how I tend to rewatch things. While I do other stuff. It allows me to pay attention to the audio only, get a part of the emotional flow, but get things done simultaneously.
Nostalgia plays a great deal in this, especially during periods of stress. Familiar shows like Stranger Things hug our souls and warm our hearts. To the point where we can put on our favorite moments to cry, laugh, and know that whatever happens around us, there are still familiar things we can trust in this world.
If you strip away the nostalgia and the memes, Superstore was built very tightly around Amy Sosa, and by extension, around America Ferrera’s mix of grounded exasperation and quiet ambition.
Ferrera was not only the face on the poster, but she was also an executive producer and occasional director, the person the network had sold as the audience’s guide through Cloud 9.
When she announced in early 2020 that she would leave after season five to focus on her family and other projects, it instantly turned season six from a comfortable renewal into a question mark.
NBC and Universal Television did renew the show and wrote Amy’s promotion to corporate as an in-story exit, but multiple trade reports later framed the decision to end with season six as a direct response to losing that core character.
Articles from outlets such as Decider and The List note that executives opted to let the series wrap rather than rebrand it entirely around the ensemble without Ferrera’s presence at the center.
Some critics and fans have argued the store itself could have carried a few more seasons, pointing to shows like The Office continuing after Steve Carell, yet NBC’s move signaled that they did not see the same upside once their best-known star had moved on.
Pandemic Production Chaos And Quiet Ratings Math
Timing made everything messier. Superstore’s sixth season sat right in the middle of the industry’s pandemic scramble, with shutdowns, rewrites, and safety protocols hitting almost every network comedy.
Variety reported that the season had already been interrupted, and the cast returned under tighter conditions, with masks and distancing written directly into the show to mirror essential workers on the front lines.
That kind of production is more expensive and more complicated, which made NBC scrutinize every returning show a little harder.
Superstore (Credit: NBC)
What complicates the story is that Superstore was not a flop in the usual sense. Newsweek and Yahoo Entertainment both highlighted that its ratings had slipped from the early years. Still, they remained respectable for a network sitcom of that era, especially once delayed and streaming viewing were taken into account.
The series passed 100 episodes and hit the kind of syndication threshold that often prompts networks to ask whether the next batch of episodes will still justify rising salaries and production costs.
For an ensemble comedy where cast members had been in place for six seasons, renegotiations tend to get pricier, and at least some industry chatter online suggests NBC weighed those numbers against modest growth potential and decided it was safer to stop while the show still felt creatively strong.
A Grounded Finale, A Loyal Fandom, And What Comes Next
The way Superstore actually ended helped soften the blow for many viewers. NBC ordered a proper run of 11 final episodes after the winter break, and outlets like E! Online praised the series finale for giving the Cloud 9 crew satisfying emotional beats instead of a rushed last shift.
America Ferrera returned for the final two episodes, which critics took as an admission that the chemistry everyone loved really did revolve around Amy and Jonah’s unresolved story and the sense of family that had grown around them.
Since then, think pieces on sites such as Slashfilm have argued that Superstore ended not because it ran out of stories about working-class retail life, but because a convergence of factors made it easiest for NBC to close the doors gracefully.
A departing lead, pandemic-era costs, and only mid-tier ratings left the show vulnerable even as its cultural relevance and online fandom kept growing through streaming.
For fans rewatching the blue-vest chaos now, that can feel frustrating, yet there is a small comfort in knowing the characters did not fade out from neglect. The series got to clock out on its own terms, with the lights still on and the break room full, instead of quietly being taken off the schedule one Friday night.
