TV Tuesday: Ahhhhhh

[yourlibrarian]

Is there a difference between comfort shows and shows that give you a mental health break? What shows might fit that for you?

Comments

[jo]

Your link is paywalled. Here's an archived version you might want to add so that people can actually read the piece: https://archive.is/XIAkz

[yourlibrarian]

Thanks for the link, I've updated!

[author_by_night]

I think the exact difference depends on the person, but for my money, a comfort show helps you deal with tough emotions in a "soft" way, whereas a mental health break show doesn't really tackle the hard stuff.

The Good Place certainly helped me deal with some stuff. A Man on the Inside as well, to a lesser extent.

[yourlibrarian]

Sounds like a good definition to me!

I'm not sure I'd heard of Man on the Inside before this article, but have added it to my watchlist.

[china_shop]

I find a lot of Kdramas are comfort TV for me -- they really take their time to revel in the emotional beats. Also, the kids' cartoon Bluey, which is just adorable little 7-minute slices of people being kind and weird and occasionally learning little life lessons.

I'm not entirely sure what qualifies as a mental health break, hm.

[yourlibrarian]

I'd say it probably varies per person. I'd guess, though, that predictability is a factor in comfort views. You don't want unpleasant surprises.

[china_shop]

Yes, good point! Re-watches are a lot more comforting than first-time views. It helps that you can set your expectations accurately. :-)

[dancesontrains]

Bingo <3

[china_shop]

Bingo! *starts singing theme song* ;D

[tinny]

I'm not entirely sure what qualifies as a mental health break, hm.

For me, the difference is that comfort shows are shows where I like the characters, so I love coming back to them and seeing how they fare, sharing a bit of their lives, etc etc. Those can be emotionally deep, and I won't mind, because I feel safe with them anyway?

Mental health break stuff is what I would consider the things I'm watching right now: anything that promises not to engage me *at all*, so I don't have to be sad with/about/for people.

I''m not sure that is the right way to categorize it? That's just what I thought of first. :)

[shadowkat]

Ponders. I don't know?

Dancing with the Stars and Great British Bake Off and Great Pottery Throw Down - are kind of what I'd call comfort shows and mental health break?

Also, I find Buffy - a comfort show and mental health break. (Weird I know, but there it is). And kind of Friends. Also, Gilmore Girls.

Hmm.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, I'd say Dancing and GBBO are comfort viewing for me. (I haven't seen Pottery).

I think there's definitely a big cozy element to GG, and of course Friends is a sitcom so there's certainly a break element in that. And Buffy has a lot of humor. Especially on a rewatch I could see it being a comfort view.

[executrix]

For friends of GBBO and Pottery Throwdown, may I recommend their sister show, Great British Sewing Bee. (Available for free on Roku in the US, not sure of free availability elsewhere.) Now I can enliven a boring subway ride by trying to visualize the pattern pieces for making everybody's clothes.

[ecto_one_spengler]

Comfort shows: anything that just has some sort of way for me to learn something in some manner. Even if it's really weird specific crap like the recessions of 2008, the history of companies or like. Some goof on the internet/TV making fun of stupid Tiktok food trends. (These are all actual things I watched in the past at 3am in past depressive episodes to try and feel better btw)

Mental health break: Basically another term for "old ass kids' shows I will quietly rewatch when I think nobody is there to witness it". Sometimes also includes Scooby Doo's weird movies / Mystery Incorporated that were aired on Cartoon Network back in 2011-ish that I cherished a lot around when my fanfiction making started to ramp up for the first time. Definitely depends on my mood though - if I feel especially bad I go for adventure/action stuff. If I don't feel as bad but want more interesting stuff I go for the kiddie horror stuff/Scooby Doo stuff.

[yourlibrarian]

I would love to watch old Scooby Doo episodes, though for me it would be more like 1970s! I was recently remembering that the Harlem Globetrotters had a show and they did a Scooby Doo crossover. I'd love to see that again.

[dancesontrains]

Saw Mystery Inc fairly recently and it holds up so well <3

[jo]

I tried to answer this yesterday but was a bit flummoxed by the whole "mental health break" concept. Even "comfort TV" isn't really something I use to categorize what I watch.

You see, for me, watching TV is the way I take a break from the real world -- whether it's sports or dramas or whatever -- I guess all of it is a mental health break of sorts as it just allows me to disconnect from RL. Most of what I watch isn't comforting or happy -- I really favour shows with darker themes -- murder mysteries, true crime docs, police procedurals, etc. The most "escapist" stuff I watch would be Star Trek, I guess, and even they can go pretty dark sometimes. So since all TV is a way of taking a break from real life, within that, I tend to categorize shows as being either "shows I watch when I can fully concentrate on them" and "shows I watch when I'm tired and odds are I'll doze off while watching". That latter category does include a lot of "old favourites", which I guess could be considered comfort viewing, but I don't watch them because they make me feel all safe and cozy, etc., I just watch them because they're just available in syndication, I've seem most/all episodes multiple times and I don't need a functioning brain to enjoy them. But it will also include new shows, usually network series like "FBI" or "High Potential", etc., shows with more predictable plots/formats, where, again, I don't really care much if I doze off while watching.

Also, I've never really been into rewatching shows over and over again -- excluding the sorts of shows mentioned above that are syndicated and I can have on mostly as background noise while doing other things like making supper. But they're not deliberate rewatches -- they're just available. It's only very recently that I've deliberately decided to rewatch a couple of shows, and I guess they're the closest I'd label as being comfort shows. One is Ted Lasso, which I seem to have gotten into a habit of rewatching around the xmas-new year period, and the other is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Otherwise, I will rewatch a show, or more likely, the previous season of a show, if it's been a really long time between seasons -- just as a refresher in preparation for the new season. For example, the final season of Outlander starts March 6, 2026, so I might rewatch season 7 before that happens -- just to remind myself where everyone left off.

[yourlibrarian]

I would like to do show rewatches but have rarely managed any (except a few that were fairly short). I feel like we zipped by the era where we had a lot of DVD/video releases of shows that would facilitate that (since syndication was often unreliable in continuity and not being edited for more commercials, or it required cable etc.), and instead hit the on-ramp to Peak TV. So while in earlier decades I might well be looking for things to watch, I now have to have a list (divided by streamers) to keep track of things I want to check out when I have time.

I would definitely see Ted Lasso as a comfort view show ::nods::

Your mention of dividing shows, I tend to do so also in terms of "exercise shows" and "watch with partner" shows. That second category probably comes closest to my comfort viewing list, because he has a fondness for British period pieces, stuff like All Creatures or Downton Abbey. That's not the only stuff we watch together, but is perhaps the most reliable. Because sometimes I think we'll both like a show, only one of us likes it more than the other. So I either go on to watch it alone or (because he has so little viewing time) it just gets dropped.

[mllesatine]

I tend to rewatch shows and movies. Right now I'm in an Andor phase. I wouldn't watch this show if it was a contemporary show so I guess it's a comfort show. But all my shows are comfort shows. I don't watch stuff that make me mad or that I find distressing.

Not to put anyone on blast who loves "Shrinking" but I would never watch that show. I'm basing my opinion on the trailer here but these kinds of shows don't show people with real mental issues, just the TV version of them where people are magically cured when you tell them the one thing that's wrong. I find the whole premise of that show insufferable.

I guess I could never see comfort in something that is too close to reality for me. The minute you know a bit more than the TV makers about the subject matter it stops being enjoyable.

[yourlibrarian]

Haha, have to admit Andor as a comfort show would not have been my guess. I am not a big lover of Shrinking (though I did like S2 much more than S1) but I think it's a problem all TV has in how it presents problems (whether medical or otherwise).

The minute you know a bit more than the TV makers about the subject matter it stops being enjoyable.

This is very true. I know something my partner quotes often is, I think, a scene from The Simpsons where kids are saying what they want to do when they grow up and a little girl says she wants to be a teacher. And her teacher in complete deadpan says "No you do not."

I remember being very disappointed in S1 of Shrinking that they don't actually spend much time focusing on the professional practice, at least in terms of its daily ins and outs. It's also ostensibly a comedy but a lot of what it deals with is just not funny. It's more like they make the characters wackier to make it seem more entertaining.

[dancesontrains]

I'm not sure there's a huge difference betweent 'comfort' and 'mental health break' shows to me! Mine would be Bluey (as mentioned before) and various kids' cartoons or anime like Pokemon (really enjoying Horizons, which is the current series).

[yourlibrarian]

Makes sense. I remember Sesame Street was a popular watch in college.

[wendelah1]

There is not a real difference to me. I will say that I do take a break from series that I find too disturbing, sometimes permanently. In 2024, I got through the first four seasons of Person of Interest, which was streaming on Amazon. It's a great show but became too dystopian for me to cope with and it appeared to be heading for a bad ending for everyone. I've been recording old movies from TCM. Old musicals from the thirties and forties are comforting. Watching The Big Bang theory and Friends, sitcoms that I didn't watch with my late husband. I don't like watching competitions at all, or shows where real people act like idiots, so that rules out most reality TV. I wish I could figure out how to use my Blu-ray player with my smart TV. I miss my dumb TV with the small screen and bad picture.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, classic films and older shows are often good comfort watches.

I did watch all of PoI, and I agree that the show did shift a good bit as it went along.

[executrix]

I started PoI and it wasn't for me, but I later saw Michael Emerson in Evil and he was *amazing.*

[tinny]

okay that is interesting. commenter above said that all their tv is comfort viewing because they do it to disconnect from rl. I hadn't looked at it that way yet. of course that is what i do, but it's still not comforting. i like to learn stuff from tv - be it scientific or about the human condition - but depending on my energy level, i can only take that much.

that's where comfort viewing comes in for me. and if i can take even less - like right now - that's where the mental health break stuff sits.

so it's basically three tiers: 1) good/engaging stuff, 2) comfort shows where I like the characters, so I love coming back to them and seeing how they fare, sharing a bit of their lives, 3) anything that promises not to engage me *at all*, so I don't have to be sad with/about/for people.

I dont usually rewatch at all, so the rewatch=comfort doesn't apply to me.

i cannot pinpoint specific shows as being one or the other, it just depends on how i feel at any given moment. i will drop the more engaging ones if i don't have enough energy for them. examples of things I've dropped but am hoping to pick back up when i feel better: Heartstopper, We Are Lady Parts, Severance, Under the Skin. things I've started watching instead include... all the cdramas :D. Sometimes some of them start engaging me too, and then I'll drop them again.

[yourlibrarian]

1) good/engaging stuff, 2) comfort shows where I like the characters, so I love coming back to them and seeing how they fare, sharing a bit of their lives, 3) anything that promises not to engage me *at all*, so I don't have to be sad with/about/for people.

Sounds like a good definition to me! Well and even if a genre usually works for you, it's not always clear what a show is going to contain or direction it will go in.