I was raised on syndicated TV, as I suspect were many my age; I never watched the original Star Trek at the stately original pace of one episode per week, but rather every day for years, thus seeing them over and over again.  And so it was with most TV I watched.

This, apparently, prepared me perfectly for this modern age of marathoning TV shows via Netflix or DVD or whatever.  To the extent that I find I do not like shows as well when I watch them weekly, or rather, I like them better when I jam through them again at some later date.  If it weren't for that last bit of me that doesn't like the Internet telling me everything that happened in an episode before I see it, I think I might at this point stop bothering to watch TV when it's new.  Thus contributing to the end of TV, I recognize, although it's not like I've ever been in a Neilsen family.

Anyway, I digress.  Point is, this has given me the peculiar habit of marathoning my way back through a TV series I've already seen as a comfort food, the moreso in the winter when seasonal depression is a constant companion.  Some years ago -- when the show was not only still airing but was about midway through its run -- I marathoned my way through Scrubs one winter to catch up.  The next year I marathoned my way back through all of it up to that point.  And so on, so that December 2013 I once again began with the first Scrubs episode and ended with the last episode of the spinoff.

This has been the year that it's almost too easy to do this kind of thing, though.  After the Doctor Who 50th anniversary a year ago, I started watching the old series with its first episode (obviously watching reconstructions along the way) and am currently in its 22nd season.  My wife and I are slamming through Supernatural after doing the same with Lost Girl before it.  The family's marathoning Arrow (to catch up) after having finished Alias after having finished Hercules and Xena after having finished ... well, I forget what, but I can tell you every Star Trek series except Enterprise was in there, too.

Not sure if I'm going to do Scrubs again this year, though; there's so many options now.  Maybe it's time to marathon New Girl...