Why ‘New Girl’ Was the Perfect Pandemic Binge—Especially for Anxious Millennials
What exactly makes a good pandemic binge? I am so glad you asked. There are several pieces of criteria that I look at when making this distinction.The first is easy: Is it relatively bingeable? Two: Are there enough episodes to watch, so that I can feel super accomplished after watching it all? And, finally, three: Will it make me feel better about where I currently am in life?
I binged a lot of series during the pandemic, but none quite fit the bill like New Girl. And, since I just binged all seven seasons of Elizabeth Meriwether’s masterpiece in two-and-a-half weeks—a new record for me—I feel like I’m aptly qualified to tell you exactly why it's the perfect pandemic binge.
It turns out that I was very much not alone in this binge. A lot of people flocked to Netflix to watch or rewatch the 2011 darling. So many that when I pitched this story to my editor, he told me of several people he knew that completed this same marathon binge during the pandemic. According to Nielsen, it ranked among the most-watched streaming titles of 2020, despite being nearly a decade old at that point.