Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. On February 2nd, prophetic groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which, if you follow the lore, means six more weeks of winter. Boy, do we know it with digits in the teens. The bright side means six more weeks to stay inside, get cozy, and watch a series or two or three. Whether that's something new or a comfort rewatch, or maybe you're catching up on a guilty pleasure like Love is Blind, or The Other Two, or the latest season of Bridgerton. Waiting to see if Benedict finally settles down. Here to share a few of her own picks is Vulture TV critic and friend of the show, Kathryn VanArendonk. Hey, Kathryn.

Kathryn VanArendonk: Hey.

Alison Stewart: Hey, listeners, don't be shy. We want to know what shows are you watching again for the second or maybe even the third time? Are you binging it? Are you savoring it slowly? What is your guilty pleasure show that you're indulging in right now? Call or text us at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can text us, or you can join us on air. The number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Kathryn, I love this idea of a guilty pleasure watch. Maybe it's a series that you really haven't had time to watch, or maybe you think it's a little too easy to binge or more like candy than broccoli. For me right now, it's the show Beauty by Ryan Murphy, which then sent me down a rabbit hole, and I started watching Nip/Tuck from the early 2000s.

Kathryn VanArendonk: Old school. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Old school. When you think of a guilty pleasure, in the best sense of the word, what is it?

Kathryn VanArendonk: I think it's interesting and helpful for me always to be checking in with myself whenever I decide that something is a guilty pleasure and what that actually means, because I think it's really different for different viewers. It's worth always interrogating a little bit about, like, "Why do I feel like this is bad?" The word guilt implies this sense of something that you know that you should not be doing. I always think it's worth just asking yourself, like, "Okay, what is it about this show that I think is bad?"

Often in the case of a romance, there is this default sense of this is trashy, or this is too girly, or this is too slight. It's unimportant because it's not serious. That genre-based guilty pleasure, I'm always trying to push back against. I will stand on a mountaintop and be like, "Let's not talk about heated rivalry or Bridgerton," honestly, as a guilty pleasure for the reasons that it feels trashy or low. Instead, I do understand this sense of the guilty pleasure when it becomes this thing that you cannot stop watching, and you're feeling guilt because you are watching it instead of doing other things in your life that you know that you maybe should be doing.

Alison Stewart: That's the role I'm in. I'm like, "Ooh, it's popcorn on my couch. I could be doing something else, but I'm watching this."

Kathryn VanArendonk: Yes. Look, that's everyone's own personal-- Everyone gets to decide that part for themselves. Right?

Alison Stewart: Yes. For some people, their jam is reality TV like Real Housewives, The Trader, Survivor, which is airing its 50th season currently. Why might shows like this provide a comforting experience for people looking for something just to put on their TV?

Kathryn VanArendonk: I think reality television, one of the really interesting things about it for me in the last several years, is that streaming series, which are so much of what we all watch now, streaming dramas, their seasons have gotten shorter, and they come out less frequently. It used to be the case that a television show would be 20 or more episodes, and you would know that it would come out again every single year. You could check in with your favorite characters, and they would be there for you, and you have these long, long relationships with them.

It's very hard to find that kind of thing in scripted television now. The pit is this deliberate throwback to that timing and scripting like anywhere else outside of network television. Look, there are Elsbeth viewers out there, I support you. I love you. The Elsbeth people. I am one of you. Like Bridgerton, part of the challenge of it is that it only comes out maybe every 18 months, and then you only get four episodes, and then it's going to be another four in a month.

Reality television is there for you. It is always there. They are making two seasons of Love is Blind a year. Those seasons have 12 or 13 episodes. Survivor is still on a long season schedule. Something like the Traders is coming out at a more regular clip. I think there's something really powerful to knowing that you get to turn on your stories and they're still going to be there for you with new things to watch without having these long, long gaps.

Alison Stewart: This says-- we're getting a lot of text. "Shetland on Brickbox." It says, "Lately, I've been binge-watching the Netflix show Hell on Wheels starring Anson Mount. It's the most historical drama about the westward expansion of post-Civil War and the transatlantic railroad." That's from Steven Lindbrook. "Deadlock. Watched it two times already. Will watch it again. Crossing my fingers for season two."

This says, "The West Wing was a really wonderful show, but also interesting to know how world problems are exactly the same as they were back when the show was made." That's interesting. Got another vote for The West Wing as a show to watch. I wanted to follow up on Bridgerton. You mentioned Bridgerton. I think we're-- Are we in the fourth season of Bridgerton?

Kathryn VanArendonk: This is season four. Yes.

Alison Stewart: It's about the fourth boy. Not the second one? No, he's second boy, actually. Benedict. It comes out in two parts. The first season comes out in four parts. Then we have to wait till February 26th for the second part of this season. What's the reason for the show splitting itself in two?

Kathryn VanArendonk: This is a strategy Netflix has been playing with more and more over the last couple of years, and I think it's happening for a few reasons. You'll notice that Love is Blind now works something like this as well. Where they'll give you several episodes on one Wednesday, and then the next Wednesday, you're going to get three more. They are attempting to split the difference between the all-in-one season binge that Netflix really became known for and that longer extended engagement that I think there's a lot of reason to believe has value. If you give us all of Bridgerton in one day, people will watch it all in one weekend. The length of that conversation window, the period when it is in people's brains, is very intense and very, very short.

It is this effort to try to keep people's minds focused, to not lose that sense of cultural relevancy quite so quickly. I really understand why they're trying to do it. The issue is that, I think, they have now trained audiences to expect a full season binge. There is this sense of outrage that there might not have been if they just did one a week, which something like Apple TV is really embraced as the model that they're going for. HBO never left that model. Then the other thing is that they will deliberately choose these big cliffhangery moments. If you have seen the first four episodes of Bridgerton, you know that they purposely picked the most infuriating place to end on.

Alison Stewart: Completely, I will say.

Kathryn VanArendonk: Yes. Then they, on purpose, make you just absolutely enraged that you do not have the rest of the season. No wonder people are storming online and being like, "How dare you do this to us?"

Alison Stewart: I want to ask you about Bridgerton between Benedict and Sophie, who is a maid. Allegedly, she was the child of a more noble man. Out of all the pairings that we've seen so far, how is their relationship different than the pairings that we have seen on Bridgerton so far?

Kathryn VanArendonk: Yes. I have to say I really have enjoyed this season of Bridgerton. One of the reasons is that they are playing with these ideas of class differences in a way that feels to me much more embedded in the world that they have built than the previous season's attempt to do stories about racial differences, which have always felt like something that they are teasing but uncomfortable with. Don't really know how to deal with. It's like a completely colorblind society. Then it's like, "No, no, it still matters, but, no, it doesn't." It just is this very incoherent sense of where the stakes are.

For Benedict and Sophie, they are much more direct about this being a significant, meaningful barrier between them, that he is the son of a nobleman and she does not have any access to the kind of wealth and privilege that he has. She is a maid, she works. She is perpetually rolling her eyes at him because he cannot do anything like light a fire. The stakes of why they cannot be together seem to actually matter in a way that I think this show has struggled with in the past.

I have to say, the other thing about this season that I really want to shout out is that Yerin Ha plays Sophie. She's had a couple roles before, but she's a relative newcomer, and I think she's truly so great in this season. It's one of those performances that you watch, and you think like, "Oh, oh, this person will have it. They need to have a long and great career because they're so good."

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Craig from Morganville. Hey, Craig, thanks for calling All Of It. What are you watching?

Craig: I'm watching The Beauty on FX, based on a comic book. I like it that they only do it once a week. Here's the thing, when they're not doing the action scenes, when it's just the agents or whoever's involved on public streets, it's empty, and it's like a throwback to the Avengers of the '60s, which is pretty surreal and makes it really cool. It's a great show.

Alison Stewart: I'm with you. I'm pro beauty. This says, "I watched 30 Rock in its entirety five times and have never told anyone that."

Kathryn VanArendonk: I love you and support you. You should check out this new NBC show called The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, which stars Tracy Morgan, is made by the 30 Rock creative team. Also stars Daniel Radcliffe, who makes some of the most interesting career choices, I think, in Hollywood, and is so surreally like 30 Rock that it feels like an out-of-body experience watching it.

Alison Stewart: This says, "I'm in my 40s, and my guilty TV pleasure is watching reruns of Henry Danger, a decade-old sitcom on Nickelodeon. Even when my kid isn't around. It's hysterical and very clever, and I laugh out loud. The guilt comes in mainly because the show's producer is Dan Schneider, and his treatment of the child actors in his orbit." That's a whole nother level we should talk about.

Kathryn VanArendonk: It's true. That is such an interesting element of the guilty pleasure phenomenon, and it is something that I certainly struggle with. As a critic, there are lots of things that I have loved and have been really influential to me. Then you have to wrestle with how you feel about those creators and the legacy that they have left. One of those things in my life is that my youngest daughter loves Harry Potter. That is something that I'm perpetually trying to think about.

For me, the answer to that is to continue to engage with those cultural works because they had an impact on us for a reason. That you can't let yourself just brush whatever it is under the rug. You have to sit and think, and make sure that you are remembering all the elements of how that work came into the world and what it is doing now.

Alison Stewart: Very good answer. My guest is Vulture TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk. We're talking about the best shows to watch right now when it is so cold outside. What is your favorite show to watch two, three, four times? Tell us what draws you in? Do you have any guilty pleasures that you want to check out? Our Phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. I see on my list here, Glitter and Gold. Do you want to set this up?

Kathryn VanArendonk: Yes. This is a three-part docuseries that's on Netflix, and it is about ice dancing. I cannot in good conscience recommend this docuseries as a high-quality piece of documentary filmmaking for a number of reasons. The main one being that it's a puff piece. They are, pardon me, skating through a lot of really thorny topics about the characters that they are following, including Chock and Bates and the Canadian ice dancing pair Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, and the French team as well. If anyone has been watching the Olympics coverage of ice dancing, you will know every single time that they announce them, they're like, "By the way, there's sexual misconduct issues with this couple."

This docuseries is not good at getting into them. It is very, very, very good at introducing the idea of these teams as characters. If you have been following this Ice Dancing Olympics, which had its-- the finale was yesterday. I was able to watch that finale because of this docuseries. Was watching that finale with my fingers just like gripping the sides of my sofa because I had had just enough more basis on who these people were. I found it to be super, super engrossing in spite of what the documentary was.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to, a little bit, this ice dance duo and married couple, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, talking about the early days of their relationship. This is from Glitter and Gold.

Evan Bates: When I first met Maddie, I just very vividly remember this bright California girl, coming into this cold rink in Michigan and just lighting the place up with her smile and everything about her. [unintelligible 00:15:23] When we started skating together, I just remember the impression being really, really strong and being like, "Huh, I really like this person. I'm having a lot of fun."

Madison Chock: We had a really solid foundation of friendship.

Evan Bates: After five years of skating together, it got to the point where I was like, "I felt more strongly than just being platonic friend or a skating partner."

Alison Stewart: That is Glitter and Gold. This text says, "Ryan Murphy's new show tonight, Love Story. That's about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette." This text says, "I loved Claire Danes so much in The Beast in Me. I'm now watching Homeland for the first time. The world is also eerily similar to the early 2000s, in which it is set." This is interesting. "I recently watched Ugly Betty in reverse order, starting with the finale and ending with the pilot." That's interesting.

Kathryn VanArendonk: That is wild. I have only done that a couple times, and because there are a few screener websites that I will not name that like to upload their episodes in reverse order. I have accidentally watched things backwards and not understood what I was doing. I would love to know what that actually feels like for a show as soap opera-y in its structure as Ugly Betty. I don't know if I can set aside the time to do that, but there would be-- I'm trying to think of shows that would be-- Outlander would be fascinating to watch backwards.

Alison Stewart: Yes. One of those shows we mentioned, The Beast in Me. Is a show that you put with groups like All Her Fault. What are the similarities between these shows?

Kathryn VanArendonk: Both Beast in Me and All Her Fault are thrillers about motherhood that came out in the fall season. They share so many similarities, actually, that it was a little funny. Our other TV critic at Vulture, Roxana Hadadi and I, she was assigned to one and I was assigned to the other. Then we were checking in on it being like, "We're watching the same show. What is going on here?" They're different.

All Her Fault is more pointedly about marriage, and motherhood, and gender roles. It is this thing where you're gradually realizing that you are probably supposed to be hating these characters, whereas The Beast in Me is a little bit more of a thriller. Neighbor Next Door is something-- is continued murdering going to happen show. However, they are, from a viewing experience, I think, very similar in the sense that you're introduced to these central characters.

You have this sense of a mystery that's happened in the past. You don't know what they are. They are unspooling. Gradually, you're finding out more information about them. Then there are going to be these big surprises that happen as you get through the season. I will also say that they both do a thing that I am getting annoyed by in television, but I understand can be a very comforting structure, which is, as you get near the end, there is a flashback episode. I have seen this enough that I'm like, "Okay, why is this always happening?"

However, it definitely grounds you once again in who these characters are so that by the time you get to the finale, you're like, "What? I didn't know." Both of those shows will give you that fun, grippy, thrilling experience.

Alison Stewart: They're very bingeable, by the way. This says, "I love All Creatures Great and Small on PBS, at least six seasons." This says, "Veep used to be my go-to, but now it's too on the nose. Now I've taken comfort in The Sopranos, which may arguably fall in the same category. Shrinking on Apple TV all day, every day. The characters, dialogue, and situations bring so much humor and heart." Who else did you want to add to this list in terms of comedies? We've talked about dramas, we've talked about reality TV. What should we do in terms of drama?

Kathryn VanArendonk: Or in comedy.

Alison Stewart: Comedy, sorry. Yes.

Kathryn VanArendonk: There's a couple things. One is I wanted to point out if you have not binged Schitt's Creek after Catherine O'Hara has passed away, which I was really, really upset about. That show is now on a lot of streaming services. It's many seasons long. It is that lovely, heartwarming. It's very, very funny. She has this incredibly strange, oddball performance, and then as the show goes, you get so attached to these characters, and that is something that I think would be lovely to go back and just sit and fully binge again.

Then there are two other comedies that I wanted to mention might be worth binging now because they have revival seasons coming up. The first one is Scrubs, which has new episodes coming soon. Scrubs is a really interesting early 2000s comedy that I find a little tricky to binge now because I think there are elements of its humor, particularly to do with the awooga eyes that it tends to do whenever a hot woman comes on screen, that I am struck by how much time has passed, that I now find this disorienting.

Those characters are so interestingly drawn, and it will be interesting to have that in your back pocket if you want to watch the revival. The other one is a very niche comedy called The Comeback on HBO starring Lisa Kudrow, which has a new season surprise coming out this spring.

Alison Stewart: I'm very excited to find out what happens to Valerie Cherish.

Kathryn VanArendonk: I know. I think it's going to be about AI, and so I think that will be a fun time on television.

Alison Stewart: As usual, it has been a pleasure having you, Vulture TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk. Thanks, Kathryn.

Kathryn VanArendonk: Thank you so much. Never a guilty pleasure for me to be here.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I'll meet you back here tomorrow.