📺 My mother watches the same family serial three times a day

My mother has a 1:30 rerun, a 4 o'clock rerun and an 8 pm fresh episode of the same family serial, and she watches all three. I asked her once why, since the story is the same, and she said the second time you notice the clothes. I sat with her for a whole afternoon last Sunday to see what she meant. The mother in law character wears a different saree in every scene, and my mother names the shop where she thinks each one came from. She also knows which scenes were filmed on the same day because the earrings stay the same across two episodes. I did not believe it until she paused the TV and showed me. The plot itself moves so slowly that I can follow it after missing six months. A wedding that started in March is still not finished in October. My father calls it the longest function in the world and goes back to his newspaper. The strange part is how calm the room feels during the show. No phones, nobody talks, the pressure cooker even gets ignored for a minute. She keeps a small notebook beside the sofa with names of characters and who is related to whom, written in pencil, with arrows. It looks like a detective board. I tried watching two episodes without her, to see if I would like it. I got bored in 15 minutes. With her it is fun. She narrates, she scolds the villain, she predicts. Maybe the show is only half of what we are watching.

My grandmother does the same with her serial and I used to tease her until I noticed she remembers every relative better than I remember my cousins.