I've been an insomniac since I was 14 and underwent spinal fusion surgery. After about a year, the physical pain and discomfort subsided, but my ability to sleep comfortably did not. Wandering through my house like an angry, neurotic ghost, I sampled all of the over-the-counter sleep aids (not to mention some prescription-strength stuff) in an attempt to reset my circadian rhythms, but nothing really stuck. That is, until I bought my Roku box four years ago.
I had abandoned cable TV after graduating from college in 2004; up until when I bought the Roku, I regarded the TV screen as an appendage to my DVD player, pretty much only using it to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs. Most of my actual TV watching took place on a laptop that scalded my thighs. The Roku box seemed like it would solve this problem — I could stream Netflix, Hulu, and other sites to my TV and no longer risk third degree burns or possible fertility damage by watching them on my computer.
But aside from injury prevention, I soon discovered other unforeseen advantages to Roku. When watching a TV series through the box, it doesn't automatically go to the next episode. I have to hit "Play" for it to move forward, so if I fall asleep halfway through an episode, the screen goes black and the room darkens and goes quiet — perfect slumber conditions and a vast improvement over trying to fall asleep while reading.
Once I realized the potential of the Roku Sleep System, I started looking for content to stream that would lull me to unconsciousness the fastest. And I came up with a few rules for the type and length of show that works best.
RULE #1: WATCH SOMETHING YOU'VE ALREADY SEEN
The first rule of streaming sleep is similar to first rule of writing: watch what you know. This isn't an opportunity to clear your Netflix queue with that show/movie you've been hearing all about. You don't become so engaged in a show that you need to see it through to the end so that you know how it ends. This is why shows like Orange Is the New Black or House of Cards are best left to primetime viewing hours, not late night.
My go-to show is 30 Rock. I've seen each episode so many times that I sometimes dream as Liz Lemon (though it's hardly original for a single woman living in New York to see herself as that character). I wake up, refreshed, humming the tune of "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" and hankering after some night cheese, which is demonstrably different from day cheese since it is made from the milk of cows that are on a normal sleep schedule. (If I have one gripe about 30 Rock, it's the end of show music that sometimes snaps me out of my reverie.) Other shows that perform similarly on the sleep meter are Better Off Ted, Parks and Recreation (though not that first season), and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: all programs I had watched in their entirety before I explored their tranquilizing potential.
RULE #2: WATCH SOMETHING PREDICTABLE
You don't have to know the plot of every episode in order to fall asleep in front of it. Some shows are so formulaic that it might feel like you've already seen the episodes. It's network TV comedy deja vu. I half-slept through all of the Netflix available episodes of How I Met Your Mother, though I had only watched a handful before I started to take one or two to go to sleep. It was just funny enough (Suits! Slap Bets! Robin Sparkles!) that I was distracted, but not so suspenseful or original that I felt the need to stay awake to see how each episode turned out.
Frasier is another show that entered my subconscious while I was mostly unconscious. Even though I had seen more episodes of the Cheers spinoff than I had of HIMYM before self-prescribing the show for somnolence, I still hadn't seen a critical mass of them. No problem. Nothing too surprising happens in a given episode and the antics never get too loud. It's staid and even tempo. It's like the elevator muzak of TV. (Though I suspect that I would be much more engaged by the Black Frasier referenced on 30 Rock.)
RULE #3: DON'T WATCH SOMETHING DRAMATIC OR FRIGHTENING
After I had gone through several network comedies, I figured I'd try a drama and Law & Order: SVU seemed like the ideal choice. Was it formulaic and predictable? Yes. Had I seen most of the episodes? Also yes. But I forgot one important thing — I fit the demographic profile of most of SVU's victims. I'm a single woman who lives alone in New York, and, according to my wildly unscientific data, 25 percent of all SVU episodes start with a woman who lives alone in the city getting attacked in her apartment. After a couple of seasons of late-night watching SVU, I started obsessively checking my window locks, almost calling on my super to look into the matter.
Ditto for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Though I didn't lie awake at night in fear of Romulan or Borg attacks, the dramatic nature of the action and the music — especially the changes in scoring throughout — made it tough to sleep through. And when I managed to fall asleep to TNG, I'd wake up the next morning, regretting that I had missed the end of the episode and would rewatch the episode the following night. Caring how things end violates the first rule of Streaming Ambien.
RULE #4: EMBRACE KEN BURNS
Don't get me wrong: as the daughter of two history teachers, I love history and Ken Burns documentaries. I watch them during my waking and alert hours. But that doesn't mean that they can't also be put to somnolent effect. Regardless of the turbulence and drama of the subject matter — WWI, Prohibition, the Civil War — Burns somehow manages to make them seem as soothing as a lullaby told by Ferris Bueller's Ben Stein. (Come to think of it, has someone made a loop of Stein saying "Bueller"? Cause that would be an excellent tranquilizer.)
I know that watching TV to fall asleep is the very thing that all sleep researchers urge you not to do. They tell you to make your bed a haven of slumber, that the only thing you should do there is sleep. But whoever came up with these strategies has never lived in a New York City studio apartment. There is just the one room and that's where all of the magic happens — from working to TV watching to reading to eating night cheese.
Trying to compartmentalize my behaviors in my studio is like trying to get Liz Lemon to find a sustainable work-life balance. We may both want to go to there, but it probably won't happen.
Dvora Meyers (@dvorameyers) is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. The End of the Ten, her forthcoming book about women's gymnastics, will be published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in Summer 2016. She is currently falling asleep at night to The Office.
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Photos: Everett Collection
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