Stuck on Repeat: Serial Time, Romantic Fatigue, and Netflix’s In Love All Over Again (2023)

This article examines Netflix Spain’s In Love All Over Again (2023) as a case study for understanding the tensions within contemporary serialised romantic comedy. The series deploys meta-commentary and a non-linear temporal structure to dissect its chosen genre, staging an intervention in romcom conventions through the story of a romcom filmmaker and her diegetic actor lover. While such self-reflexivity initially deepens romantic tension by stretching the ‘will-they-won’tthey’ dynamic into an extended, serialised temporality, this article contends that the logic of narrative deferral ultimately becomes exhausting. The series’ endless, suspended retellings drain narrative and erotic charge through wearying repetition – a fatigue reflected in its negative reception and rapid cancellation. By positioning In Love All Over Again within broader debates on streaming-era seriality, heteropessimism, and narrative fatigue, this analysis demonstrates how the demand for prolonged serialisation in the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) landscape can undermine, even exhaust, the recursive romantic fantasy it seeks to sustain.

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