March 25, 2022

Watching TV while high is one of the greatest joys of being a stoner.  And now with all the streaming platforms constantly pumping out new content, decision fatigue or finding yourself in a “show hole” is all too common and can be even worse if you’re already high. To save our fellow stoners lots of time, boredom, and scrolling, we have a few recommendations to make stoner TV time the best it can be!

What Makes a TV Show Awesome for Stoners

Whether you’re getting “in da couch” with an Indica or analyzing character choices with a Sativa strain, there are a few things that make a TV show especially great for a stoner.  Each of the shows listed here touches on at least a few of these traits, and is high-quality watching for anyone but would be enhanced greatly by a little THC.

• Cannabis can heighten senses/enhance sensitivity so highly stimulating and interesting visuals and audio are great for stoners.  We’re looking for richly detailed sets and costumes, vivid colors in CGI or animation, all underscored by clear and stimulating audio.

• Cannabis might shorten attention spans and make it easier to zone out so shows should be light on subtext and give plenty of context clues for stoners to latch onto after dissociating for a little bit.  Exceptional performances from actors help here, as more committed and authentic actors make less work for stoners’ brains to interpret.

• For stoners who hyperfocus or become more perceptive to details, possibly on a Sativa or hybrid strain, deeply layered stories like mysteries or educational shows are ideal.  If educational, show being entertaining is also necessary. 

• Some stoners love a long smoke session so these series will be binge-worthy in that they’ll have many episodes and character growth and story arcs that span multiple seasons.  

• Cannabis can also enhance a stoner’s sense of humor, so comedy, wit, and cleverness help a series make this list. 

Finally, our choices all released new episodes in 2021, most have more coming for 2022, giving our stoner friends fresh recommendations with plenty of possibilities for more stoned TV sessions this year.  

On With The Stoner Shows:

1. Marvel Streaming Series (Drama/Sci-fi Fantasy)

After over a decade of interconnected blockbuster movies, Marvel Studios expanded their universe to streaming series on Disney+, and they did not disappoint.  WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye are all amazing choices for a stoner’s nightly binge watch.  

Stoners will love these series because of their stunning visual effects, absolutely stellar performances from the actors, and, despite the superpowers, highly believable character choices, and easy-to-follow plot lines. 

Marvel excels at context clues, so even if viewers haven’t seen all the preceding films, or zone out easily, they can catch on very quickly while watching, or even get a crash course on each character via their Legends series, also on Disney+. 

Each of these shows has one season, 6-8 episodes each, on Disney+ and the episode runtimes range from roughly 25-67min, making them perfect bite-sized stoned forrays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

2. Ted Lasso (Comedy/Drama, wholesome)

Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ is the wholesome, optimistic hug everyone needed in 2021.  Starring SNL alumnus and long-time comedy powerhouse Jason Sudekis, the show is about an American college football coach taking the helm of a failing British professional soccer team, despite knowing nearly nothing about soccer.  

Similar to meta workplace comedies like Scrubs and 30 Rock, Ted Lasso cherry-picks and condenses all the best elements of the sitcom genre into an upbeat, fish-out-of-water story, often subverting expectations in delightful ways and even tackling tough issues like mental health and divorce.

This show is perfect for stoners who have binge-watched years of sitcoms, as it gives them the humor and heart they love in their old favorites, re-packaged in a fresh, updated show that reflects the modern nuanced sensitivities of our time. 

Ted Lasso has 22 episodes spanning two seasons streaming on Apple TV+

3. Foundation (Drama/Sci-Fi)

Based on a novel from the golden age of science fiction, Foundation is a visually exquisite Amazon Prime Video series that spans centuries and light-years in an ultra-detailed, action-packed political space drama.  The season starts in a single story, a small human colony dealing with a mysterious and dangerous monolith on a barren planet, and then jumps across history and space to other rich, complex stories giving context to that first moment, ultimately culminating in an epic finale right where we started.  

Foundation is an excellent choice for a stoner to watch because of its imaginative visuals, clear world-building, and complex and engrossing characters over many stories. As a science fiction and fantasy piece, the show features many creative settings and costumes that’ll keep stoners glued to the screen, but the cinematography is especially breathtaking.  The filmmakers tell a speculative story with an almost dizzying visual style that also challenges preconceived notions.  

Showrunner and executive producer David S. Goyer recognized that the elaborate, complex, complicated, storyline might be hard to follow and so included visual aids like clearly labeled time and location jumps, as well as distinct tones in each scene, to help keep all audiences, but definitely stoned viewers, conveniently on track.    

Foundation has ten episodes in its first season (viewers can expect two more) on Amazon Prime TV.

4. Mythic Quest (Comedy/Drama, workplace) 

Mythic Quest the fictional video game is a globally successful, and labor-intensive, fantasy world role-playing game. Mythic Quest the streaming show on Apple TV+ is an absurd workplace comedy about the company that makes the game with all the raunchy, sometimes toxic humor common to tech start-ups and other works of Mythic Quest co-creator/star Rob McElhenney, co-creator/star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. 

This show is especially perfect for stoners because of its wicked-sharp humor, expertly delivered by a cast of committed actors, aggressively relatable office dynamics as we get a glimpse behind the scenes of a video game start-up, and just the right amount of surprisingly sensitive and serious emotional drama.  

One delightful element of Mythic Quest is that a few episodes per season depart entirely from the main storyline, usually to lend further emotional depth to an upcoming pivotal moment or provide much-needed context to a complicated character.  These episodes still make viewers laugh while also telling deeply emotional stories, punctuating the series' comedic flow with highly engaging drama.

Mythic Quest has the humor, heart, and intelligence that keep stoners coming back for more. 

The show has two seasons on Apple TV+.

5. Love, Death, and Robots (Drama, Animated, Sci-fi, Speculative) 

Love, Death, and Robots is an animated anthology series on Netflix where every story is linked only by its inclusion of at least one of the three titular concepts.  A work of speculative fiction, each episode is a mind-bending dive into distinct worlds that challenges viewers visually, mentally, emotionally, and philosophically. 

Although these are all technically cartoons, viewer discretion is advised as there is a lot of adult content.  

Stoners will love this show because of its diverse animation styles, deeply engrossing stories, and short runtimes for quick forays into each dystopian universe. 

Each episode’s short runtime ranges from six to twenty minutes, but takes viewers on a massive journey, tugging on heartstrings they didn’t know they had.  They don’t always end with closure and comfort, sometimes with humor or unease, but always just enough satisfaction to watch the next episode.  

Love, Death, and Robots has 26 episodes over two volumes on Netflix.

6. Life In Color (Nature Documentary)

Life in Color is just one of David Attenborough’s dazzling collaborations with Netflix and BBC where they explore the natural world using cutting-edge technology.  This one focuses on the integral role that color plays in natural ecosystems, as in camouflage or attraction, utilizing new camera technology to better show different animals’ specific perspectives.

This show is perfect for stoners because it really highlights the ways in which planet Earth is extremely beautiful.  They use high-quality and situationally appropriate cameras to show literally never-before-seen images and animal stories.  Even if this weren’t fully novel footage, the subject matter is highly engaging and hard to look away from.

New camera technology also allows for increasingly more cinematic photography in documentaries, and this show benefits greatly from this.  From dynamic camera actions to intimate close-ups, Life in Color shows viewers, stoned or not, things they’ve never seen before in ways they’ve never seen before. 

It’s also perfect for a stoner with a low attention span because there’s no plot or characters exactly.  Stoners barely even need to pay attention because the visuals are so engaging that even if they space out for a minute, the next scene will pull them right back in. But if stoners do find themselves hooked by the show, they’ll get the added benefit of learning about and better appreciating the huge diversity of life on our precious planet.

Life in Color has one season on Netflix and many related shows.

Television for stoners has come a long way in 2021.  We hope this list helps stoners find better entertainment options more quickly and with higher expectations than ever. 

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