Dayton, Ohio — After conducting what witnesses described as "an extremely thorough" review of his combined streaming libraries across six platforms, local man Derek Poulton, 34, concluded a four-hour watchlist curation session Friday night by selecting Season 4, Episode 3 of The Office, which he has seen eleven times, including twice in the same week last November.

Poulton began the evening with stated intentions to finally watch one of the 47 titles he had added to various queues over the preceding months, including a critically acclaimed Norwegian limited series, two documentaries described by publications he respects as "essential," and a film that won a major international award at a festival whose name he cannot pronounce.

"Tonight's the night," Poulton reportedly told no one before opening his laptop at approximately 7:14 p.m.

By 8:30, he had reorganized his Netflix watchlist by genre. By 9:00, he had read the Wikipedia synopsis of the Norwegian series to determine whether it was "too bleak." By 9:45, he had watched four minutes of the award-winning film before pausing it to check whether it "got better," a search that returned mixed results he found inconclusive.

"The subject demonstrated all the hallmarks of what we call Watchlist Collapse — the terminal phase in which the paradox of choice becomes so acute that the brain simply routes around the problem entirely and goes home."

Dr. Constance Weybridge, Senior Fellow in Recreational Surrender at the Dayton Institute for Leisure Avoidance Studies, said the outcome was consistent with patterns observed across thousands of similar cases.

"The subject demonstrated all the hallmarks of what we call Watchlist Collapse," Dr. Weybridge explained, "the terminal phase in which the paradox of choice becomes so acute that the brain simply routes around the problem entirely and goes home."

Poulton's watchlist, at the time of collapse, contained 51 items, two of which he had already seen and re-added by accident.

At 11:08 p.m., Poulton selected the episode of The Office in which Michael Scott mismanages a pretzel day event, a premise Poulton has described to at least three separate acquaintances as "genuinely so funny every single time." He was asleep before the cold open concluded.

Poulton told reporters Saturday morning that he felt "pretty good" about the evening and that he intended to watch the Norwegian series "this week, probably Sunday." His queue has since grown to 53 items, following two additional recommendations from a colleague he describes as having "very similar taste," a claim he has not verified.

The Norwegian series has won four additional awards since Poulton first added it in March.