Reruns Don’t Have to Mean Doldrums : Television: Viewers get a second chance to enjoy once-rejected shows or really analyze old favorites.

Right about now, you’re probably turning on your television set, checking out the listings, sighing heavily and saying to yourself, “Seen it.”

Reruns. Repeats. Rebroadcasts. Call ‘em what you want. But when it’s summer and it’s network television, there’s no getting around them.

There is, however, a way to get through them. Fresh reruns.

The best reruns--need we say it?--are the ones you’ve never seen.

That’s at least one reason for their existence.

For the Big Four, the summer provides an open field for a prime-time network Hail Mary play, when a ratings bomb the first time around can score, and score big, on rerun. (And if it doesn’t, at least they fill a half-hour or hour they’ve already paid for.)

A good place to start looking for what’s new to you is opposite your favorite sitcom or drama of this past season.

Odds are you haven’t given whatever runs on the other channels much of a chance.

If you’re interested in a couple of critical hits that didn’t get much attention from viewers: Check out NBC’s critical smash “Homicide: Life on the Street” Friday nights at 10, catch up with Fox Broadcasting’s “Party of Five” Wednesdays at 9 or “Due South” on CBS Fridays at 9.

Another approach to reruns is to consider your second time around a learning experience.

OK, so you’ve committed every single punch line in that episode of “Frasier” to memory. You know the plot. The identity of the mystery caller on Frasier’s radio show. Fine.

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So now why not take some time to really understand the show: to get into its comic psyche, examine its Oedipal underpinnings, study the nervous tics of Niles, the canine complexities of Eddie.

Or maybe you could just bone up on your trivia skills. Pay close attention to any mention of relatives so distant they never appear on the program, middle names of main characters, single-episode references, that kind of thing. . . .

There are all kinds of ways to watch television. Some more pleasant than others.

See what kind of video mettle you’re made of. Be a TV Iron Man or Woman. Do like the kids do. Watch your favorite shows over and over and over and over until the TV G-force squashes you into your couch pillows.

In other words, see if you can get through ABC’s “T.G.I.F.” lineup without your head blowing up.

Or . . . You watched some show once or twice, something like CBS’ “Chicago Hope” and said to yourself, “Hated it!”

And then you found out all your friends were watching it. You felt left out. It gave you pause.

On the sly, watch it again. Watch an episode you’ve never seen and one or two of the ones that led you to your original conclusion. Now you have one of a few options: Bite the bullet, admit you were wrong; lie and say something like “Ohhhh, I thought you said, ‘Bob Hope’ ” or stick to your guns and say, “Gimme a break. I watched it twice. And it still stinks.”

Or . . . How about those times when your viewing got interrupted? The phone rang. The kids started fighting. The dinner was burning. You got distracted.

All of sudden, you missed half the show. Don’t you just hate that?

Well, every summer (and years later in syndication, but who can wait that long?) you get another chance. An opportunity to make up for lost time. To fill in the blanks. Finish something you started.