I imagine it's a compromise between cutting through the fluff and using the primary source material. You could just read the plot synopsis or watch the highlig

I imagine it's a compromise between cutting through the fluff and using the primary source material. You could just read the plot synopsis or watch the highlights, but sometimes those don't convey build-up, suspense, or other data that are hard to losslessly compress. Being comfortable with the "boilerplate" of a given medium or genre usually lets you skim or skip it to jump right into the good stuff.