> Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room
No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file.
Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.
That's the latest version of yt-dlp, just downloaded. I tried from two different IPs, both actually also having signed-in Google sessions (so not even really trying to hide).
As always with the surveillance industry, your experience may vary. I'm sure there are workarounds - less-hassled IPs you can get access through, etc. The point is that going for the straightforward libre software solution lets you avoid playing any of those constantly-churning games to begin with. It's much nicer to use software systems that straightforwardly work in your interests, rather than having to trick adversarial systems.
For sure, this is why my original comment said "make your identity legible to Google". They're apparently happy enough with the identity signal of your specific IP, but they most certainly no longer allow general anonymous access. Reddit has not been generally publicly accessible for quite some time, and imgur even longer. Reddit at least still seems to work through TOR (no idea about imgur or Youtube).
The "AI" bot scare has really kicked the surveillance lockdown into overdrive. These days I get hassled merely trying to browse online stores. Like their goal is to advertise and sell things - yet they somehow care if it's "to a bot" ? rolls eyes.
No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file.
Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.