Yes you can use your phone, but only after the initial setup, to join wifi and login with Apple ID.

After that you can put your remote in a drawer and forget about it, well until you need to do setup again, although I have never done that in 3 years.

The remote comes with it, so it’s’ not as if you have to buy one, and the setup is literally a few minutes.

Don’t overthink this.

Does Todoist auto categorize items as you add them?

We only ever have a couple of streaming services at anyone time. I don’t understand why you would have all the services all at once. Just get a couple, then when you have had your fill get another for a while, all the content will still be there and the series that they released week by week will be there as a whole for you to binge. We have been doing it this way since we pulled the plug on cable.