Commercials

I have become addicted to TV on DVD primarily for one reason . . . there are no commercials. I could really care less about the bonus features and such. There are no commercials. Honestly, that's why we buy them.

This all started about 4 or 5 years ago when I started watching reruns of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Don't laugh. I had a good reason. Among the first three episodes I ever saw was the season 2 cliffhanger. And it was on a Friday. So I had to wait all weekend to stew about everything. I happened to be in Media Play the following day (it was that long ago) and I saw season 3 on DVD so I bought it. Why wait?

Since then I have purchased the entire 7 seasons of Buffy, and all 5 seasons of Angel. then I branched out and started buying West Wing seasons, one at I time. I didn't want to look too shallow. I have all 8 now.

Now I own all the seasons for Alias, The Office, Smallville, and Lois and Clark. I have the first 3 seasons for a British show called MI5. I'm not sure if I want the others because they kill off everyone at the end of 3 . . . EVERYONE.

and I have watched everyone one of them multiple times. I can quote the Office and the West Wing, I can tell you who Rambaldi is, and which seasons of Smallville you can skip. The can draw family trees for Angel and Spike, and tell you how many times Buffy has saved the world from being sucked into some hell dimension.

But that just makes me look very very sad. And shallow.

So back to my point about commercials and how they can drive you to drink.

I watch regular T.V. on Thursdays to catch new episodes of Smallville and the Office.

Last night, I settled in to watch a rerun of Smallville that I had missed when I was using my opera tickets in January (see? Depth.) After 10 minutes I realized I had seen 3 minutes of the show and 7 minutes of commercials. I almost turned it off. The season will be out in September. I can catch the episode then. (And raise your hand if you hate Lana's new hair . . . Was she thinking this would be the new "Rachel Cut?")

But I decided to start keeping track in my mind of commercial time and show time. There were far more commercials. And Lana's hair is really annoying.

I can't help but wonder . . . is the economy getting to be so rough that the CW can't afford one hour of TV unless it 35 minutes of advertising?

I actually missed most of the show, because I was timing commercials, so if anyone knows what happened last night . . .