So I don’t care if it makes me sound stupid to say it: I like TV. TV shows, done well, have the ability to do something that movies really don’t: let characters grow with you over time. I’m a big fan of movies too, but let’s face it: you get to know a lot more about a character over the stretch of twelve hours spread over a brief summer season, twenty two hours spread over a regular nine-month season, six seasons spread over six years, than is possible in the fleeting two-hour span of your average cinematic experience. You know it’s good tv when you start talking about characters like real-life friends – you know it’s great tv when your real-life friends all love to talk about them too.

Just can’t convince yourself to start scheduling your life around some TV show? You’re in luck – with the advent of the DVD age, you can now watch many of the best shows on TV without once checking a TV Guide, rearranging your busy life to make sure that you’re in front of the boob tube at a certain time on a certain day, adjusting those rabbit ear antennae, or shelling out the bucks for cable installation. Just head on over to your favorite video store, mosey on over to the TV section, and grab whatever you want to watch, whenever you want to watch it. Shows are available on VHS as well, of course, but with DVD, you get more shows for your buck – you can generally rent a disc that has 4 shows on a single disk and pay the same amount you would to watch the two shows that can fit on a single videotape. Added to which, TV shows on DVD tend to look way better than they ever do on TV itself – for those of us poor suckers who lack cable especially – and as an added perk, no pesky ads to sit through.

Granted, TV on DVD lacks that expansive time element that to me, at least, is part of the joy of fine television. There’s something to be said for being forced to wait a week, several weeks, even a whole summer, to find out whether your favorite character’s really just bit the bullet, or who the mystery killer is, or how your heroine manages to extricate herself from a particularly sketchy sort of situation. If you’re patient enough not to plow through all the episodes of a TV show on DVD in a single weekend, you’ll be rewarded … you really do need time to let the characters build and grow on you. The best way to do this is to start hosting weekly "Insert TV Show here" Nights … if you know your buddies are eagerly anticipating your Thursday night gatherings to watch the next episode of your new favorite show on DVD, you’re far more likely to resist the temptation to watch all four disks at once.