See You In Syndication

Later tonight they are going to air the series finale of "The Office." I have to say, 9 seasons is a pretty good run for a show no one thought would make it more than 2 or 3. Now I have to admit I won't be watching tonight's final installment but that is par for the course, because I rarely watch episodes of "The Office" and when I do it is never the new episode. The more likely scenario is that I eventually catch a rerun on another network. The first few years the show was on everyone told me how much I would love it but for some reason their recommendations always fell on deaf ears. I guess there was just always something I wanted to watch instead, though right now I can't tell you what that would be. I did try to watch the show on a few occasions and even watch an episode of the original, UK version of the show but by that point I feel like too much time had elapsed to be invested. Plus, the show had been on the chopping block for a couple of seasons, so I figured why get attached to a show which was going to be cancelled soon anyway? (This is what stopped me from getting into shows like "30 Rock" and currently prevents me from tuning in to programs like "Community.) And this is not the first time I have felt like I have missed my TV viewing window.

Previously I mentioned that when gamers are in their early teens they make a very important decision in their lives - X-Box or Playstation - and once that decision has been made there is no reversing it because the effort required to master the controllers is simply too time-consuming to allow for both. More and more I am feeling like TV shows are demanding that same level of loyalty. With a vast number of channels offering original program and only so many hours in the day to watch shows if you still want to be a productive member of society you just have to pick your programs, hope they don't fail you and refuse to alter your schedule. It also doesn't help that TV episodes are being forced to cram as much story into 22 minutes as they can (it is not like commercial breaks are going to get shorter). The days of being able to skip an episode without missing a lot of key storylines are going away, especially if you are talking about a drama. There is nothing worse than not catching an episode, being convinced you are caught up with everything going on and suddenly realizing you have no idea what the characters are talking about because they are referencing some fact which happened the night your cable went out.

The other problem is that after a while having a mountain of old episodes of a TV show to watch is a rather daunting task. For example, I think I would like to go back and start catching up on "Breaking Bad" but at this point it's around 60 hours and do I really want to sacrifice all that time in the summer? When the task is that large watching old episodes of a TV show starts to feel like homework and the entire point of television is to escape the feeling of doing something out of obligation. Seriously, the only way I catch up on that show now is if I get a monster version of the flu and does that sound like something I should be wishing for just to watch a TV show? Even the invention of DVRs isn't helping because while you think you can record something now and watch it later people rarely ever go back and clean up their library as instead the shows just sit for months. On top of that the newest episodes in the On-Demand library usually disable the fast-forward option, which means you can't even catch up quickly. That's like having Cliff's Notes which are just as long as the regular book. And the networks aren't doing you any favors either because for all the crap they seem to churn out in a given year (they just released the teasers for most of the new shows coming out next year and I can already confidently predict 75% of new shows won't get a full-season run), they still manage to put the only two quality shows on opposing networks on at the same time. I can't tell if this is brilliant or idiotic, but I know which way I am leaning.

The funny thing is that you would think shows like "Justified" or "The Wire" would be easy to catch up on because they are on cable channels, which means their seasons are only 10 to 13 episodes long versus a network show which can crank out 20+ episodes per run. However, those shows are actually crazy complicated to keep up with because writers are always trying to out-think themselves by adding new characters and multiple over-lapping story arcs which will be repeatedly referenced in the future. As it is you pretty much need to take notes as the show airs, so if you aren't in with a program from the very first season you have a small window to catch up on all the action or there is simply no hope for you. Thus, with 8 previous seasons to catch up on you can see why I didn't bother to try and cram all the back episodes of "The Office" in before tonight's finale. The good news is that I don't work in an office in which people want to talk about all the shows they watched last night, so tomorrow I won't feel left out of the loop. Plus, I think if you are in an office talking about "The Office" it creates some kind of weird space/time loop and those never turn out well for anyone.