Walt Crawford is one of my favorite people to read; He is smart, has good things to say, and (most importantly) he is a Buffy fan. His post yesterday was about BtVS and how he has been watching them on the same night that the show was on, but on DVD. I came to the Buffyverse through Angel, which Walt is still unsure about, then moved on to Firefly, and finally to BtVS. It was a bit backward, but I ended up ok. Out of all three, Firefly is the one I love the best, but that is a tough, tough choice.
Walt poses an interesting question at the end of his piece that I too have contemplated:
One of these days, I’ll put together a post about the threat to new TV shows posed by all those DVD sets.
The question is out there and I have some thoughts. I too have been watching old DVDs instead of TV this past season and this summer, though I was watching Gilmore Girls this summer in an effort to catch up. Most of the shows I like on the regular season have been canceled and replaced with… well, crap is the nicest word I can think of at the moment. Most of my TV viewing has been replaced by Netflix and DVD series I have, which incidentally are all Whedon shows. The only shows that I am looking forward to when the new season starts are Lost and Gilmore Girls and I will always stay up as late as I can, about 11, to watch [adult swim].
I know that Walt and I are not the only ones with this problem.
DVDs are not the only competition TV has because now there is TiVo. Even my favorite show, cancelled, gone, and only on at 3 am, can be recorded and I can watch that instead of the families who switch wives to see who kills who first or who likes their new wife better. Don’t even get me started on The Swan etc. and about what message that sends out to people.
I know there are plenty of people who love the reality and the sitcoms that are currently on TV. I have occasionally been sucked into more than a passing glance, but I always feel like I need to take a shower when they are over or read some Dante, imaging those network execs floating in the river Styx. I think that until the networks stop putting on the drivel that skips across my screen each night, I will stick with my DVDs.
–Jane, has watched some episodes so much that she prelaughs at the funny bits