No Rentals for Old Men
At least not since last summer… and I’m not really an old man. But seriously, we have not set foot in our local video store since we returned from our trip to Chicago in August. And we’ve only been to the movies once to see Transformers on the Imax screen downtown. So as the hype for the Academy Awards started building I noticed that I was out of the loop as far as latest movies. Yes, I knew the names and the plots of the major ones, but we haven’t seen any of them and we haven’t heard of many of the others lesser knowns. Part of the blame can be because of the interesting political events going on. And partly because we have little ones who are not interested in watching Entertainment Tonight. But there’s another reason.
Television series on DVD.
While we were in Chicago, my father reintroduced us to the series ’24’. I remember back when the very first episode was shown and how much we wanted to see it. But we missed that first week and didn’t really feel like jumping in after already missing some of it. So we’ve spent the last few years slightly disappointed that we did not catch that first one. Especially after all the acclaim it has received.
My father had the first six seasons on DVD and I think we made it through a quarter of that first season before returning to Montréal. We’ve been watching them at a clip of about two per week along with some downtime between seasons. We just started season four last night. So we still have 69 episodes before we get to season seven which is not yet out on DVD. That would take us to about the end of the year.
But there’s another thing. Suddenly enlightened by seeing how fun it is to see television series without commercials, I went out and got the complete series of the X-files for my wifes landmark birthday. That’s 201 episodes, people, along with the full length movie. I have a feeling we won’t be visiting the video store or the movie theater for a few years.
Chicagoan in Montréal 
Not only will you not be visiting the video store, you might just avoid the outside world entirely…Start putting aluminum foil on the ceiling and stuff. And, finally, in the silent darkness, wait, listening for “them”.
Sounds like a plan…
Watching too much of the Xfiles may do that to you. I’ll start building a bunker tomorrow.
I’m a huge fan of TV series on DVD. We just purchased the first 3 seasons of The Wire on DVD — best show ever, period.
btw our local video store closed down a while ago, I think we need to look at zip.ca (essentially a Canadian Netflix)
You’ll laugh, but I’m older than you. We have several TV shows on DVD now — Family Affair; Baa Baa Black Sheep; The Waltons; Emergency!; Wild Wild West; Sports Night; and our newest one, The West Wing. Okay, so we got one or two right. :o) It is wonderful to watch the series from our childhood and formative years (and not so formative years) reappear.
We also just saw the U2 IMAX movie — excellent.
We actually don’t watch much TV anymore. The only shows we watch regularly are a couple reality shows and CBS Sunday Morning. Otherwise it’s random dramas like the Law & Order series or CSI. Free time just seems to be getting shorter.
Though if there were any old shows I’d like to see on DVD, they would be the Simpsons, Seinfeld, and various science documentries like Nova. There is likely others, but I can’t think of them at the moment.