As much as I obsess about keeping up with the blog posts in my Google Reader, my husband’s anxiety is provoked by unwatched TV shows recorded on the DVR. There was reason to be concerned about that with our first DVR box; since he prefers to record shows in high-def, the hard drive tended to fill up pretty fast and shows might be automatically deleted to make space, but we don’t seem to have that issue with our current recorder. Even so, he’s already talking about “all the TV we’ll have to watch” once new episodes start up again later this month. The half-hour sitcoms are manageable, but the winter/spring TV season brings more of our hour-long favorite shows as well, so the time commitment grows.

I’m both anticipating and dreading the return of Lost (February 2, if you haven’t marked your calendar) for its sixth and final season. I’ve kept my faith that the show’s creators know where the show is headed and that they’ve been steering it toward a satisfactory wrap for the last couple of seasons; I’m not doubting them now, but as we’re coming down to the wire, I really hope I’m not wrong. I’m glad this drama has the chance to come to a proper ending – one that I hope will answer most of the major questions it’s stirred up along the way – but I’m really going to miss it. I’ve grown to love some of these characters, and their stories, like those in a favorite novel.

Several of our favorite hour-long shows will be back from breaks soon. USA Network does this “split-season” thing with a few of their shows where they save the last third or half of the season’s episodes to start in January – and we’ve been waiting for the rest of Burn Notice‘s Season 3 since September! Our newest fall favorite, White Collar, will be back in a few weeks too, and so will Psych, which we just started watching this year despite the fact that my stepdaughter’s been urging it on us forever. I’m glad we finally listened to her – the mysteries are even weaker than those classics on Murder, She Wrote, but the show is just funny, which makes it good for unwinding on the weekends.

Also good for unwinding on weekends is my #1 guilty pleasure, Smallville – some of the best eye candy on television, and it keeps me busy quizzing Tall Paul as to how the storylines fit (or don’t fit) the Superman canon. We were latecomers to this show – we started watching last year, in its eighth season (he had watched it on and off in previous seasons, but I hadn’t). However, I gave Tall Paul Seasons 6, 7, and 8 on DVD for Christmas, so we can at least catch up on the more recent history of the show…theoretically.

I say “theoretically” because TV on DVD is the other half of the “all the TV we’ll have to watch” issue, and when do we make time for that? We’ve started on back seasons of The Big Bang Theory, but as a half-hour show without much in the way of story arc, it’s not so hard to fit that one in. I got the first season of Mad Men for Christmas, and that will be our introduction to that series; I’m really looking forward to getting acquainted with it. We still have the last two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to watch with 15-year-old Katie (I have been waiting for months to get to “Once More with Feeling”). There are those three seasons of Smallville I already mentioned, and another of Tall Paul’s Christmas gifts was Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series, which we never watched at all during its run. That’s a serious ding to our nerd cred, and since we’re going to the first two days of Comic-Con in San Diego this summer, we really need to do something about that.

We’re planning to free up some time and DVR capacity by sitting out 24 and American Idol this season, though. We may get 24 on DVD once the season’s over, and…well, let’s be honest, it’s hard to escape American Idol no matter what you do. I’m somewhat inclined to encourage popping in a DVD instead of idly channel-surfing when there’s nothing pressing recorded – I’ve taken the “appointment television” approach for years – but Tall Paul’s idle channel-surfing time is usually an opportunity for me to do something else (like write blog posts). If I’m going to suggest watching TV on DVD, I’ll need to ready for us to do it together.

None of this helps with the whole “all the books I have to read” issue, of course. How’s that invention to add two hours to each day coming along?

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Associate. This post contains purchasing links for TV series on DVD.

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