Netflix TV

I've just watched the first season of Jericho on Netflix tv. I've been sick so I've had time lying about and enjoyed immensely the ability to program my entertainment with this brilliant series.  No commercials.  Easy download. I love Netflix.  Cheap at $8 a month.  I've loved tv series I bought in DVD but the cost of $40 or more a season was relatively prohibitive.  That said, Sons of Anarchy was well worth the price when we got it at Sturges North and watched it in the RV rainy nights after a Harley run.
When I first got Netflix a few years back the selection of movies was limitted and I only watched a couple before dropping out.   I've seen a lot of movies over the years being somewhat of a movie buff.  Tuesday 1/2 price movie at the theatre was a regular event some years.  Now it's only the movie that's a must see big screen event like the recent Men in Black that gets me out to the theatre. Some movies are cultural events and seeing them early in the first week at the theatre allowed one to be able to talk about them. Woody Allen films were like that a few years back.  Then there's Kidman's Australia which really needs a truly big screen to appreciate it.  Australia is that big a country.  Otherwise we like to stay at home with the dog and watch DVD.
I'd watched an episode of Jericho on tv and never watched it again. The commercials disrupted the 'flow'.  However, watching the series over a week has been like reading a great book .  The characterization, the sub plots and sub stories have all been so alive this way.  I realized too that commercials have caused television story telling to have to be 'dumbed down'.  Jericho has alot more happening than alot of the mainstream tv. Ironically lack of commercials can kill a tv series but equally commercials can kill a great tv show.
Thanks to netflix I'm reviewing tv series I've not 'caught on' too because without the commercials complex character stories like Jericho are really extremely intriguing. The fast pace thriller aspect is maintained without the interruption too.
I'm hoping that tv series and movie series find a better way to 'make money' to make the money they deserve.  The acting and writing of these has never been better.  Other venues seems to have sorted this out.  I don't mind paying the monthly rent for this sort of quality. I imagine however all manner of things that could of gone the 'commercial' route like 'educational lectures' at Univeristy interrupted every 5 to 10 minutes by a jingo.  Maybe with the health care crisis surgery can interrupted for a 'word from the sponsor'.  I recently had the experience of a video commercial board over a urinal and thought while I missed the opportunity for my own thoughts I preferred commercial in the washroom to commercials in my livingroom.
Just as Frank Lloyd Wright asked that architecture consider the environment it was in  an ahead of his time ecological consideration,  high quality marketting really needs to get on board with better ways of selling without abusing the potential 'customer' the way commercial disruptions of entertainment have.
Netflix  is a  great antidote.
I don't have much time in my schedule for tv or movies as is.  I suspect though I watch at least a couple of hours a day of some sort of entertainment making me one of those roughly 20 hour a week sorts.  Perhaps that's a lot by some standards, less by others.  Whenever I'm sick though or recovering from an injury or overworked tv series and movies are a favourite distraction and entertainment.
Thanks to Netflix though I can better program the content - indeed I could watch more 'discovery' channel easily if I was so enclined. Frankly I do watch a lot of history and science material but nothing beats a good tv series for 'comfort food enjoyment'.  Jericho did that like Friends and Tudors did it, like some of the HBO mini series have too.
Probably having watched so much Jericho this last week I'm a little post apocalyptic and more attentive to the BBC news about world terrorism.  Certainly Sons of Anarchy didn't affect my desire to do crime, if anything it made me more against it, but it did affect my desire to ride my Harley.  Just seeing the bikes on the open road was invigorating. "Friends" always takes me back to medical school days,  nostalgia of student friendships that is always enjoyable. I appreciate the friends I have today more as a result of the relationships depicted in the Friends series and in Seinfeld too.
Netflix lets me choose the tv I want to view.  I confess, if I'm eating alone at home, I prefer to watch tv , a half hour, rather than watching a movie which can have me infront of the screen for an hour and a half limitting the available choices for the evening after that.
I like that it's on my laptop too.  My Mac Air is just fine for viewing.  The Apple cube and tv seemed over priced and didn't have what Netflix has in comparison.