Screw NBC...

ARGH!

NBC is driving me nuts right now.

I had planned to spend a quiet night in tonight.

Hey! Don't roll your eyes! Yes, it's a Saturday night and, yes, I could be doing something much less loser-ish. But I'm getting old - I have a trick knee and everything. I'm tired. I work 40 hours a week and I go to school full-time. And I blog; I'm obviously just not that cool anyway.

Anyhoo... back to my quiet night in sweats at casa de Nagel... I missed this week's "Office," which isn't a big surprise. I still have yet to see a new episode when it originally airs. So, I was planning to come home, log-on to NBC's site and watch streaming video of the episode. I'd be done in 25 minutes and ready to go on to something else (another beer? an on-demand movie? a pint of Ben & Jerry's? I'm a wild man - who knows what'll happen?).

Of course it couldn't have been that easy.

The streaming video wouldn't stream. I can handle that mostly, but this was choppier than sharing a water-bed with a pre-diet Subway Jared. To make matters worse, every time the episode cut to the little commercials NBC inserts, the show would start again from the beginning. And then, the option to skip a segment didn't work, either. Meaning that I was forced to watched the first segment half a dozen times.

In frustration, I tried to download the episode (NBC will give them to you free for 48 hours before erasing your viewing privileges). But you first have to have NBC's specially designed viewer. That doesn't work on Macs. Now, granted, Apple only owns an 8% market share... but, think about it, who are the ones watching shows online? Yup, that's right, the younger, hipper, smarter, better-looking, Mac-owning crowd.

Then, I tried downloading the player on my sister's PC. That took about 20 minutes, because Microsoft makes everything as complicated and as user-unfriendly as possible. And (of course!), I had to get the newest version of the crappy Windows Media Player in order to get the NBC Viewer thing to run. Ten more minutes of downloads there...

After all of that hullabaloo... did I get to watch The Office?

No.

Instead, I received a nice, fat error message.

F. U.
N. B. C.
F. U.

(A little background here... NBC has chosen to not make its shows available for download through iTunes. So, instead of being able to drop two bucks for an episode that I can watch in less than 10 minutes with a single click, I had to pull out handfuls of the little hair I have left - most of which is in my nose. And that smarts.

For the love of all that is good and holy, please put The Office back on iTunes!)

What I'm obsessed with (for now)...

Let's get one thing straight... I do not watch TV.

That's not to say I don't own one. I do... I think it cost $79.99 at Target my sophomore year of college - great way to put that scholarship money to use!

But my little picture box is barely able to call itself a television set. It's 19-inches (just like me, ba-dum-ching), has one button on the front and a remote that only works after slamming it onto the coffee table and muttering Inca curses. It's not so much there for picture-quality as it is for picture, period.

I do have cable... the intermediate package, actually (Hmm... intermediate package - that may be more accurate. But, uh, moving along...). But I only am willing to cough up the $105 a month for it because it means I get to watch every Sox game on NESN and gives me access to the sixteen different ESPNs that are out there: ESPN, ESPN2, Classic, Classicer, News-and-Sportscenter-when-ice-skating-is-on, the Ocho, the Spanish one, the Esperanto one... need I continue?

That, essentially, is the only TV I watch... I get to enjoy the Sox for maybe 7 months of the year and watch football highlights the rest of the time.

What I mean about not watching TV is that I don't watch any shows with any kind of regularity... I don't have time for the dramas, don't care about the reality shows, puke when anything on MTV comes on, don't watch as much news as I should. The only thing I follow is Lost and that's the result of becoming addicted by downloading episodes from iTunes to show off my video iPod (back when it was new and exciting, 60 gigs and not full).

I've never been a TV junky. I think, for that, you can blame my mom. We never got cable until 4 years after I moved out and, since we lived in rural NH, the only terrestrial channel we got without loads of static was ABC. So, ask me any TV-related question from the 90s not involved World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and all you'll get in return is one big blank stare.

Since I don't watch the boob tube (hehe, boob), I'm always way behind any bar conversations about pop culture...

Me - "Hey, did anyone see the Friends finale the other week on TBS?"

Everyone else - Awkward silence, followed by them slowly shuffling toward the jukebox and away from me.

So, now that NBC's The Office is a hit and in its forth season, all my friends are talking about it, it won something called an Emmy or two, I just started watching. I figure it's about time, right?

I wound up buying the first season (6 episodes) on DVD two weeks ago and I watched them all in two days. Then, thanks to the gloriousness that is iTunes, I downloaded Season 2 in an hour and spent a Friday night holed up watching episode after episode. I'm now halfway through Season 3 and I can't get enough.

I've never seen the BBC original... but I can't imagine it being any funnier. Each of the main characters (Michael, Dwight, Jim and Pam) can carry episodes by themselves. The supporting cast (Kevin, Angela, Ryan the intern, Stanley, Phylis, Oscar and Toby) provide some of the best lines. The writing is edgy, in that the show discusses some really offensive and sensitive issues, but it strives first to be funny and second to make a point. You'd think that'd be a simple thing to do, right? Sadly, it's not... maybe that's why I don't watch TV.

Also, I find myself really caring about these characters for some weird reason. Yeah, it's just a sitcom, but I really want Jim and Pam to get together (they do, right? I kind of looked that one up), I hate seeing Michael mess up, I want Ryan to slap Kelly, etc... This show really gets to me. Perhaps it's a product of not watching TV and just being a naive sucker, but I think it's more than that. Solid writing all around...

I haven't seen anything from this season yet, but I have heard that the first four episodes were 1-hour long and dragged a bit. I hope that's not the case... if so, don't kill my buzz. I'll download it as soon as I'm done with the third !