I finally got caught up on AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” an all-around terrific show. I missed the first season, but I watched it on DVD. I missed the first six episodes of the second season, but I DVRed them. Now, I am all caught up and ready for the season to start again.

Hahn

Being “in” on a TV series is fun. You get to look forward to weekly episodes. You can chat, speculate, and go on about each episode with your friends who are also “in” on it. There is a special kind of excitement knowing that every week you get a new slice of regularly scheduled entertainment. It’s awesome.

The only problem is that to be part of the in crowd on these shows you have to have seen it from the beginning. Picking up a show mid-season, unless it’s a sitcom or episodic drama like “Law & Order,” is very, very hard. If you are watching it by yourself, you typically have no idea what is going on. You need an “in” person to explain it to you, which means frustration for both of you. You want to know what is happening, and they just want to watch the show.

If you want to enjoy an ongoing series, it means you need to get caught up. Catching up is a process that takes time, money and commitment. Time because you are trying to compact one season — or two or three — into a normally unhealthy amount of time. Money because if you want to get to watch multiple seasons it means either buying or renting previous seasons of the show — unless you are fortunate enough to have friends who already own them. Commitment because the path to enjoying the fruits of being caught up is fraught with obstacles, peril and mortal danger. Maybe that was an exaggeration. But whether it is renting seasons, watching online episodes, DVRing, or — heaven forbid — using a VCR you will need to invest an embarrassing amount of effort into the process.

Here is an example. The Fox serial drama “24” came out in 2001. Because of its format — every hour-long episode represents one hour in a day — it is almost impossible to miss an episode and have any idea what is going on the next week.

My older brother and I started watching episodes from the first season in the summer leading into my sophomore year of high school in 2005. After purchasing four seasons (for more money than I would care to admit), recording one season every week, and 120 hours of watching Kiefer Sutherland blow stuff up and yell orders at people, I was finally able to watch one season live. It was my junior year, season six, in 2007. Then in 2008, while I anxiously awaited season seven, the writer’s strike happened. It was another year until I was able to watch more wholesome goodness of hourly televised action. By the time season seven eventually rolled around I was a freshmen in college and because of night class, I couldn’t watch the weekly shows. I tried keeping up with streaming video, but sadly I had lost the spark and stopped watching.

After all that effort I will think twice about getting caught up on a show again.

Here are some of the shows that I have gotten caught up on:

  • The Walking Dead
  • Game of Thrones
  • The West Wing
  • 24
  • Deadwood
  • The Wire
  • Heroes

Here is a list of shows (past and present) that I’d like to see but I lack the willpower to get caught up on:

  • Lost
  • The Sopranos
  • Madmen
  • Glee
  • Breaking Bad
  • Entourage
  • Dexter

Kevin Hahn