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I love my DVR. It changed the way that I watch TV.  No more worrying about getting the kids to bed in time to watch House.  No need to say ‘no’ to any activity that conflicts with Lost. The DVR is the TV watching innovation of the decade, without any close second.  Until now.

Now, we have TV and movies on demand from Netflix.  Hundreds of movies and TV shows available upon the push of a button.  It started out that we could watch them on demand on our computer, which was nice, but not really all that comfortable or convenient. Netflix recently added the option to stream movies on demand from the Internet to my router to my Wii to my TV to my eyeballs.  I may never leave the living room again.

The single biggest score for my lovely wife and me is the 1970s TV show Soap.  Remember Soap?  Jessica Lang, Billy Crystal, Richard Milligan, Robert Guillaume. Most shows that I revisit from the 70s and 80s are so dated that I find myself wondering how I ever liked them to begin with.  But not Soap.  That show is as funny today as it was thirty years ago.

Surely not as shocking, though.  Soap was infamous for introducing the first openly gay character on television.  In the post-Will and Grace era, gay characters don’t even merit a raised eyebrow.  But back in the day, that was pushing the envelope.  And Billy Crystal’s over the top performance was so hysterically funny that it became less about breaking new ground and more about entertaining the audience.

Robert Gillaume, likewise, was gut-bustingly funny as the family’s insolent butler, Benson, who proved so popular that he received his own self-titled spin off.

We’re half way through Season One now.  For those who remember the show, they just introduced Chuck and Bob in episode 8 or so.  For those who don’t know Soap, get yourself Netflix, a wireless router, a Wii (or some other Netflix compatible device) and get cracking on watching.