The CBS/Showtime blackout is over, so why am I still VERY angry?

It's all over. Sometimes last night after 6 pm. all those Showtime channels on the grid repopulated along with the Smithsonian Channel. Of course we never lost the CBS Sports Network, poor little unpopular channel. It's been the whipping boy of the whole debacle.

I am still pissed off. Pissed off at Time Warner Cable. Pissed off because they chose to not deliver content I had already paid for (you pay your cable bill for the upcoming month's service) as a negotiating tactic in a dispute that should not have involved me at all.

I was not on Time Warner's team or CBS' team, I was on MY team. They were not on my team, despite their constant claims to be "working for me." The point of it all in Time Warner's mind was that they were protecting me from higher prices.

Bullshit.

So we're back to Ray Donovan and the final season of Dexter and all the Gigolos reruns you can stuff in your craw from the On Demand menu. One thing this new agreement does do for consumers is provide Time Warner subscribers to Showtime Anytime, their IPTV catchup service. Not yet, just checked, but apparently soon.

I will not be happy until the pay TV services begin to sell access to their catchup services to non-cable subscribers. Starz doesn't have one yet but I'm sure it's in the pipeline.

Ultimately what the disruption did for me was it let me know I could survive without cable. I purposely spent many days with just offerings from Netflix and Hulu and I was very happily enrobed in all kinds of great programming from previously unseen British sketch comedy from Robert Webb and David Mitchell to the first season of Bob's Burgers with which I needed to catch up to movies like Iron Sky (Nazis who have been settled on the dark side of the moon since WWII are found) and Safety Not Guaranteed (Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass get ready to travel through time).

If I didn't have a senior in my home I would be cutting the cord right now. However, he has a thing for turning on the History Channel and watching hours of their Vegas-set pawn and restoration shows. Still gonna try, gonna lay out the costs and the benefits for him and see if I can talk him into it. The difference in price is enormous! These two services and a digital antenna can get you through and quite famously, actually.

Something to think about. Huh?

A sumptuous orgy of TV comedy on Netflix, Hulu & Crackle

So, what do you like? Wanna bathe in a glorious pool of comedy ooze? Let in run over and through you? Give yourself over to the funny without reservation?

Got your comedy boner yet? Well stick it in these shows you can binge on right now on just about any screen you've got. Big, small, in between ... there's no prejudice here, just get your comedy on.

That Mitchell & Webb Look, from BBC Two

BBC America decided after series two that we didn't need to see three or four.

They were VERY wrong. I love these guys (pictured above), they're sketch writing is top notch and they have great chemistry as they always have since starting together with the Footlights at Cambridge and moving through clubs and onto TV in three sketch shows, as the stars of Peep Show from Channel 4 and as the Mac guy and PC guy in the British version of those Apple commercials that starred Justin Long and John Hodgman here in the US.

Watch all of the second season premiere here thanks to some copyright infringer at YouTube, as most of you don't have Hulu Plus:


The third and fourth seasons lose a couple of fan favorite sketches. Sir Digby Chicken Caesar ends with the second series as does Numberwang, but you get a great game show parody that takes place after a horrific armageddon only referred to as "the event." Hilarious. You can't lose with these guys, I'm also rewatching a bunch of episodes of Peep Show on Hulu Plus too.

Cut The Cord: I am fully, completely entertained by Netflix & Hulu on Roku

I am. Absolutely, full, completely entertained by a combination of Netflix Instant and Hulu on my Roku 2 device. It's been a perfect viewing experience. I had only one issue with the actual streaming on only on one Hulu video (from the 2010 Just For Laughs festival). Otherwise the picture is pristine on my 40" LCD, the useability of the Roku device is solid, and with adding on over-the-air broadcast stations I'd be set. No cable TV necessary.

Last night I watched a couple episodes of The IT Crowd on Netflix, The Speech, which features my favorite thing in all sitcomdom, the Moss and Roy plot that I affectionately call "Jen, this is the Internet" and Friendface, the episode that ends with Moss and Roy fighting to be Jen's fake boyfriend in front of all her old college chums. EVERY episode of this international Emmy and BAFTA winning sitcom that manages to squeeze so much funny out of only four regular characters and does it better than almost any other sitcom in history.

After that the final two episodes of Moone Boy on Hulu (also Chris O'Dowd, who's in The IT Crowd and also the recent HBO series Family Tree). Moone Boy's a show he created about a young boy kinda like him growing up in Boyle in Ireland who happens to have an adult imaginary friend (played by him). Delightful! Wonderful! Very sweet, funny, tale of Liam Moone, a moon faced boy living in the 80s in an Irish town with all the usual hurdles and hardships of being a kid ... with an encouraging someone on his shoulder.

Lovely show.

And great for your not-too-young kids, too.

And Steve Coogan shows up in an incredible guest starring role in the second episode. Don't miss that. His scenes with Liam's mom, played by the beautiful Dierdre O'Kane are hilarious.

NOTE: There are commercials on Hulu. You can't skip them. However, they are short breaks (maybe 40 seconds, tops), not the overlong breaks that broadcast and cable TV needs to keep the lights on. It's doable. These are the first TV ads I've watched in a long time, because I record EVERYTHING, even if I watch the same day. Or in the cast of last night's Jeselnik Offensive on Comedy Central, I started watching 11 minutes after it started so I could FF through the commercials.

What I'm recording: Cartoons, Downton Finale, Robot Chicken

I could show you clips from all the Fox animated shows that are all brand new tonight or ...



... that's right, every Bob's Burgers clip on YouTube (from Fox, you know, the official ones) because you should and you're a good a kind person and you deserve to be entertained and haven't you had a rough weekend and wouldn't comedy so good that it's already been renewed for a fourth season be just the thing to change the trajectory of your three-day weekend that has gone seriously off the rails after that thing with ... well, you know.

Also I'm recording the Downton Abbey finale, but to be frank I haven't watched any of them this season, they still all sit there on the machine taunting me with their need for closed captioning and their actual run times because there are no commercials.

And Robot Chicken's season 6 finale. Always. Los Angeles Times feature on them today at this link. Preview clip? After the jump.