As soon as you said Cassavetes, I knew the exact episode. One of the great things about my present cable package. (Verizon just pissed me off in a major way, btw) is that I have two or three channels that are devoted strictly to various ages of old, older and even older tv shows, and I love watching tv from the 50s, 60s and 70s. They ditched The Fugitive just about the time I finally found it, but Columbo is so much fun that my 16 year old enjoys watching with me.
In many ways, NetFllix has taken the place of buying the sorts of tv show DVD sets, because you can watch so much there. The exception that comes to mind is Castle, mentioned above and my youngest and I watch it pretty much weekly together. But my DVR tapes every Castle episode, new or seven years old and in between. So we can take our choices from any number of episodes in the tracking of Beckett's mom's killer, or the early flirtation intensifying. I think my favorite Castle episodes were the two where James Brolin is his spy father. And a quirky favorite is when the guy from the future intrudes in their life, and reveals that Kate will eventually become a Senator.
I confine my DVD set buying to stuff that cannot be enjoyed easily elsewhere, Right now, I can watch a year of Castle episodes taped from USA in a week.
Something I didn't mention earlier is that several years ago, I bought the first 20 episodes on DVD of The Lone Ranger (original back to 1950) episodes including the killing of the Rangers by the Cavendish gang, and some other really cheesy, but for me very fun to watch early tv cowboy episodes. And there was something special about The Lone Ranger and Tonto.
I wanted my 21st century kid to experience just a little of what that hokey stuff felt like. There was a goodness about LR and T. The whole Lone Ranger code, which btw was included when I bought the last 19 episodes of LR in color. He had little use for the details.But we enjoyed watching the episodes together. They go pretty quickly without commercials. I realized in the viewing that part of my longtime values were imbedded watching scratchy B&W tv in the 50s.
