I guess my inaugural post here will answer why I felt a desire to start a tv blog. My unabashed affection for television probably started when I began watching Alias and 24, and in one word these two series show how addictive tv can be at its best: suspense. Alias and 24 both use cliffhangers on a (semi) weekly basis, and this setup compels us as viewers to tune in the following week for some sort of closure, though with enough left unspoken to maintain our interests in the story beyond that episode (some people might call this strategy exploitative, but when a show crafts it well, its thrills are palpable). This sensitivity to time then becomes key to the tv watching experience: as one cliffhanger ends, the wait begins for the next episode. Similarly, because the availability of an episode is based around all things temporal; it only airs on a certain night at a certain time. The ephemerality of the show then creates the situation where we are loath to miss an episode, especially if inter-episode continuity (though in the case of Alias, that should read "continuity") is a component of the series. You can pick up a novel or a put on a CD almost at will, but for us tv junkies, we depend on the progression of time to bring us our medium (even if you have Tivo, you still have to wait for the official broadcast).