CLOSING THE LOOP

It's been a wild and wacky ride, but, after my six month marathon, I've finally closed the loop of my epic viewing of the "NYPD: Blue"television series.

After starting with my shiny new purchase of series five back in March, after that decade long delay between releases, I rattled right through to the end of the twelve-year run in a ridiculously short space of time, given that I am working full time, using my early mornings and any other free time I had to devour about one hundred and sixty chunks of this high quality pre-and-post-millennium American drama series and, after doing that, I though "What the hell…" and decided to run through - at a more leisurely pace I'll grant you - the first four seasons which I'd not seen in quite some time.

Anyway, on Saturday morning, after having had far more time to myself on Friday evening than I expected to, and consequently made more headway than I had thought I might, the last two episodes were consumed before the rest of the household surfaced, and I found myself right back where I began all of those months ago.

It's a good place to leave it, to be honest. All of the "classic" characters are now in play and at the top of their game, and all of the subsequent tragedies which I have already endured are still ahead of them, which means that I can drift away and let the boxes gather their dust until the next time I suddenly feel the need to devour a complete series from start to finish.

Although it wasn't exactly from "start" to "finish" was it…? It was more "middle to middle" I suppose, but that works, too, and it's not as if I don't have a history of this sort of thing. My epic run through of "Doctor Who" on videotape - the one which occurred just after I had moved to this house and was all alone with little in the way of spare "going out" money - started with Tom Baker's debut and looped back around to Jon Pertwee's departure, and my second complete run of "M*A*S*H" started with the arrival of B.J. and Colonel Potter and ended, rather tragically, with "Abyssinia Henry" a few months later.

Not all of my choices are quite like that, though. Both "The West Wing" and the updated "Battlestar Galactica" were run through from start to finish, and were, of course, wonderfully epic for that, but once you know how the story unfolds in such shows, it's tricky to watch them in quite the same way again.

Anyway, here I am, with a complete run of "NYPD: Blue" behind me and a decision to make as to which show is going to draw my attention next, given that I'm trying not to add any more "new" (or "trendy") shows to my "watch list" and whatever it is that I watch in the wee small hours has to be something that the rest of the household isn't interested in watching with me.

Or maybe I'll just get back to blogging properly again… or maybe I could even leap into that pile of unread books that I've been avoiding for a while and get my "literary head" back on…

So many possibilities, so little time...