172

Well, I'm really not sure where I found the time but somehow, since ordering myself up that first box set so that I could carry on with my long-interrupted "NYPD: Blue Marathon" back in late March, I've managed to find the time during the wee small hours, and time left home alone, to pile-drive my way through the remaining 172 episodes which made up seasons five to twelve and yesterday morning I completed the run with "Moving Day" the very last episode of a very long journey which ended nearly a decade ago on American TV, but which somehow got away from me due to some life, retail and scheduling issues.

One hundred and seventy two episodes… It seems almost unbelievable… and that doesn't include the eighty-eight or so which I worked my way through a decade ago.

Nevertheless, this "achievement" (or complete waste of time, or whatever else it is) represents more than 100 hours of television that I've somehow managed to squeeze in around my schedule and might, just might, explain why matters of a more Blogfordshire-related nature have been playing second fiddle to this obsession lately, although that may also have had something to do with computer issues which have made even the most basic of typing into a rather frustrating chore in recent times.

And was it worth the effort…?

Probably not.

After all, you only live once, and I imagine that few of us slip off this mortal coil wishing that we'd watched more telly…

However...

The show was, of course, one of my favourites, right from the moment I first saw the pilot way back in 1993, and was one which I always intended to acquire as and when I could, not least because I never got to see a lot of those later seasons for various reasons, and, whilst there was perhaps the inevitable dip in quality in later seasons as actors came and went, budgets were cut, and storylines needed tweaking to accommodate those sorts of thing, the show itself could still move me in quite alarmingly sentimental ways as it approached its inevitable conclusion and the long salvation of Andy Sipowicz and his redemption storyline came to a rather satisfying end, whilst also finding, rather pleasingly, time for a post-retirement Greg Medavoy to appear in the show right up until the final show.

Still, "When you're gone, you're gone…!"

So, after having consumed all of my spare time for the past three months or so, the time has come for me to bid adieu to Andy Sipowicz and the boys and girls of the detective squad of the 15th precinct, and decide what to do next when it comes to my "box set blitz" of choice, or, perhaps, maybe the time has come for me to realise that there's more to life than just telly and that I shouldn't waste that precious thing we call life staring endlessly at some kind of a screen.

You never know, I might just return to regular bloggery again, and try to get the gears of my mental motor spinning properly once more to present you more pointless nonsense dredged from the increasingly irrelevant backwaters of my mind…

Although…

I do have to admit that going back to the beginning and working my way through those first four years again is proving incredibly tempting...