KD^3CD^3 - 20260510 Sleep’s Older Sister
Here’s something I’m almost definitely not going to do: Start printing my own blu-rays.
I have a running list of tv shows that have never had a physical media release. A bunch of shows are on the list! Over 2 dozen at last count. Some of them are obscure/never quite successful enough to get a home media release (Abby’s, Roc, Bunheads, What Just Happened?‽ with Fred Savage) and some are streaming-only show that were made in the last 10 years or so when all the streamers decided they want you to pay them every time you watch a show and so never released them in any other format (Russian Doll, How to With John Wilson) or somehow a combination of both (We Are Lady Parts, Reservation Dogs). All of these shows I would pay money for if I could have physical copy to sit on my shelves. I would also then, of course, rip them to my plex server so I could watch them more continently. Yes, I am aware of the irony.
But a thought occurred to me this week. I have a blu ray drive. I mostly use it to rip movies and shows, but it has burning capability. Many of the shows on the list are available for “Purchase” on digital storefronts. I put purchase in scare quotes there because as the EULA states (and the courts have confirmed) you aren’t actually buying a thing. Instead you are entering into a licensing agreement where the company who owns the rights to the movie will allow you to access it (usually via streaming, occasionally via downloading) for as long as their good will allows. You don’t own it, you paid for indefinite access, and the company has the right to turn off that access at any point eat their sole discretion. You know what they can’t take back? The DVD on my shelf. Which is why, with very few exceptions, I don’t “buy” movies or shows on those platforms. I got burned on one of my very first purchases, where the company revoked my access to a season of a show that they didn’t want me to have anymore and I’ve been incredibly unwilling ever since. And if I do “buy” a movie or show that way, I do so knowing full well that it’s only temporary access that I paid for. I don’t have any illusions about that.
Back to my thought. I have a blu ray burning drive, and you can buy burnable blu rays. You can even buy ones with printable labels, either with a specific disk printing machine or desktop inkjet printers that have a disc printing attachment. and DVD cases can be bought in the same store that burnable disks are available for purchase. So theoretically, I could buy the shows digitally and then make my own physical copies. Now of course to do that, I would need to find a way to circumvent the DRM that is obviously going to be on those video files, and as previously discussed, I wouldn’t actually be buying them, as I am well aware. So really what this whole thing boils down to is piracy with more steps. Which is why I’m almost definitely not going to do it. Probably. I don’t have room for the printer for one thing.
One show I don’t need to print my own DVDs for is Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, a sitcom from the late 90s/early 00s about well.. two guys, a girl and a pizza place. It was one of the dozen or shows that came out after the success of Friends, being a sitcom focused on a group of young attractive people in a city. There were a bunch of these and I watched many of them, despite never being a big fan of Friends. Many of them tried to have a unique twist, or a catchy name (rarely both). There was It’s Like, You Know… (punctuation included) which was “Friends Crossed with Seinfeld, but in LA and Jennifer Gray plays herself” or Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane which was “Friends, but they’re even younger, and Selma Blair plays Zoe” and, later came what was the true successor to Friends, in my opinion, How I Met Your Mother which took the light serialization of Friends (“we were on a break,” the apartment swap, etc) and dialed it up to maximum. It was still an episodic show, but there were ongoing storylines, and an overarching narrative, even if they were making a lot of it up as they went. They didn’t quite stick the landing, but for most of the run it was really good.
One show I don’t need to print my own DVDs for is Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, a sitcom from the late 90s/early 00s about well.. two guys, a girl and a pizza place. It was one of the dozen or shows that came out after the success of Friends, being a sitcom focused on a group of young attractive people in a city. There were a bunch of these and I watched many of them, despite never being a big fan of Friends. Many of them tried to have a unique twist, or a catchy name (rarely both). There was It’s Like, You Know… (punctuation included) which was “Friends Crossed with Seinfeld, but in LA and Jennifer Gray plays herself” or Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane which was “Friends, but they’re even younger, and Selma Blair plays Zoe” and, later came what was the true successor to Friends, in my opinion, How I Met Your Mother which took the light serialization of Friends (“we were on a break,” the apartment swap, etc) and dialed it up to maximum. It was still an episodic show, but there were ongoing storylines, and an overarching narrative, even if they were making a lot of it up as they went. They didn’t quite stick the landing, but for most of the run it was really good.
But we were talking about a Pizza Place. One of the Two Guys was Ryan Reynolds, and I’d argue this show is what helped him move towards being a household name. The other Guy and Girl aren’t as famous, but you’ve probably seen the Girl if you watched Monk, where she played Natalie, Monk’s second assistant. The Pizza Place in Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place is where the two guys worked, at least in the first two seasons. In the first season their manager and one customer were mainline cast members but they got cut for season two (wisely). Season two also introduced two more regulars in the form of love interests for some of the characters, and that’s when the show really hit its stride. One of those love interests? A pre-Rookie, pre-Castle, pre-Firefly Nathan Fillion. Nathan Fillion will always be “That Guy from Two Guys A Girl and a Pizza Place” first, and all those other roles second or lower. I feel like the 2000s were the last gasp of the multi-cam sitcom, where even though Two and a Half Men and Big Bang theory made it to 2015 and 2019 respectively, Bo the started in the 00s and I don’t know if we will ever have a multi-cam show last as long as either of those again. They all got beaten out by single camera shows like The Office, Arrested Development and Malcolm in the Middle. But that’s probably a newsletter for a different day.
While Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place doesn’t doesn’t hit quite the level of serialization as How I Met Your Mother, it’s at least Friends-level. There are ongoing plots, and relationships grow and change, even if most episodes are still pretty self contained. I watched most of the episodes when they originally aired, but couldn’t tell you specific plots of any specific one because it was so long ago, although I do remember the bigger narrative arcs. But that’s changing as I’m more than half way through the second season. And now when I watch an episode it feels like a 50/50 chance if I’m going to remember the episode or not. It’s a really weird experience to watch something and remember it as it happens. I can tell what the punchlines are going to be in advance, but typically only 30 seconds in advance at most. It’s like experiencing a 22 minute long session of deja vu, only not as disorienting as the sounds. Now if only someone will release both seasons of It’s Like, You Know… on DVD before I have to take matters into my own hands.