Damn! I had just gotten rehooked on House, after a summer of being worried that our favorite crank, suddenly all pain-free and fully mobile, might be going soft, which would have ruined the show -- but no, he was in fine antisocial form, so I was very happy and continued worshipping at the feet of the brilliant Hugh Laurie. And then the damn World Series playoffs start, and virtually take over Fox's programming! Four fantastic episodes of House, and then nothing! For a month!

It's been two House-less weeks now, and I'm thinking I could use a couple of the doctor's Vicodin myself ....

It's cruel, is what it is. Fox is cruel ... and I'm a fool for letting myself get suckered in again -- the same thing happened last year, and I suffered a House-free month then, too. But what choice did I have? Should I not have watched House? That would have been torture, too.

But then: hope. Only a hint, but I clung to it. Fox, it was announced -- I saw it in the Los Angeles Times -- would be webcasting episodes of its shows that had gotten shuffled off the schedule by the damn baseball games. Prison Break and Bones and Standoff ... everything that TV lovers would be missing, they'd show up at Fox's MySpace. So I checked it out.

And of course I was disappointed. No House, for one thing. No new episodes, for another -- not that I care about Prison Break or Bones or Standoff anyway, but still: what's the point of putting reruns online? Is this supposed to appease us nonbaseball fans? We don't want reruns of the episodes we've just seen -- anyone serious about these shows has TiVo'd them anyway. We want new stuff.

And then there's this, which popped up when I clicked on Vanished, just for fun -- maybe I'd check it out, see if it was worth killing another hour a week:

We're sorry, but only Microsoft Windows 98SE or later is supported at this time. Please check back soon for support for other operating systems.

Argh!

Everyone's worried about how the networks are gonna track viewership of these webisodes -- or The Wall Street Journal is, at least -- but does no one care about how we House-loving Mac users are coping this month? No. Won't someone think of us, please? I'm desperate here ....

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com

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