Arresting Developments

One of the added bonuses (bonii?) that comes from watching the new episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix is that we once more get to hear their their jazzy end theme.

It's music you likely didn't hear when the series ran on Fox almost a decade ago because the network's standard procedure was to box out the end credits in order to promote an upcoming show. I didn't get a chance to hear the end credits theme until I got the DVDs.

But you can be happy in the knowledge that all is not well in Netflix land. It seems Netflix is "out-Foxing" us with the new Arrested, thanks to their new practice of starting the next episode in a new box before the old one (minimized in a much smaller box) has finished playing. If you want to hear the full end theme, and see the full end credits, you have to click on the smaller box playing the credits -- it will then finish playing out the current episode in full screen and allow you to select the next episode you want to watch, or select a different show all together....

...you know, choice, the reason I pay for Netflix in the first place.

Hulu does this now, too, with a variation -- they start playing an episode of a similar TV show before the credits are done on the old one. Just because I watched the latest episode of New Girl does NOT mean I want to watch the latest episode of The Mindy Project. I DO NOT WATCH The Mindy Project, even when I'm watching actual, real-time, un-time-shifted network TV. Or finishing the newest Modern Family doesn't mean I'm ready for the newest The Middle. I DO NOT watch The Middle.

Call me crazy, but I kind of like to watch the programs I WANT to watch WHEN I want to watch them. Which, I thought, is kind of why Hulu and Netflix exist.