dsandler.org/wp

Erin is getting out of the synopsizing business.

I’m going back to being a private citizen, merely a consumer of television. I’m sorry if this disappoints anyone.

You may recall that back in June of 2002 she began her synopses so that she could help her friends discover the hidden gems of the TV schedule. Erin accounts for most of the Google (and other) search-engine hits to dsandler.org, so it looks like there are others out there who have been helped by her service.

Fig. 1.   Yesterday’s search query distribution (pretty typical).

Since then, however, her friends have either started watching these shows, or haven’t; the shows in question have either gone off the air, turned dull, or are on hiatus. The only one left is Lost, which is much less fun to watch when you know you’ll have to go through it later and write down every flashback, every occurrence of The Numbers, every nickname Sawyer gives Kate. So our TiVo fills up with un-synopsized shows, staring back at her mockingly every time she reviews the Now Playing screen.

So, observing this state of affairs, I assured Erin that she is allowed to quit at any time if it interferes with her enjoyment of TV. It’s not as if she’s being paid, so she’s got no incentive to continue writing summaries of her favorite TV programs if she doesn’t enjoy it any more.

One final program note…

I’ll wait a week before deleting the backlog of Alias and Lost that I haven’t synopsized from my Tivo, just in case there’s a clamor for me to go ahead and finish the season.