103 Episodes, 47 Days

TigerBlog read someplace yesterday that Americans spend nearly $9 billion a year more on Mother's Day than on Father's Day.

So what do we make out of this?

Well, in fairness, the mothers are a tad bit more, uh, inconvenienced by the whole childbirth process. Still, is that worth $9 billion more?

Anyway, TigerBlog hopes all the dads out there had a great day yesterday, even if their kids got them gifts on the cheap, at least compared to the mothers.

Mother's Day and Father's Day are big days for the Braverman family, even if they are fictional. For those who don't know, the Bravermans are the family about whom the show "Parenthood" centers.

There were six seasons of "Parenthood," for a total of 103 episodes. TigerBlog recently finished watching all 103.

It's a great show, especially for someone who can relate to families, raising children and all those "grown-up" type issues. It's not exactly hip stuff. It's just a fairly old-fashioned family show, and it succeeds on every level it tries. It's one of the best TV shows he's ever seen.

Perhaps more than any other show TigerBlog has ever seen, "Parenthood" came up with situation after situation that forced him to think deeply about what he would do if faced with the same circumstances or who in the family was right and who in the family was wrong, with no real black or white answers.

It also had some great supporting characters, which is the mark of any great show. The best were Max, the son with Asbergers, and weirdly enough, Ray Romano, who went from sitcom star on "Everybody Loves Raymond" to Hank the photographer, a character who is 180 degrees away from Ray Barone.

The best ending to a series finale that TigerBlog has ever seen was for "Newhart," the show in which Bob Newhart plays an innkeeper in Vermont. This is not to be confused with "The Bob Newhart Show," in which he played a psychiatrist in Chicago.

Or was it to be confused? If you ever saw the last episode, you know what TB is talking about. If you didn't, let's just say that it is the most creative ending to a TV show anyone has ever come up with.

Most final episodes of shows fall flat, because they put too much pressure on themselves to resolve everything for the viewer. Plus they struggle to be artificially dramatic, instead of letting it all play itself out.

"Parenthood," though, hit a major home run with its final episode. It was pretty much perfect. It tied up every loose end and presented it flawlessly and emotionally. It was great.

There's one little problem, as TB sees it. Or maybe not a problem. He'll leave that up to you to decide.

TigerBlog wrote about "Parenthood" back on May 18, when he finished watching Season 1, which was 13 episodes long. He finished the show Saturday, which means he watched the final 90 episodes in 33 days.

He can't remember exactly when he started watching, but it was probably two weeks or so earlier. That would mean 103 episodes in 47 days.

At least he watched it on Netflix, which didn't have commercials, which meant that each episode was 43 or 44 minutes. At least for the first five seasons. Then he got to Season 6, which isn't out on Netflix yet.

He could watch it on demand, which meant either paying $25 to have the season without commercials or watch for free but with commercials. It was a tough choice. He watched Episode 1 of Season 6 with commercials and then forked over the $25.

Anyway, maybe he overdid on the whole "Parenthood" thing. On the other hand, it did keep him from starting Season 3 of "Orange Is the New Black," which is only 13 episodes. How long could that possibly take?

So now he's put away "Breaking Bad" and "Parenthood" pretty rapidly. He can't imagine that he ever watched a show one week at a time, one year at a time.

Once again, that was 103 episodes in 47 days. That's not unhealthy or anything?

It's been a little more than a week since the end of the NCAA track and field championships, which were the last athletic events of the 2014-15 season. The last actual game of the Princeton athletic year was back on May 16 (during Season 1), when the women's lacrosse team lost 7-3 to Duke in the NCAA quarterfinals.

The first event of the 2015-16 athletic year will be on August 28, when the women's soccer team hosts Howard in what will be Sean Driscoll's first game as Tiger head coach.

May 16. That was 36 days ago. August 28? That's 67 days from today.

That means it'll be 103 days between games for Princeton Athletics. If you go by the last event, the track championships, then it'll be 76 days between events.

Summer actually started for real this weekend.

At Princeton, the first two-thirds of summer are camp season. They've already started, actually, and they transform the campus from college athletes to those who dream about being college athletes.

Anyway, there's a long way to go until a new athletic year begins.

TigerBlog probably can knock off two more TV series between now and then.