My Sunday Night TV

Now that the networks are bringing out new episodes, there's a bit too much for me at the moment. Too many of the shows I watch regularly are on Sundays: "The Simpsons," "Family Guy," and "Desperate Housewives," all of which premiered tonight. Also, I sampled the "Family Guy" spinoff "The Cleveland Show" -- I don't think I'll give it a second chance. "Mad Men" is in the mix as well, although it started a few weeks ago and there aren't as many new episodes in the season, so it will be out of the way. (I'd include "Robot Chicken" as well, but their new episodes ended last week. Besides, it's a 15-minute show -- actually less, because of commercial time and the credits.)

I could, of course, DVR a lot of this and save it for during the week. That presents problems, though:

• The networks -- Fox, in particular, often skews things so that their shows begin a minute or two before the scheduled time ("The Simpsons" will start at 7:58 or 7:59, for example). Also, if they have a national NFL telecast in the 4:15 pm ET slot and the game runs late that may cause the schedule to be adjusted.
• I don't like to watch shows days later if I can help it. I like to read some recaps of shows on EW.com and I don't want to worry about avoiding spoilers.
• With my DVR I can record one network while watching a show on another network. If I do that, I can't watch the Sunday night NFL games on NBC. If the Eagles are one of the Sunday night teams, that takes away my options further. I have a second TV downstairs (besides my TV with the DVR in the living room) but the screen is smaller and there's no DVR.

I record the shows anyway so I can fast-forward through the commercials, but this generally means I'm either missing the Sunday night football or I only see parts of it, or I'm up really late at night -- like now, for example.

Because of all of this, I'm not watching the new season of "The Amazing Race." It debuted tonight as well. I never watched the show until the most recent season but I was really impressed. If I want to watch this season I'll have to catch up with it online, or perhaps the Travel Channel will have repeats later in the week, as they did last year.

I suppose I'm lucky that I only have this problem one night per week.