In what’s feeling kind of like a retro activity these days, I’ve been watching some TV shows on DVD these days.

Angel Season 5. Probably haven’t seen it since it went off the year in 2004. I’d forgotten so many details it almost seemed new at times. I remembered that Angel and Spike had an epic fight over who got to shanshu, but forgotten just how awesome that entire episode—Destiny—was.

So good I had to rewatch with commentary. And be still my Spike-loving heart if the commentary didn’t reveal that in the first draft of the script, Angel won the fight. Only, after the scripting out each vampire’s arguments, they came to an inevitable conclusion: Spike was the better man. He was the deserving one.

And he won the fight.

(Vid above is a fan edit, not the original show. And like everything I tried to embed, not allowed. All  have to be watched YouTube.)

Then there’s Everwood, Season 1. This I can be forgiven for not remembering, as I’d never seen it before. I’d seen later season, but not the start of it all. As it was somehow in memory as a good but rather sentimental program, I was a bit startled by some of the rawness, as in the epic fight (another fight!) between father and son in the pilot, below.

Another example? Episode 4 dealt with a breakout of gonorrhea among the teens of the town. Gonorrhea of the throat, to be precise. (“But I’m a total virgin!”)

Finally, the much-lamented Freaks and Geeks, which lasted only one season, but launched so many careers:

• This year’s Oscar host, James Franco.
• Jason Segal of How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
• John Francis Daley—Sweets on Bones
• Seth Rogen, unlikely movie star and leading man
• Busy Philips, now Laurie on Cougartown

And of course, that Judd Apatow guy.

The following short (1 minute) scene, in which Lindsay’s parents try to decipher the lyrics of The Who’s “Squeezebox”, is one of the damn funniest things I’ve ever seen.

I’ve got to watch the commentary track of that episode now.