In browsing the alphabetical list, many shows only contained clips, including one of my beloved programs, Scrubs. House had only one episode, three show clips, and a few interviews. Heroes had the first five episodes from season two. Those were the ones that stunk. Couldn’t they have shown the last five instead? The Simpsons had nine episodes, which isn’t much considering they’ve made over 400. ER had three episodes and six clips, all from season 14. Weren’t there 13 seasons before it? Then, I was delighted to see one of my all time favorite shows, WKRP in Cincinnati. My joy quickly turned to disappointment though when I found the episodes were from season one only, which I already have on DVD. Why not offer episodes from seasons two, three, and four, which aren’t on DVD yet?

I went onto the movies next, and that list is far less robust. Only half of the films listed are in their entirety. One film I chose to test is a favorite in our family, Ice Age. I had the DVD less than five feet away, but wanted to see how Hulu compared. Even though I’m running my Internet connection from a high-speed DSL line, the stream was often plagued with quick interruptions and made for choppy viewing. Granted, I was watching in the evening, which is likely peak time, but that still took away from the experience. I found by comparison that nothing beats the full screen video quality of the original DVD. I watch full length films for entertainment and not for background noise while I’m performing ten other tasks, so watching films on Hulu will not be part of my immediate future.

That brought me back to the TV shows. Since many of the shows had clips, I sought out the clip-friendly shows, such as The Simpsons, in which the episodes contain many small nuggets of comedy that are legendary. Only 91 clips were listed, and those came from seasons one, four, six, seven, and 19. Seasons eight through 18 were made, right?

I Found Something to Watch

Eventually, I found the perfect show to fully bend the Hulu interface and let this site prove itself to me — Saturday Night Live. This show is in season 33, and Hulu offers 477 clips going back all the way to season one. The only season missing clips was the infamously horrible season six, and I’m sure many viewers were grateful.

Considering I’ve watched SNL since the first season, I took interest in older clip choices. The list comes up in random order. I wanted to sort from season one on, and sorting through 32 seasons worth of material gave Hulu a workout. I clicked on the season:episode field, and 10 seconds later the sort defaulted automatically to the most recent season first. When I clicked on the field again so it would sort the other way, there was no indicator that a sort was in process, making me believe I couldn’t do that. 20 seconds later, when the sort did eventually work, it took me by surprise since I’d already started scrolling through the list.