Summer: A TV Lover's Paradise

iPad. The Good Wife. Dark Room. Summer is awesome.

Once upon a time, TV-land in the summer was a dark and desolate place. 

Every May the shows that I depended on, the ones that kept me company through a long, cold winter, came to an end. For nearly four months every year - the "hot" months, if you will - my DVR was heartbreakingly empty, my channel guide mocking me with its constant scroll of re-runs, news and baseball games.

It was as if the network heads themselves had conspired to force us all off our couches to get us outside to enjoy the season. Never much of an outdoor person unless outdoors includes a lounge-chair, a delicious drink and a book, I was relegated to watching movies and the same episodes of Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, and NCIS over and over again.

It was a sad existence, friends.

But happily, that existence is no more.

Because it seems as though the people who run the networks have finally realized that not everyone has a burning desire to hike and bike and spend their summers baking under the scorching sun. They finally understand that the people who watch TV in the fall and winter watch just as much TV in the summer, it's just that, until the last year or two, there was just nothing in the summer worth watching.

But oh how the times have changed. The past two summers have served up such delicious treats as Mistresses, Under The Dome, The Night Shift, Extreme Weight Loss, Sister Wives and Falling Skies. And we can't forget the summer mainstay The Bachelorette, Jack Bauer's harrowing and illustrious return in 24: Live Another Day, and the brand new and highly anticipated Bachelor in Paradise, ABC's replacement for the beloved and dearly-departed Bachelor Pad.

And if you get sick of waiting a week in between episodes of your favorite shows, you can always do what I did and spend and entire Sunday binge-watching the first eight episodes of Netflix's incredible original series Orange Is The New Black. You might, as I did, end up with some pretty insane nightmares about being a prison inmate and wake up with a major TV hangover, but just stick with it. Any season binge watcher will tell you that it'll all be worth it in the end.

And if none of that strikes your fancy, the advent of Netflix and Hulu Plus means that you can spend an entire summer ensconced in marathons of the TV shows that you always meant to watch but never got around to. For example, a few weeks ago I jumped on The Good Wife bandwagon and have now watched my way through three and a half seasons, with a season and a half left to go. I'm not sure how I missed this one the first time around, but I'm definitely making up for lost time, and am considered a re-watch of all of the seasons of Friday Night Lights to combat my post-Good Wife blues that are sure to settle in once I finish season five.

So TV lovers rejoice! No longer do you have to tag along on those hateful outdoor events that define the summer. You can stay inside, in your air-conditioned living rooms, with snacks at the ready, enjoying everything that TV has to offer. And if you still want a little outdoor time, just do what I do and move your TV watching right outside for the very best of both worlds.

My kind of outdoor summer activity

Just make sure to bring your snacks out with you. That walk from the lounge chair to the kitchen can be awfully taxing.