My Darling B and I were watching The Big Bang Theory last night when we ran into a glitchy DVD that frustrated every attempt to get past the road block. We don’t subscribe to cable or satellite television, so we can’t watch television, but occasionally we check out DVDs from the library of shows we’ve heard are pretty good.

That’s how we got hooked on The Big Bang Theory. We seem to be tuned into the weird nerd humor of the show. We could both watch Jim Parsons, the guy who plays the part of Sheldon Cooper, crack jokes all night long. And the theme song is way too much fun to sing along with.

The second disk of the second season finally came in yesterday. My Darling B picked it up from the library on her way home. After dinner, we settled in to watch all six episodes. We watch television shows on DVD the way most people eat a bag of Doritos – the whole goddamn thing in one gulp. But halfway through, the fourth episode wouldn’t play. We both tried every way we could think of to get to it – chapter search; play all episodes and skip ahead; start at the end and back in; cycle the disk out and back in again after cleaning it with my t-shirt – but nothing seemed to work. We’d skip ahead to the end of episode three, start episode four and get nothing but gibberish and no picture.

“We could always go buy it at Shopko,” B suggested. Well, we could, but that would make us such a pair of gullible consumer assholes, wouldn’t it? I mean, running out on Black Friday, of all days, to buy a DVD of a television show. Might as well start shopping regularly at Wal-Mart.

Five minutes later we were backing out of the driveway, trading our favorite quotes from the show, and five minutes after that we were prowling the aisles among the DVDs at Shopko. Not only did we find the disk we were looking for, it turned out that Season Two was the only DVD of The Big Bang Theory on sale. Talk about lucky! And it was the entire second season. We won’t have to wait on the other two disks from the library. (But we violated The Doritos Principle and somehow managed not to stay up all night watching every goddamn show.)

For the record, we’re both in agreement that the best quote from the show so far was Sheldon’s reaction when his sister told him she’s “always bragging to her friends about, ‘My brother, the rocket scientist.’” “You tell people I’m a rocket scientist? I’m a theoretical physicist! Why don’t you just tell them I’m a toll-taker on the Golden Gate Bridge!”