Comedian Tom Popa said something like, “The best day I can possibly have is one where I don’t have to recover my password for anything.” I couldn’t agree more.

I did not have a best day today.

I got a subscription to Apple TV over a year ago to watch the Tom Hanks movie “Greyhound” because I usually like Tom Hanks movies, and in this movie Tom plays a Navy captain sinking U-Boats in World War Two. Watching Tom Hanks kill Nazis has got to be good, right? The answer is yes, as it turned out. I enjoyed “Greyhound” quite a lot and can recommend it without hesitation. Worth getting a trial subscription for.

I kept the Apple TV subscription because that was the only way to watch the series “Slow Horses,” which I can also heartily recommend. If you like Gary Oldman, if you like Kristen Scott Thomas, if you like Jonathan Pryce, they’re all here and all doing a bang-up job. If you like spy films, this is right up your alley. If you’re an Anglophile, this all takes place in and around London. I happen to be all three. Totally worth the trouble of keeping the subscription going.

Then, we kept the subscription a bit longer because that’s the only way to watch “Pluribus,” the series from “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan, starring Rhea Seahorn in the most unusual and interesting alien invasion story I’ve ever seen. Can’t wait for the next season, although I’ll have to, for a frustratingly long time. Oh, well.

All those shows are done. We have re-watched a few things but for the most part the Apple subscription has gone stale. The last time I tried to watch it, about two months ago, the sign-in had timed out and I got a login screen. I dread those because logging in usually takes at least a half-hour and elevates my blood pressure by at least thirty points. I tried to log in but gave up after several failed attempts, and probably didn’t try again for at least a week. When I tried again, same result: frustration, failure, veins popping out of my head.

The problem with logging in is that I couldn’t recall the password and I hadn’t been able to reset it. When I clicked on the link labeled “I forgot my password,” it took me to a page where I put in my email and entered a Captcha code. Half the time, the Captcha code wasn’t there. Even when I clicked the “give me a new code” link, it didn’t show. I think this had something to do with the browser cache, because when I cleared the cache I can got the Captcha image to show up again, but every time I entered the Captcha code, I got to a screen that asked me to verify my telephone number. When I did that, it told me to try again. And again. And again. I could never get past the telephone number screen.

I tried it again today. Same result. I tried it on two different browsers on my phone. I tried it on my desktop computer. I tried it on my Samsung TV. Same thing every time.

So today I tried the login of last resort: I called the 800-number for help. I’m surprised you can still do this. I mean, I’m surprised you can still talk to a real person instead of a bot. You can! It’s still frustrating, but it’s a real person.

The first real person I spoke with tried to talk me through resetting my password using exactly the steps I had already tried. That, right there, was kind of frustrating, because I thought I had thoroughly described what I had already done. But whatever, I tried it anyway. Got the error message. Started to tell her about the error message when we were disconnected.

Called back after waiting two or three minutes. Described to the second person in exhausting detail what I tried to do already. She wanted to talk me through doing it again anyway. Okay, whatever. I tried it. Didn’t work. Tried clearing the cache and logging in again. Didn’t work. She suggested using a different browser. I told her — again — that I had already used two other, different browsers and gotten the same result. She suggested trying to recover my password by downloading an app, which I wasn’t willing to do, not just to be difficult, but because I’m trying to watch TV. I shouldn’t be required to junk up my computer or phone with apps just to watch TV. There’s got to be another way.

In the end, she told me she couldn’t reset my password, which is all I wanted her to do in the first place. Best she could do, she said, was to direct me to an Apple store where I could use one of the iPhones or other Apple devices on sale there to log in and reset my password. Or, if I had a friend with an iPhone, I could ask to use theirs. “I know you’re trying to help me and I appreciate that,” I said, “but I’m not going to drive to a store just to borrow an Apple device to reset my password.”

After I got off the phone with her, I got a call from Apple support. Coincidence? Well, no, it turned out that when the first call got cut off, a callback was automatically triggered. I don’t know how they knew I was done with my previous call and it frankly creeped me out, but we are long past the point where I began to take it for granted that my every move was always being tracked.

I answered the call and was put in touch with Steve, who sounded like a real go-getting problem solver, I so decided to give him a chance to fix this. I once again described what I wanted to do and what I had already done in EXCRUCIATING detail. He asked me to go back to the same web page I had already tried many times.

Sigh. Okay. Sure.

When that didn’t work, he asked me to try another browser. I explained, again, that I had already tried it on two other browsers, but IF HE REALLY WANTED I could try it again. He shrugged — I’m pretty sure he shrugged — and said no, if I’d already done that, don’t bother.

He asked me to do all the things I had already done before he asked me to try logging in on my television screen. At that point I told him, “Look, Steve, I want you to know I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, and I want to stress that I am not mad at you, but at this point I’ve spent forty-five minutes trying to log in, and watching a TV show is not worth forty-five minutes of my life, so at this point I’m going to ask you, if you can, to cancel my subscription.”

To Steve’s credit, he immediately canceled my subscription. Didn’t try to talk me out of it, didn’t ask me why, he just did it, and said he completely understood why. Props to Steve. A+ customer service. I wish more computer support people were like him.