Streaming Video Power Rankings #107

1) Warner Archive Instant: Ladies and gentlemen, I have fulfilled my life's destiny and watched all episodes of Eight Is Enough on WAI. Umpteen months of WAI is still less than the 200-250 bucks it would have cost to buy the DVDs. That is why I will miss Warner Instant when it goes dark this week. I won't get through all the Dr. Kildare, but I enjoyed quite a bit of that classic series over the years as well. Farewell, WAI, and may something like Harry O somehow find another streaming home.

2) HBO Go: The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling is amazing and worth the price of a month of HBO alone, and the fact that all of The Larry Sanders Show is right there to dive into afterwards is a fantastic bonus.

3) Netflix: Still the easiest and best place to watch Cheers even though it is streaming seemingly everywhere. Therefore, when Harry Anderson died this week and I wanted to see a Harry the Hat episode, I went to Netflix. It sure would be great if Night Court were streaming somewhere.

Otherwise, Netflix got some headlines this week, but none of the adds really excite me. Kodachrome and Mercury 13 sound good, but otherwise, just a quiet and steady week of Netflix while I binged on Eight Is Enough.

4) Filmstruck: New this week are a bunch of Liz Taylor movies, early Hitchcock, a selection from the Maysles brothers, and a fun mini-category called "it Could Be Worse," featuring Wag the Dog, Escape from New York, and Mars Attacks! Personal note on that last one: I have a fond memory of seeing it with my dad when it opened, the two of us laughing and having a blast the whole time and wondering as we left why the hell nobody else in the theater seemed to be enjoying it. Did they think it was supposed to be a straight-up action/sci-fi movie?

I watched Mario Bava's Planet of Vampires (as opposed to Woody Allen's Planet of Vampires, right?)  and All the Marbles, which has to be the definitive Peter Falk women's wrestling movie.

5) Prime Video: Thank you, Prime, for making possible an upcoming episode of Battle of the Network Shows, the smash podcast covering TV of the 1970s and 1980s.  Thank you, also, for adding goofy stuff like the 1978 paranormal documentary The Force Beyond, which has to be worth at least a look.

6) Hulu: Hey, it looks like new episodes of Teen Titans Go! are fresh on the service, which may prevent my kids from going back to Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Also, word is strong on Handmaid's Tale season 2, and there is a lot of buzz about the upcoming Catch 22 series, even if George Clooney is stepping out of a lead role.

7) YouTube:  Honestly, it would get a spot in the top 10 just for the Mickey Rooney/David Naughton Dr. Pepper commercial that was uploaded this week.

8) The CW: I thought Black Lightning delivered a satisfying conclusion to its first season. Let's hope it maintains its distinctive voice next season and avoids rehashing what we saw this time out. There is some real potential here.

9) Boomerang: Captain Planet is free this weekend in honor of Earth Day!

OK, so I don't know anyone who watched the show when it originally aired, nor anyone who watched it since. It's still cool of Boomerang to do this.

10) FX Now: I still have major issues with FX Now, even if it does brag about now having Fox shows and National Geographic shows, but Atlanta is so good that I have to be thankful this exists.