Trying to Get My Netflix Fix

B and I have loved our Netflix subscription since day one. Typically we're able to get the movies and TV shows we want within days of their release on DVD.

I wrongly presumed the same would be true when Friday Night Lights' fourth season came out a few weeks ago. The discs have been at the top of my queue for a month, sometimes even listed as immediately available, but Netflix has not yet sent them to us.

My solution? Stack the cards in my favor by outsmarting the site's queue algorithms. (Who am I kidding? For all I know they pick a film out of a hat and send it to you.)

Earlier this year I cleared out our queue and left only one title on it: a newly released, super popular movie I really wanted to see. Netflix took pity on my slim pickings and sent me the DVD immediately.

This time around, Netflix seems to have gotten wise to my game. Our queue has looked like this for over a week:

The site warns me daily to add more titles to my queue. I just know that, the moment I have other discs sent to us, FNL will become (very briefly) available and I'll miss my chance. Dramatic? Yes - but also possible.

Netflix is so heartless. First it got me hooked on Friday Night Lights with three seasons of instantly available episodes and now, knowing I'm thoroughly addicted, it refuses to give me another moment of Texas football goodness.

So now I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face: shunning each of the thousands of discs they have in stock on the off chance they'll send me just what I want. I realize how bratty this makes me sound, rest assured.

Netflix, if you send me just one measly little DVD, evidently your only copy, I promise not to fly through it in a Tim Riggins-induced haze. Help me out now and I'll never try to rig your secret system again.

All I need is a little drawlin', brawlin' Dillon-style entertainment. Cross your fingers that my tactic works soon!

(Meanwhile, B still asks me daily what we have on Netflix - then proceeds to roll his eyes at me when I launch into a diatribe about principles and "holding out for what I really want." I think what he really wants is a movie, any movie, for his dollar.)