I was excited when I first visited TV Minisodes on the Crackle channel. Over 50 classic TV series! Sitcoms, dramas, game shows, cartoons - it was as if TVLand had come to the Roku and I was selecting the programs. My excitement turned to disappointment when I discovered that these weren't full episodes. Crackle was giving me only short five-minute clips. Why would I want to watch just a few minutes of an hour-long show? But I decided to watch a few episodes anyway, and I'm glad I did!
I quickly learned that these "minisodes", as Crackle calls them, aren't just clips. They are, in fact, condensations. A 30-minute sitcom or a one-hour drama distilled down to its essence, requiring no more than a five minute investment of your time. You may think that you can't cut out that much material and still have an entertaining show, but I disagree. Five minutes of Fantasy Island is plenty of time for Tattoo to announce "De plane! De plane!", followed by Mr. Roarke suggesting that a person's fantasy may not be what they hoped for, and for us to learn the moral of the episode's story. And there's even a bit of time for some spellbinding drama in between.
My attention span is generally pretty short, and these little five-minute gems provide good nostalgic entertainment in chunks of time that I can finish without channel surfing to something else. The Roku version of Crackle is missing a lot of great content that's available on their website, but if you look at what's available, and not at what's missing, the channel is worth a visit.
For more information and a complete listing of the currently available content, visit RokuGuide's Crackle channel page.
