Even though I had seen the ads for the show, I assumed it would be on PBS. By the time I realized my mistake, Tyson was whizzing past Uranus on his way to the asteroid belt and beyond. The content was fine, at least to me with my liberal arts education, if a little too whiz bangy. (Nova on PBS has succumbed to that too.) The tribute to Sagan at the end was nicely done.

But those commercials! I only watch Fox at World Series time, so my delicate sensibilities weren't prepared for all those dopey sitcom promos. One of Ronald Reagan's lesser sins was allowing the networks to cram as many commercials as they wanted into each half hour. I guess the idea was that if they pushed their new freedom too far we would all turn off our sets and go back to reading Proust. That hasn't happened yet. I counted six commercial breaks during the first hour of Cosmos, each one four minutes long. If Tyson's going to do justice to all those billions of galaxies, each with its billions of stars, he's going to need more than 36 minutes per episode.

Mike