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Like many First World problems, the Sunday TV glut is an example of how technology is both liberating and smothering. Your smart devices are wonderful because they keep you from being tied to the office; they are terrible because you bring the office everywhere. Just so, it's great that you can have entertainment on your time, on your terms, that you can record Sunday and make it last all week. But it's also a kind of lie--the lie that you can hack your life, use your day more efficiently and never miss a thing.
We hurtle through our overscheduled lives like so many Hermione Grangers with Time-Turners. But you can cheat time only so much. You can fast-forward ads or stash the last season of Breaking Bad in your carry-on, but life is still finite. Chores must be done, money made, actual human interactions had. You will not see everything you want to see and do everything you want to do. You will have to choose.
TV overload, in other words, is the kind of minor, ludicrous, nonproblem problem that at least gives us practice in dealing with the real thing. And no one is immune. Jenni Konner, a TV writer and producer, jokingly tweeted late one recent weekend, "Kids, put yourselves to bed Sundays. There's so much TV." She should know: Girls, the acclaimed series she co--executive produces, returns to HBO in January. Sunday nights at 10.