Hulu Is Here with Free Shows, including TV's Best Doc (Hi, Bob!)

 

Say hello to Hulu. The ad-supported video on-demand site goes public today, offering thousands of TV shows, movies and clips online. Everything is free and available anytime. Users can even embed videos to blogs and edit clips.

 

There’s a soothing, feel-good quality to how Hulu organizes itself. It’s not pushy, not pretentious. It seems to listen and respond gently to requests. And it’s there when you need it.

 

Think of it as the Dr. Bob Hartley of online video services (whereas YouTube is more Dr. House, all complain-y and a big pain and sometimes not on duty when service is required).

 

Thanks to Hulu, we can revisit the nubby couch of TV’s most understanding psychologist., Dr. Bob. Check out this episode of The Bob Newhart Show on Hulu to see one of the great reactor-actors at his best (Newhart as Hartley, counseling a patient with food issues).

 

Compare and contrast Hartley’s therapy style to that of “Paul,” the complicated psychiatrist of HBO’s In Treatment. YouTube now has episodes of the pay-cabler’s new series starring Gabriel Byrne as a shrink with his own shrink (she’s played by the incomparable Dianne Wiest). The five-night-a-week half-hour series runs on a schedule of Paul’s patients: the lissome Laura on Mondays; troubled Alex, a fighter pilot, on Tuesdays; 16-year-old Sophie, an anorexic gymnast (played by the magical Mia Wosikowska), on Wednesdays; a married couple on Thursdays; and then Paul with Gina, his mentor-psychiatrist, every Friday.

 

There’s something therapeutic about watching other people grapple with their innermost probs, isn’t there?