TVSquad

Give Justine Bateman credit: She could have been typecast after playing the dippy, fashion-obsessed Mallory Keaton on Family Ties, but she's been able to build a nice career for herself over the last twenty years by playing interesting supporting roles in movies like The TV Set and series like Desperate Housewives. But she's also been -- just like 75% of the people in Hollywood -- an aspiring writer, struggling to get her scripts produced (and you think having connections helps ... she knows Michael J. Fox and her brother is Jason Bateman, and she still couldn't get her scripts produced).

But now she can add "sitcom writer" to her credits; she just wrote an episode of The Disney Channel's hit Wizards of Waverly Place, according to the New York Daily News. Apparently, she's a friend of executive producer Peter Murrieta, and she got to know some of the show's writers during the writers' strike. So, when the strike ended, she was invited to write an episode for the show.

The Digital Video Recorder (known henceforth as DVR) is a heavenly, yet evil, device. On the one hand, it lets you record and store shows for easy retrieval. Some models even permit you to record two shows that are airing at the same time. On the other hand, it lets you record and store shows, some of them airing at the same time, that you may never, ever get to watch.

I thought about this as I went through my own list of DVR recordings. Some shows I have on the unit are from the beginning of the summer. Others are items that my wife saves. Still others are those recorded by my six-year-old daughter, who recently learned how to program the darn thing (kid needs to be in M.I.T.).

So, what I wanted to know from you, the devoted TV Squad reader, is what shows you have on your DVR. I'll tell you mine (after the jump) if you tell me yours.

As we all get ready to eat way too much pie and nap/shop (choose your own adventure) away a couple days it's time to give thanks for that which is good in television land. So, this year, I'm thankful for...

1: Tivo. I resisted the siren's call of Tivo for a long time, opting instead to stick with the complex system of tapes, VCR's and my computer that had kept me up to date for years. But finally, after hearing again and again from the TV Squad readers to just get a Tivo already, I did. And it has been as good as everyone said it would be. I'll say it. You were all right. I was wrong.

I'm still hoping for all the goodies to work with OS X, or dare I say, Ubuntu, but for now I can begrudgingly run Windows. The ability to archive shows to another machine is fantastic, and if you do the math, it works out to about the same price as using tapes for storage anyway.