In the UK we've just seen the episodes where:


Can a US viewer please tell me how long ago these episodes were aired on WB? I get the feeling we may only be a couple of weeks behind. Which would be pretty f-in sweet!

You are definetly 1 week behind.. possibly 2(but probably not)
This coming tuesday is the season finale for the US.

The US episodes which we saw on Tuesday 5/15 were only one week ahead of the eps you've described. You've got two more to go, we've got only the finales left...

That's pretty **cking cool!
For once, we're not YEARS behind the US. In the past, movies, consoles, DVDs, and TV - the UK was always at least 6 months behind. I would thank $ky 1, the channel that shows it, but it's owned by Murdoch, and I usually refuse to say anything nice about News Corp. ever. But I'm almost tempted to in this case.

WOW!

Currently, the episodes that we see on a Friday are the episodes that screened in the US on Tuesday the previous week. So we're a mere 10 days behind now

God bless American TV networks putting almost two months of reruns in the middle of a series

Is this a regular thing in the US? It would really piss me off if it happended in the UK. Although, we do tend to have far shorter TV series than the US, so maybe it amounts to the same thing. (i.e. 6/13 episodes - 3-6 month break - 6/13 episodes.)

Most series in the US run from mid September to mid may.
Not every week has a new show. In the case of Buffy and Angel, they had literaly 1-2 months of re-runs.
A lot of other shows throw in reruns now and then.
Not to mention that some weeks, shows get displaced for things like sporting playoffs, presidential broadcasts, things of that nature.
So, even though september - may seems like along time, not every week had a new show.

The normal US pattern for network TV shows does throw lots of re-runs into the mix before completing a full season. A regular TV series consists of around 24-26 episodes for one season. They're shown starting in early fall, and spread out evenly throughout 3/4 of our year. It's maybe 36-40 weeks until the final eps show...

Where they used to show the new episodes all the way through, or with only one grouping of repeats in the middle, it's now standard practice to group only 5 or 6 new episodes at a time before padding them out with repeats.

You have to resign yourself to watch lots of re-runs all the time, or be constantly checking to see if a given night's episode is new or not...

Great for advertisers, lousy for the viewers. But then, that's American TV in a nutshell...