How to watch American Gothic

Liz got me the boxed set of American Gothic for Christmas. I watched this years ago in mid to late 90s in Australia, and it wasn't until recently that I found out why the series seemed so disjointed when I watched it.

Both CBS here in the U.S. and whichever station aired it in Australia showed the episodes out of order. When Universal released the boxed set they arranged the episodes on the discs according to CBS's airing date, so if you watch the discs from 1 thru 6 you're doing yourself a disservice, because Disc 6 (or Disc 3) contains unaired episodes which need to be seen partway through the series at certain points, and in one episode one of the major characters leaves the series (for good) but returns in the very next episode, at least he did if you watched the original series or will if you watch the discs from start to finish.

Here's how to watch American Gothic. Note that it involves a lot of disc changing and flipping.

1 - "Pilot" Disc 1, Side A:Episode 1
2 - "A tree grows in Trinity" 1A:2
3 - "Eye of the Beholder" 1A:3 (so far, so good, right? Now flip Disc 1 to side B to watch...)

4 - "Damned if you don't" 1B:1 (now change to Disc 3, side A to watch...)

5 - "Potato Boy" 3A:4 (missing episode, never aired. Now, back to Disc 1, Side B for...)

6 - "Dead to the World" 1B:2
7 - "Meet the Beetles" 1B:3
8 - "Strong Arm of the Law" 1B:4

9 - "To Hell and back" 2B:3 (Yes, Disc 2, Side B:Episode 3)
10 - "The Beast Within" 2B:2 (Yes, Episode 2, the one before the one you just watched. Now flip Disc 2 to Side A.)

11 - "Rebirth" 2A:1 (then change to Disc 3, Side B)

12 - "Ring of Fire" 3B:1 (another mid-season episode that was never aired. Now back to Disc 2, Side A.)

13 - "Resurrector" 2A:2
14 - "Inhumanitas" 2A:3
15 - "The Plague Sower" 2A:4

16 - "Doctor Death takes a holiday" 2B:1
17 - "Learning to crawl" 2B:4

18 - "Echo of your last goodbye" 3B:2 (never aired)
19 - "Strangler" 3B:3 (that's two episodes in a row that were never aired)

20 - "Triangle" 3A:1
21 - "The Buck stops here" 3A:2
22 - "Requiem" 3A:2

So you had 6 discs (or three double-sided discs), but you needed to change/flip them 10 times to watch the series in the correct chronological order. I'm still going to do that when I watch them, because even now, almost a decade later, I can remember things didn't quite make sense when I originally watched American Gothic.