There are two reasons I don’t watch television. The primary is a simple matter of economics: my housemate and I can’t afford cable, and we don’t pick up any network television stations well enough to make it worth our time. The other reason, of slightly lesser importance, is that I hate waiting. The very idea of waiting weeks or more until I can find out what happens next is horrifying.

This is why I love DVD, and also why I delayed playing Sam and Max: Season One until the whole gosh-darned thing was available. I’ve always been a big fan of the idea of adventure games, but typically they require such obscenely insane leaps of logic (or visits to gamefaqs.com) that I end up offended by what I’m expected to do and can not stand to finish them. With the rave reviews that each Sam and Max episode received, and the awareness that it is possible to make a good adventure game (having previously played Grim Fandango), I was psyched about the game.

Picking up the first episode after finding the free demo to be palatable, I reached a simple conclusion: Sam and Max is great! I picked up the remaining five episodes for “one low price” as the saying goes, and just finished up the season. Sam and Max retained it’s exceptionally entertaining qualities from start to finish, I’m happy to report, and featured some of the most hilarious moments ever captured in an interactive game.

The greatest thing about Sam and Max is that it is not stupid. Or maybe it is just that it is dumbed down enough (compared to the adventure game norm) that people who are not insane can play it. Either way, the game makes sense. Your goals are usually clear, and solving the puzzles requires the use of your brain, not the use of the “randomly clicking everything onto everything else in the damn game in the hope that something will make something positive happen” strategy that Roberta Williams pioneered in the 80s (technically before clicking existed).

Of course, solvable, sensible puzzles are just the tip of the iceberg. Unlike most mainstream forms of games, adventure games require a decent story, decent characters, and solid pacing to be interesting. This is why adventure games were considered “games for smart people” back in the day, despite the fact that most of the oldschool adventure games were pretty moronic in terms of gameplay. When it comes to characters, writing, plot, and pacing, Sam and Max absolutely shines.

The characters are hilarious, and fully realized–they’re actual characters, not just plot-enablers, and they consistently act and speak as their characters would in (heaven forbid!) real life. The titular Sam and Max, a dog-and-psychotic-rabbit dynamic duo of “freelance police” first introduced to the world in a 1987 comic book, are perfect. Sam plays the straight-man, and Max is constantly throwing completely psychotic, anti-social, and (not or!) adorable one-liners back at him. Their lines are just top-notch, with nary a misstep. The cast of supporting characters (three or four of whom are in all six episodes) is diverse and equally well-realized.

The plot begins small and ostensibly thickens over the course of the next five episodes to become something epic in scope. In fact there is a bit of repetition in the nature of the basic problem to be solved in each episode (someone is hypnotizing people), and there does end up a small sense of deja-vu/same-old-same-old about the whole thing after a few episodes, but despite this, it never becomes tedious. The details are wildly divergent from episode to episode, and each episode features a thoroughly unique theme that allows for different-but-equal comedy and action. Indeed, since these six episodes can be thought to form a single “game”, it only makes sense that there’s a sense of unity and cohesion to them, which is what it mostly feels like.

Besides a great plot with great characters and great dialog, there are a couple of musical numbers that have to be witnessed in-context to be conceived (and, for the record, the score for the game isn’t shabby at all; download it for free at the Telltale Games website). There is also a truly inspired episode that references a ton of gamer geek culture that ends in… well, the only way an homage to classic adventure gaming could: in totally unexpected and absolutely brilliant fashion (this all refers to episode five, incidentally, so if you’re just obsessed with riffs on gamer culture, pick up that one–you would be doing yourself a disservice to avoid the rest of the series, but that’s your right as a consumer. Right?).

There’s virtually nothing bad I can say about Sam and Max: Season One. Even the graphics are good. I’d love to track down a copy of the original 1993 adventure game that established them in the hearts and minds of adventure-gamers everywhere–if it’s anything like this first season of the new episodic games, it must be absolutely stellar. I also can’t wait for season two. I have no idea how they plan to one-up the events of this first season.

I suspect it will be fun to find out.