I just finished blowing through Season 1 of AMC’s fantastic “Breaking Bad” yesterday, and was psyched to think that I’d be able to catch up with the current second season before it ends in three weeks. But I was crushed to discover that the entire current season isn’t available on Comcast’s On Demand; they only offer the last four episodes, and since the earliest of those is episode seven, that doesn’t do me much good. Hulu.com has the first episode of Season 2, but nothing more. Season 2’s on iTunes, but I really don’t want to spend $32.99 for a season pass, or even $17.94 to get the first six episodes. Besides, I hate watching shows on my laptop when I have a giant HDTV going to waste.

Grrrr. It’s infuriating when cable offers goodies such as On Demand, then undercuts viewer habits. I don’t know if Comcast or the individual network is to blame, but there’s no good reason to make older episodes unavailable so quickly. It seems only the premium channels have any sense. On HBO On Demand, for example, all of Season 3 of “The Wire” and Season 1 of “True Blood” are currently available. And Starz has the full season so far of “Party Down.” In a time when viewership of the fragmented TV market is plummeting, you’d think they’d be doing everything possible to attract new eyeballs. As it is, they’re locking out new viewers, which seems to defeat the purpose of On Demand.

Not the best way to build a loyal fanbase. I’d willingly watch those 11 episodes on On Demand, then the rest live (with commercials even!) on AMC. But as it is, it looks like I’m going to have to wait six months to get the DVDs on Netflix.

I think my only hope is for AMC to run a Season 2 marathon before the season finale.

By the way, Season 1 of “Breaking Bad” is well worth watching. I went in thinking it’d be a dark comedy, but it was a lot more dark and a lot less comedic than I thought. In a nutshell, Bryan Cranston (the dad from “Malcolm in the Middle”) stars as a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher who finds out he has terminal cancer, and turns to cooking meth to pay for his treatment and provide for his family after he’s gone. Sounds cheery, huh? Turns out it’s super compelling and you can blast though the seven-episode season in a week. And for basic cable, it really pushes the envelope with sex, language (I heard an f-bomb) and violence (one guy gets turned into a raspberry slushee). Cranston won an Emmy for best actor, and it was well-deserved. Top-notch acting, well-written and thoughtful plotlines, lots of moral ambiguity . . . . I’d put it right up there as one of the very best drama on TV.