As white people everywhere know, “Mad Men” returns to the air on Sunday. We have suffered silently and whitely for more than 500 days.

Well, not all of us. I was a latecomer to the AMC franchise. I still have not finished Season 4 (I have one episode left) since I didn’t feel any sense of urgency until the new season rapidly approached.

Now that the time has arrived for Don Draper and his whiskey-soaked goodness to lighten up our lives, I’m considering which approach I should take to keep up with the series since I have watched all the previous seasons on DVD or via Netflix Streaming.

The easy way out is to record them on a DVR and watch them when I get a chance at home. The problem is that I don’t want to feel like I have to watch each week and I don’t want to watch just at home. Most of Season 4 has helped me get through lunches at work.

So I think I will take the new $10 credit in my Amazon account (thanks to an AmazonLocal deal which sold them for just $5) and buy a Season pass for their streaming video service. This way, I can watch at work online or at home via my Roku or Tivo.

I’m not ready to completely cut the cord from cable, but I hope that broadcasters add things like this into the equation. With so many outstanding television shows out there, viewers can make choices on how they consume their favorite shows. Sometimes sitting down when the broadcast takes place just doesn’t work.