Spend the summer on TV with therapists, vampires, Louie and sandcastle builders

It’s hard to remember a time when there was next to nothing on TV in summer besides reruns. Entire families shut the box off, with good reason, confident that they weren’t missing anything.
But in this century, summer is when TV becomes more interesting (and provocative) and easier to enjoy. At your Sunday night barbecue, guests start looking at their watches nervously as the citronella candles flicker and the flies have discovered the watermelon rinds. Sure, summer TV addicts can watch “True Blood” or “Breaking Bad” later — on the DVR or on demand — but the fact remains that there is a real pleasure in wasting a perfectly good summer on good TV.

I’ve come to love summer TV more than I do the big fall season launches. Some of my favorite shows come on in summer — FX’s “Louie,” Showtime’s “Weeds,” Bravo’s “Flipping Out.” It’s also where I develop new watching habits, because there is something looser about the summer TV grid. The pressure is off, somehow, not only for the networks but also for the viewer. Even the reality shows on far-flung cable networks have a “why not?” feeling to them.
So why not? Well, there’s the guilt to deal with. On an emotional and psychic level, American Summer is reserved for camping and lakes and other bucolic pursuits. Beach motels never used to get TV reception. Swimming pools beckoned. To watch TV during all that possibility, all those sunsets? We’re brought up believing it’s a sin to waste it.
I don’t know what to tell you, except to offer you my picks for this summer’s best TV, and to recall a kindness that a neighborhood friend offered me many, many summers ago: If your mom won’t let you watch TV at your house, come over and watch ours.