I thought that during commercial breaks the characters in the show I was watching were still doing things and I was missing it because the commercials were not pausing the show in the background but playing over top of it.
I think there's some truth to that - I think sometimes films (movies) were cut a bit too fit the ads in.
Or maybe that's just my yet-to-be-busted childhood myth!
I asked my mom why there were commercials and she said 'so the actors could get paid'. I thought it was pretty rude of them to make everybody wait around watching commercials when they could just hang around for a couple minutes after the show was done to get their money. Like, I thought they were literally counting out the money into their hands during the commercials.