You may most certainly tape a show to watch it later if you are going to miss it. Similarly, you may keep this tape for a library and to watch it at a future date. And certainly no one would be angry if you allowed a friend to borrow a tape to watch an episode that they have missed. Your friend could even make their own copy for their archive. This is still fair use, as defined in the aforementioned RIAA case.
It is quite simple. Let us suppose that [someone] encodes a Seinfeld episode. He then sends the episode to me. He is my "friend" as mentioned in the above paragraphs. All of the people downloading from me are my "friends", so this is legal.