TV Show Meme
Three days in, no signs of slowing down.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled
Lots of easy choices here, but I'll go with Sci-Fi's late, lamented 2001-02 series The Chronicle, which had an interesting premise and a fantastic cast with great chemistry but only got 22 episodes to strut its stuff. I think it was mainly victim to bad timing -- considering the success the channel has had with similar shows (like Eureka and Warehouse 13) recently, if it were running today it would probably be considered a hit show.
Honorable mentions: Better Off Ted, Kings, The Middleman.
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
If you have any affection at all for the superhero genre, you owe it to yourself to watch The Venture Bros. on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Flat-out hilarious first and foremostly, with surprisingly deep and affecting characters that really grow on you over the run of the show. Season 2 is particularly brilliant, beginning with a run of seven or eight near-flawless episodes right out of the gate.
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this season)
All the new shows from this season have a flaw or two, which makes it harder to pick a single favorite. I think overall I have to give the nod to Community, which is consistently hilarious even if I sometimes catch a whiff of flop sweat from time to time. I also enjoyed Caprica, Modern Family, and Justified quite a bit. (Then there are the guilty pleasures, like Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Human Target and The Good Guys...)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
At my core, I'm a sci-fi guy when it comes to television. I love the novelty of worlds created from whole cloth, learning a new set of rules and cataloguing new alien bestiaries, and I like when my dramas feature big ideas and big stakes. The workaday, ripped-from-the-headlines mundanity of your typical cop/doctor/lawyer drama generally leaves me completely cold because their worlds are so small and self-contained.
So that's why my favorite show ever is Farscape. Great drama, gorgeous to look at, a fantastic cast, able to address big ideas (both scientific and moral) without becoming sterile or preachy, and remarkably different from most other shows of its kind. Farscape takes everything you loved about Star Wars (a huge, chaotic universe full of conflict and weird-looking aliens) and everything you loved about Star Trek (a really strong ensemble whose relationships grow and change, moral quandaries to wrestle with between action sequences) and combines them into a feast for sci-fi fans.
It's a show I revisit in its entirety at least once every 18 months or so, and it always strikes me how everything about it, from dialogue to props to CGI, hints at a surface that is only barely being scratched by the action you see on the screen. And it sure doesn't hurt that the show's tone contains multitudes, from jokey episodes like "Crackers Don't Matter" to terrifying mini-horror films like "Eat Me" to sit-and-think pieces like "A Human Reaction." Heck, half of one of the Season 4 episodes is an homage to the animation of Chuck Jones! That willingness to throw open the doors of imagination and let 'er rip is so hard to find on television -- even in sci-fi, where the focus is almost always on telling familiar stories in a way that won't frustrate or confuse the most fickle and distractable of viewers -- but it's what I love most about fiction, and brilliantly realized in this show.
Day 05 - A show you hate
At the other end of the spectrum, we have Reality TV in all its guises. From the celebrity-trainwreck subgenre (Rock of Love) to the gape-at-the-losers subgenre (Intervention, Jersey Shore) to the humiliate-yourself-for-prizes subgenre (Fear Factor) to the subgenre stankow calls "Long Form Game Shows" (covering things from The Amazing Race to Project Runway to Dancing With The Stars) and everything in between -- I loathe it all, won't watch it, and in fact think less of people who become fans of it, in direct proportion to how much they watch. Think of reality TV as cigarette smoke and you'll begin to understand my attitude toward it.
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show
As I mentioned above, Farscape has a lot of different kinds of episodes, almost all of which are excellent. It's really hard to pick a single favorite. Put on the spot, I guess I'll go with the Season 3 premiere, "Season of Death." It's jam-packed with almost everything that made Farscape so engrossing: great character moments, a twisty plot of maneuver and counter-maneuver, cracker-jack dialogue, and a heaping helping of the darkness and foreboding that began to characterize the series starting from the second half of Season 2. But it won't make a damn bit of sense as a stand-alone episode -- for one that will, I'd go with "...Different Destinations", also from Season 3, as my favorite. It takes the familiar sci-fi story trope of sending the cast back in time to a historical event, and handles it in a way that's uniquely Farscape. Can't wait to watch it again!
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show
This one's easier than the "favorite" question -- at the risk of attracting the ire of Crichton/Aeryn 'shippers everywhere, I have never really liked "The Locket" from Season 2. It's basically Farscape's version of a chick flick, as if somebody had decided to devote an entire episode of a usually fast-paced and eventful sci-fi show to a remake of On Golden Pond. When rewatching the series in full, it's the one I'm always tempted to skip, because it lifts neatly out of the show's run without leaving much of an impact, except on the pitter-patting hearts of those sensitive souls who live to play matchmaker for fictional characters. The only bit of extended-plot business that happens is the return of Stark with the news that he's located D'Argo's son, and that doesn't happen until the last two minutes of the show.
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch
Even an arrogant sod like me blanches a little at this question. Tastes being what they are, there's a lot of TV that I consider unassailable which other people completely don't get, and vice-versa. And that's OK. But if you push me into a corner, I'd say that very few people out there would not be improved by developing a taste for The West Wing -- at least until the end of the fourth season, when Aaron Sorkin left the show to make a terrible flop called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sure, I know about all the criticisms: it's too lecturey, it's too inside-politics, it's unfair to conservatives, it's idealized liberal propaganda. To the critics, I say a little idealized liberal propaganda never hurt anybody. And there's something wrong deep inside your soul if you can't watch this stuff and be inspired, or at least entertained, before you start picking nits.
Honorable mention: The Simpsons, although "mission accomplished" in that regard, pretty much. Even the Yanomami Indians know where "Can't sleep, clown'll eat me" comes from at this point.
Day 09 - Best scene ever
I don't know about "ever", but in keeping with the previous question -- among the thousands of TV scenes I've seen, the vast majority of them are less emotionally satisfying than this one:
Coming tomorrow:
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death
--- Ajax.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled
Lots of easy choices here, but I'll go with Sci-Fi's late, lamented 2001-02 series The Chronicle, which had an interesting premise and a fantastic cast with great chemistry but only got 22 episodes to strut its stuff. I think it was mainly victim to bad timing -- considering the success the channel has had with similar shows (like Eureka and Warehouse 13) recently, if it were running today it would probably be considered a hit show.
Honorable mentions: Better Off Ted, Kings, The Middleman.
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
If you have any affection at all for the superhero genre, you owe it to yourself to watch The Venture Bros. on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Flat-out hilarious first and foremostly, with surprisingly deep and affecting characters that really grow on you over the run of the show. Season 2 is particularly brilliant, beginning with a run of seven or eight near-flawless episodes right out of the gate.
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this season)
All the new shows from this season have a flaw or two, which makes it harder to pick a single favorite. I think overall I have to give the nod to Community, which is consistently hilarious even if I sometimes catch a whiff of flop sweat from time to time. I also enjoyed Caprica, Modern Family, and Justified quite a bit. (Then there are the guilty pleasures, like Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Human Target and The Good Guys...)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
At my core, I'm a sci-fi guy when it comes to television. I love the novelty of worlds created from whole cloth, learning a new set of rules and cataloguing new alien bestiaries, and I like when my dramas feature big ideas and big stakes. The workaday, ripped-from-the-headlines mundanity of your typical cop/doctor/lawyer drama generally leaves me completely cold because their worlds are so small and self-contained.
So that's why my favorite show ever is Farscape. Great drama, gorgeous to look at, a fantastic cast, able to address big ideas (both scientific and moral) without becoming sterile or preachy, and remarkably different from most other shows of its kind. Farscape takes everything you loved about Star Wars (a huge, chaotic universe full of conflict and weird-looking aliens) and everything you loved about Star Trek (a really strong ensemble whose relationships grow and change, moral quandaries to wrestle with between action sequences) and combines them into a feast for sci-fi fans.
It's a show I revisit in its entirety at least once every 18 months or so, and it always strikes me how everything about it, from dialogue to props to CGI, hints at a surface that is only barely being scratched by the action you see on the screen. And it sure doesn't hurt that the show's tone contains multitudes, from jokey episodes like "Crackers Don't Matter" to terrifying mini-horror films like "Eat Me" to sit-and-think pieces like "A Human Reaction." Heck, half of one of the Season 4 episodes is an homage to the animation of Chuck Jones! That willingness to throw open the doors of imagination and let 'er rip is so hard to find on television -- even in sci-fi, where the focus is almost always on telling familiar stories in a way that won't frustrate or confuse the most fickle and distractable of viewers -- but it's what I love most about fiction, and brilliantly realized in this show.
Day 05 - A show you hate
At the other end of the spectrum, we have Reality TV in all its guises. From the celebrity-trainwreck subgenre (Rock of Love) to the gape-at-the-losers subgenre (Intervention, Jersey Shore) to the humiliate-yourself-for-prizes subgenre (Fear Factor) to the subgenre stankow calls "Long Form Game Shows" (covering things from The Amazing Race to Project Runway to Dancing With The Stars) and everything in between -- I loathe it all, won't watch it, and in fact think less of people who become fans of it, in direct proportion to how much they watch. Think of reality TV as cigarette smoke and you'll begin to understand my attitude toward it.
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show
As I mentioned above, Farscape has a lot of different kinds of episodes, almost all of which are excellent. It's really hard to pick a single favorite. Put on the spot, I guess I'll go with the Season 3 premiere, "Season of Death." It's jam-packed with almost everything that made Farscape so engrossing: great character moments, a twisty plot of maneuver and counter-maneuver, cracker-jack dialogue, and a heaping helping of the darkness and foreboding that began to characterize the series starting from the second half of Season 2. But it won't make a damn bit of sense as a stand-alone episode -- for one that will, I'd go with "...Different Destinations", also from Season 3, as my favorite. It takes the familiar sci-fi story trope of sending the cast back in time to a historical event, and handles it in a way that's uniquely Farscape. Can't wait to watch it again!
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show
This one's easier than the "favorite" question -- at the risk of attracting the ire of Crichton/Aeryn 'shippers everywhere, I have never really liked "The Locket" from Season 2. It's basically Farscape's version of a chick flick, as if somebody had decided to devote an entire episode of a usually fast-paced and eventful sci-fi show to a remake of On Golden Pond. When rewatching the series in full, it's the one I'm always tempted to skip, because it lifts neatly out of the show's run without leaving much of an impact, except on the pitter-patting hearts of those sensitive souls who live to play matchmaker for fictional characters. The only bit of extended-plot business that happens is the return of Stark with the news that he's located D'Argo's son, and that doesn't happen until the last two minutes of the show.
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch
Even an arrogant sod like me blanches a little at this question. Tastes being what they are, there's a lot of TV that I consider unassailable which other people completely don't get, and vice-versa. And that's OK. But if you push me into a corner, I'd say that very few people out there would not be improved by developing a taste for The West Wing -- at least until the end of the fourth season, when Aaron Sorkin left the show to make a terrible flop called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sure, I know about all the criticisms: it's too lecturey, it's too inside-politics, it's unfair to conservatives, it's idealized liberal propaganda. To the critics, I say a little idealized liberal propaganda never hurt anybody. And there's something wrong deep inside your soul if you can't watch this stuff and be inspired, or at least entertained, before you start picking nits.
Honorable mention: The Simpsons, although "mission accomplished" in that regard, pretty much. Even the Yanomami Indians know where "Can't sleep, clown'll eat me" comes from at this point.
Day 09 - Best scene ever
I don't know about "ever", but in keeping with the previous question -- among the thousands of TV scenes I've seen, the vast majority of them are less emotionally satisfying than this one:
Click to viewComing tomorrow:
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death
--- Ajax.