TV I've been watching and not watching
I've been meaning to post meaningfully about TV for months; instead I've been jotting down occasional notes. At this point I've accumulated enough notes that a) I will never get around to turning them into meaningful posts, and b) they're sort of a large post all by themselves. So here we go...
Mild spoilers for recent BSG eps; I think everything else is general enough that it doesn't count as spoilery.
Battlestar Galactica
I like watching characters go through terrible things and then - this is actually my favorite part - have to live with the consequences. That's what first grabbed me about BSG, actually; the war was over before it began, and the show got right down to the coping-with-the-aftermath part. It's too early to tell just how well the show is going to spin out the latest consequences of the latest disasters, but at this point I am happy to go along for the ride. I've been enjoying recent eps in large part because I was mildly concerned about the Cosmic Reset at the end of last season and the start of this season, worried that we'd be rehashing some of the same difficulties. But no, the difficulties - and the allegiances - feel new to me. I mean, Kara and Tigh bonding! WTF, yet awesome!
I've been watching eps a bit out of sync with most folks, so I haven't been hunting down conversation about them, and thus I have very little sense of how most folks in my fannish circle reacted to 3x08 Unfinished Business (although dualbunny and I did flail over it together). Parts of that ep made no sense to me, but I did like the issue raised by Daddy Adama's fight with Tyrol: Adama wants the crew to be a military organization and a family, and he's finding out that he can't have it both ways. Since I have been wanting the show to deal with that issue for a long time now, I am hoping that this ep is a signal that the show is going to deal with it and not simply an empty gesture in that direction. I also liked the backstory on the Starbuck/Apollo tryst + split; it makes sense to me that the two of them would hook up when drunk and hopeful (I pause here to note how much I love that Starbuck literally drank Anders under the table), that Lee would be willing to follow through on it without thinking about whether that's actually a good idea, and that Kara would take a look at her declaration of love in the harsh light of day and run in the other direction as fast as she can. They really have no communication skills whatsoever. I love it! They are so colossally stupid about each other! I can't decide whether they are more stupid for not trying to make it work or for hooking up in the first place! I don't even care! I gather that a number of folks are fed up with Starbuck at this point, but I'm not; I'm still finding her a really interesting mess.
Buffy
My show! I miss this show. I watched a few eps of Supernatural recently (see below), and my primary reaction to it was "...I really miss Buffy. And Buffy. And Willow. And Xander and Giles and Spike and Oz and Cordy and Tara and Anya and Faith and OMG I seriously miss my show." I am planning to rewatch the entire series from the beginning this spring, both for vidding purposes and for sheer love.
DaVinci's Inquest
I actually watched a couple of eps of this show because renenet's been watching it and loving it, and because we'd been having some interesting conversations about investigative procedurals in relation to my watching of Homicide (see below). And DaVinci's Inquest, like Homicide, didn't ping for me. Which isn't to say that it's a bad show, just... it's not for me.
It is possible that I will get around to writing up my thoughts about why investigative procedurals and workplace dramas don't appeal to me, but it is much more likely that I will think about it occasionally for the next six months and then forget about it altogether. I mean, honestly, I still haven't finished my CD reviews from 2004. Let's be realistic here.
Doctor Who
This show is just so relentlessly charming! I'm not sure I'd say I'm fannish about it yet - though that could change at any moment if one of my other shows starts to seriously disappoint me - but I am... well, charmed. And very much looking forward to the new eps. I found the Runaway Bride xmas ep quite amusing, especially the parts where the Doctor would get all wound up and Donna would just smack him. Smart girl.
Farscape
In the past few months, I've been introducing one of my dearest local friends to a bunch of TV she hasn't seen before; most recently, she was over for dinner and looking at my DVDs, and observed that she's seen Farscape S1 and a few scattered episodes thereafter, but would love to see the whole series in order. So we reviewed a few key eps from S1, watched the season finale and the first ep of S2, and are embarking on the rest of the series as of this week. Looks like the return of Sunday Night Pizza & Media at my house, which pleases me immensely.
Firefly
I'm working on a new Firefly vid idea. I have no idea whether it's going to be a good vid, but as of right now just working on it is making me happy. I have all the eps loaded on my vidding drive, and scanning through them looking for clips sends me into gleeful little raptures on a regular basis. This show... this show still has my heart.
Gilmore Girls
I've downloaded most of this season's eps, but haven't watched them yet. My sense of urgency about this show has always been intermittent, and now? It's completely gone. Which isn't to say it's gone forever. I mean, when I first started watching it I mainlined four seasons in about a month because I just couldn't stop watching (...the fact that I was avoiding revising my dissertation might possibly have had something to do with that too, but I really did like the show), but last year I kept up with the first few eps and then just... didn't feel the need to keep up, until a few weeks after the season finale when I watched the whole season in less than a week.
I do still have a couple of GG vid ideas that I am excited about; I'm actually more excited about the ideas than the show at this point, so who knows when or even if they'll get made, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Homicide: Life on the Street
I'd heard great things about this show, suspected it wouldn't be my thing, but wanted to watch a few eps before dismissing it out of hand; and I'm glad I did, because now I can say "this is not my genre" with considerably more confidence, on the basis of experience rather than theory. It is clearly a very well-done show; it's just that the things it's doing aren't things that interest me personally. I think that The Wire (see below) is more my thing, although I am still trying to figure out why.
Actually, watching H:LotS made me start thinking about writing a post in which I think through what I do and don't respond to in TV - stuff about characters, plots, genres, writing, etc. - because I see certain patterns in what I like but then also these odd apparently anomalous fondnesses that don't seem to fit the pattern, which makes me think that I need to theorize a new set of patterns. Of course, most of that post would probably be pasted-in transcripts of conversations with renenet, because I am lazy like that.
The other thing that Homicide (and more recently The Wire) has made me think about is just how unusual it is for me to see lots of people of color together on my TV screen. Very few of the shows I watch feature more than one non-white regular character (if that); at some point during one of the first few eps of Homicide I looked at my screen and saw three black characters talking together and thought "Wow. That is a sight I really do not see often enough." It made me think about how different it is - how different, literally, it looks - to have multiple people of color onscreen instead of just The Token Nonwhite Character.
It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I should check out Heroes.
Hornblower
I watched the first of the Hornblower series with truepenny a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it, though not in a "must see more NOW" kind of way. I have a Thing about ships (Voyage of the Dawn Treader has always been my favorite of the Narnia books), which actually makes Hornblower a bit frustrating to watch: too much stuff about boys, not enough stuff about ships. But truepenny very kindly gave me the entire series on DVD when she ended up with a spare copy somehow, and a few weeks ago I thought "you know, I think I feel like watching that now" and then mainlined the entire series in about ten days. Like ya do.
As I observed to renenet on the phone: The Hornblower/Kennedy slash pretty much writes itself, doesn't it. As does the Hornblower/Pellew and the Hornblower/Bush. How can Horatio manage to be so repressed and uptight and yet simultaneously to convey the impression that he's on the verge of sex with nearly every officer he encounters? Seriously, all those loving looks (with Kennedy) and bitten-off expressions of devotion (from Pellew), and then the conversations about marriage (with Bush)... This stuff would totally delight me if only I, you know, cared. Even without caring, I was amused; I kept cracking up at inappropriate moments and then having explain to the reproachful cats that the subtext here was rapidly becoming text.
Slings & Arrows
The series finale just killed me, in the best of all possible ways. I adore this show, and it breaks my heart that there's not more of it; but it ended so perfectly - everybody involved was so willing to just follow this thing to its logical conclusions, however painful - and wrapped up so well without feeling overly tidy... It's not a uniformly brilliant show; some of the subplots got way too much screen time, and in general I always wanted more Geoffrey (and more Maria - I love Maria) and less Richard, plus the show occasionally hit my social embarrassment squick a little too hard. But those are relatively minor concerns (especially since I am more than willing to fast-forward through Richard, or simply hit mute and go get a cookie). The show as a whole, the idea of the show, just makes me so terrifically happy.
Sports Night
This show was a perfect popcorn show for me. I Netflixed it, secure in the knowledge that I would never need to watch it again (I was so right about this). It was a good show for watching at the end of the semester, because it's amusing and smart and sometimes even witty and it made absolutely no demands on me whatsoever. It was also the perfect show to watch, or rather "watch," while folding laundry, because when I glanced up at the screen there were people scurrying around with amusing facial expressions, but mostly I didn't need to look at the screen and could just listen to the dialogue while I dealt with turtlenecks and sweater sleeves.
Supernatural
For this, I blame... pretty much everybody, but specifically sockkpuppett, sisabet, renenet, and coffeeandink, who've talked about the show in my (actual and/or virtual) presence to the point that it's actually on my fannish radar in more than a "the kid who played Rory's boyfriend is on a new show" kind of way. Result: I ended up with a song stuck in my head that I thought might be a Supernatural vid, but of course I couldn't be sure because I hadn't actually seen any of the show (although I've seen vids - boy howdy, have I seen vids). I made renenet listen to it, hoping she would veto the idea ("Are you crazy? How could you think that would be a Supernatural song? Would you please stop assigning songs to shows you haven't even seen?"), which, to my considerable irritation, she didn't.
renenet: ok, listening again
renenet: lots of driving, lots of camera movement
renenet: lots of looks of grim determination
renenet: this could totally work
here's luck: crap
renenet: unexpected violence on certain drumbeats
here's luck: the vaguely sinister rattling in the background
renenet: it might be....possibly it's a Sam vid
renenet: I'm not final on that
renenet: except it may have to be Dean
renenet: esp. as Dean mostly drives
here's luck: well, it could be a metaphor
here's luck: since the whole thing is metaphors
[snip]
renenet: okay, so...I cannot speak to SPN fandom reception
renenet: so we can't care about that
renenet: this would be a vid for us
here's luck: Well, except for the part where I don't want to make it
here's luck: or possibly even to watch it
Eventually I just couldn't deal with having this possible vidsong for a show I'd never seen outside of vids, so I Netflixed the first disc.
I came to two conclusions:
1) The song would work. I mean, it wouldn't be groundbreaking, and it might not be everybody's cup of tea, but it's not screamingly inappropriate.
2) I don't care enough about the show to bother at this point.
Now before some of you get all over my case about #2: Yes, I've heard that the show gets substantially better later in the season. That's not really the issue. I didn't find the show nearly as offputting as I'd expected; the pilot has some clunky exposition, but honestly, it's the rare pilot ep that doesn't have this problem. The premise is reasonably interesting. The two leads do not actively annoy me (although I think Dean could stand to be smacked upside the head repeatedly). However...
I have concluded (and not just because of this show) that I'm not wired to develop a sustained and substantial interest in a show that features no interesting major female characters. I don't mean that I can't enjoy shows that are All About The Boys; I enjoyed Due South (an enjoyment boosted in the latter seasons by the hotness of RayK), and more recently Hornblower. But I enjoy them in relatively limited ways: I enjoyed the Due South characters, but the show itself made me nuts more often than not, and I have no particular desire to rewatch the show qua show (although I will cheerfully scan the source for vidding purposes). Plus, while there is precedent for my being able to enjoy shows that feature a pair of leads rather than a large ensemble cast (notably X-Files), the shows I love most have all been ensemble-oriented, and that's really not on offer here.
Also: in a show (and a fandom) that seems, shall we say, preoccupied with the hotness of the two leads, I find neither one even remotely hot. I realize that this disinclination puts me in a vanishingly small minority of fannishly-inclined women, but there it is. I don't find Dean attractive, period - not when he's trying to be charming, not when he's being angsty, not even when he's dramatically lit. (I would probably find him mind-bendingly hot if he were female, but what works for me in a butch almost always fails to work for me in a boy.) I find Sam vaguely cute in a pat-him-on-the-head kind of way, but I think this is mostly because (like many tall and still-slightly-gangly twentysomething guys) he reminds me of my own little brother. My reaction to him is to want to feed him pot roast and a quart of milk and then make him go get his hair cut.
So while I don't think that I'd actively dislike Supernatural, I suspect that I would be fairly "eh" about it, and that is just not the reaction that I want to be having when people all around me are vibrating themselves halfway to another dimension with excitement and squee and OMG TEH HOT. I will almost certainly catch up with the show at some point, but I think I would rather do it when the excitement has settled down to a quiet simmer. Which at the rate you people are going may never happen. So, you know, whatever.
Torchwood
I was never all that sold on Captain Jack to begin with - I liked the idea of him (canonical bisexuality yay!), but found him not-particularly-compelling in practice (at least compared to all the folks I knew who were completely thrilled by him); possibly this is just because I don't find him even slightly attractive. So I was on the fence about this show before it started airing, and nothing that I've seen from laurashapiro or vonnie_k has made me want to watch it. Pity.
Veronica Mars
I haven't had much to say about the show this season, largely because vonnie_k's writeups have been expressing most of my reactions. It's been the slowest start to a season so far, I think, from a plot point of view; but then the plot isn't really why I'm watching. I'm watching for the characters, and as long as Veronica and Wallace and Weevil and Keith and Mac continue to delight me I'll keep watching. So though I am mildly annoyed that we're not getting enough of Wallace and Weevil and especially Mac, and I'm not particularly thrilled by the wrap-up of the campus rape plotline, the resolution didn't make me want to throw things, and I am basically still on board with the show (and praying they get enough of a budget for next year that they can afford to have my favorite characters onscreen simultaneously rather than sequentially).
The Wire
For this, I blame sdwolfpup. I've only watched the first three eps; I'd queued up the first discs of a bunch of shows in Netflix just to check them out, and right after The Wire I had Sports Night (see above), which turned out to be much more what I was in the mood for at that point in the semester. But I was intrigued by The Wire, particularly the mix of characters, so although my attention is elsewhere at the moment I'm planning to pick up the show again at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Mild spoilers for recent BSG eps; I think everything else is general enough that it doesn't count as spoilery.
Battlestar Galactica
I like watching characters go through terrible things and then - this is actually my favorite part - have to live with the consequences. That's what first grabbed me about BSG, actually; the war was over before it began, and the show got right down to the coping-with-the-aftermath part. It's too early to tell just how well the show is going to spin out the latest consequences of the latest disasters, but at this point I am happy to go along for the ride. I've been enjoying recent eps in large part because I was mildly concerned about the Cosmic Reset at the end of last season and the start of this season, worried that we'd be rehashing some of the same difficulties. But no, the difficulties - and the allegiances - feel new to me. I mean, Kara and Tigh bonding! WTF, yet awesome!
I've been watching eps a bit out of sync with most folks, so I haven't been hunting down conversation about them, and thus I have very little sense of how most folks in my fannish circle reacted to 3x08 Unfinished Business (although dualbunny and I did flail over it together). Parts of that ep made no sense to me, but I did like the issue raised by Daddy Adama's fight with Tyrol: Adama wants the crew to be a military organization and a family, and he's finding out that he can't have it both ways. Since I have been wanting the show to deal with that issue for a long time now, I am hoping that this ep is a signal that the show is going to deal with it and not simply an empty gesture in that direction. I also liked the backstory on the Starbuck/Apollo tryst + split; it makes sense to me that the two of them would hook up when drunk and hopeful (I pause here to note how much I love that Starbuck literally drank Anders under the table), that Lee would be willing to follow through on it without thinking about whether that's actually a good idea, and that Kara would take a look at her declaration of love in the harsh light of day and run in the other direction as fast as she can. They really have no communication skills whatsoever. I love it! They are so colossally stupid about each other! I can't decide whether they are more stupid for not trying to make it work or for hooking up in the first place! I don't even care! I gather that a number of folks are fed up with Starbuck at this point, but I'm not; I'm still finding her a really interesting mess.
Buffy
My show! I miss this show. I watched a few eps of Supernatural recently (see below), and my primary reaction to it was "...I really miss Buffy. And Buffy. And Willow. And Xander and Giles and Spike and Oz and Cordy and Tara and Anya and Faith and OMG I seriously miss my show." I am planning to rewatch the entire series from the beginning this spring, both for vidding purposes and for sheer love.
DaVinci's Inquest
I actually watched a couple of eps of this show because renenet's been watching it and loving it, and because we'd been having some interesting conversations about investigative procedurals in relation to my watching of Homicide (see below). And DaVinci's Inquest, like Homicide, didn't ping for me. Which isn't to say that it's a bad show, just... it's not for me.
It is possible that I will get around to writing up my thoughts about why investigative procedurals and workplace dramas don't appeal to me, but it is much more likely that I will think about it occasionally for the next six months and then forget about it altogether. I mean, honestly, I still haven't finished my CD reviews from 2004. Let's be realistic here.
Doctor Who
This show is just so relentlessly charming! I'm not sure I'd say I'm fannish about it yet - though that could change at any moment if one of my other shows starts to seriously disappoint me - but I am... well, charmed. And very much looking forward to the new eps. I found the Runaway Bride xmas ep quite amusing, especially the parts where the Doctor would get all wound up and Donna would just smack him. Smart girl.
Farscape
In the past few months, I've been introducing one of my dearest local friends to a bunch of TV she hasn't seen before; most recently, she was over for dinner and looking at my DVDs, and observed that she's seen Farscape S1 and a few scattered episodes thereafter, but would love to see the whole series in order. So we reviewed a few key eps from S1, watched the season finale and the first ep of S2, and are embarking on the rest of the series as of this week. Looks like the return of Sunday Night Pizza & Media at my house, which pleases me immensely.
Firefly
I'm working on a new Firefly vid idea. I have no idea whether it's going to be a good vid, but as of right now just working on it is making me happy. I have all the eps loaded on my vidding drive, and scanning through them looking for clips sends me into gleeful little raptures on a regular basis. This show... this show still has my heart.
Gilmore Girls
I've downloaded most of this season's eps, but haven't watched them yet. My sense of urgency about this show has always been intermittent, and now? It's completely gone. Which isn't to say it's gone forever. I mean, when I first started watching it I mainlined four seasons in about a month because I just couldn't stop watching (...the fact that I was avoiding revising my dissertation might possibly have had something to do with that too, but I really did like the show), but last year I kept up with the first few eps and then just... didn't feel the need to keep up, until a few weeks after the season finale when I watched the whole season in less than a week.
I do still have a couple of GG vid ideas that I am excited about; I'm actually more excited about the ideas than the show at this point, so who knows when or even if they'll get made, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Homicide: Life on the Street
I'd heard great things about this show, suspected it wouldn't be my thing, but wanted to watch a few eps before dismissing it out of hand; and I'm glad I did, because now I can say "this is not my genre" with considerably more confidence, on the basis of experience rather than theory. It is clearly a very well-done show; it's just that the things it's doing aren't things that interest me personally. I think that The Wire (see below) is more my thing, although I am still trying to figure out why.
Actually, watching H:LotS made me start thinking about writing a post in which I think through what I do and don't respond to in TV - stuff about characters, plots, genres, writing, etc. - because I see certain patterns in what I like but then also these odd apparently anomalous fondnesses that don't seem to fit the pattern, which makes me think that I need to theorize a new set of patterns. Of course, most of that post would probably be pasted-in transcripts of conversations with renenet, because I am lazy like that.
The other thing that Homicide (and more recently The Wire) has made me think about is just how unusual it is for me to see lots of people of color together on my TV screen. Very few of the shows I watch feature more than one non-white regular character (if that); at some point during one of the first few eps of Homicide I looked at my screen and saw three black characters talking together and thought "Wow. That is a sight I really do not see often enough." It made me think about how different it is - how different, literally, it looks - to have multiple people of color onscreen instead of just The Token Nonwhite Character.
It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I should check out Heroes.
Hornblower
I watched the first of the Hornblower series with truepenny a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it, though not in a "must see more NOW" kind of way. I have a Thing about ships (Voyage of the Dawn Treader has always been my favorite of the Narnia books), which actually makes Hornblower a bit frustrating to watch: too much stuff about boys, not enough stuff about ships. But truepenny very kindly gave me the entire series on DVD when she ended up with a spare copy somehow, and a few weeks ago I thought "you know, I think I feel like watching that now" and then mainlined the entire series in about ten days. Like ya do.
As I observed to renenet on the phone: The Hornblower/Kennedy slash pretty much writes itself, doesn't it. As does the Hornblower/Pellew and the Hornblower/Bush. How can Horatio manage to be so repressed and uptight and yet simultaneously to convey the impression that he's on the verge of sex with nearly every officer he encounters? Seriously, all those loving looks (with Kennedy) and bitten-off expressions of devotion (from Pellew), and then the conversations about marriage (with Bush)... This stuff would totally delight me if only I, you know, cared. Even without caring, I was amused; I kept cracking up at inappropriate moments and then having explain to the reproachful cats that the subtext here was rapidly becoming text.
Slings & Arrows
The series finale just killed me, in the best of all possible ways. I adore this show, and it breaks my heart that there's not more of it; but it ended so perfectly - everybody involved was so willing to just follow this thing to its logical conclusions, however painful - and wrapped up so well without feeling overly tidy... It's not a uniformly brilliant show; some of the subplots got way too much screen time, and in general I always wanted more Geoffrey (and more Maria - I love Maria) and less Richard, plus the show occasionally hit my social embarrassment squick a little too hard. But those are relatively minor concerns (especially since I am more than willing to fast-forward through Richard, or simply hit mute and go get a cookie). The show as a whole, the idea of the show, just makes me so terrifically happy.
Sports Night
This show was a perfect popcorn show for me. I Netflixed it, secure in the knowledge that I would never need to watch it again (I was so right about this). It was a good show for watching at the end of the semester, because it's amusing and smart and sometimes even witty and it made absolutely no demands on me whatsoever. It was also the perfect show to watch, or rather "watch," while folding laundry, because when I glanced up at the screen there were people scurrying around with amusing facial expressions, but mostly I didn't need to look at the screen and could just listen to the dialogue while I dealt with turtlenecks and sweater sleeves.
Supernatural
For this, I blame... pretty much everybody, but specifically sockkpuppett, sisabet, renenet, and coffeeandink, who've talked about the show in my (actual and/or virtual) presence to the point that it's actually on my fannish radar in more than a "the kid who played Rory's boyfriend is on a new show" kind of way. Result: I ended up with a song stuck in my head that I thought might be a Supernatural vid, but of course I couldn't be sure because I hadn't actually seen any of the show (although I've seen vids - boy howdy, have I seen vids). I made renenet listen to it, hoping she would veto the idea ("Are you crazy? How could you think that would be a Supernatural song? Would you please stop assigning songs to shows you haven't even seen?"), which, to my considerable irritation, she didn't.
renenet: ok, listening again
renenet: lots of driving, lots of camera movement
renenet: lots of looks of grim determination
renenet: this could totally work
here's luck: crap
renenet: unexpected violence on certain drumbeats
here's luck: the vaguely sinister rattling in the background
renenet: it might be....possibly it's a Sam vid
renenet: I'm not final on that
renenet: except it may have to be Dean
renenet: esp. as Dean mostly drives
here's luck: well, it could be a metaphor
here's luck: since the whole thing is metaphors
[snip]
renenet: okay, so...I cannot speak to SPN fandom reception
renenet: so we can't care about that
renenet: this would be a vid for us
here's luck: Well, except for the part where I don't want to make it
here's luck: or possibly even to watch it
Eventually I just couldn't deal with having this possible vidsong for a show I'd never seen outside of vids, so I Netflixed the first disc.
I came to two conclusions:
1) The song would work. I mean, it wouldn't be groundbreaking, and it might not be everybody's cup of tea, but it's not screamingly inappropriate.
2) I don't care enough about the show to bother at this point.
Now before some of you get all over my case about #2: Yes, I've heard that the show gets substantially better later in the season. That's not really the issue. I didn't find the show nearly as offputting as I'd expected; the pilot has some clunky exposition, but honestly, it's the rare pilot ep that doesn't have this problem. The premise is reasonably interesting. The two leads do not actively annoy me (although I think Dean could stand to be smacked upside the head repeatedly). However...
I have concluded (and not just because of this show) that I'm not wired to develop a sustained and substantial interest in a show that features no interesting major female characters. I don't mean that I can't enjoy shows that are All About The Boys; I enjoyed Due South (an enjoyment boosted in the latter seasons by the hotness of RayK), and more recently Hornblower. But I enjoy them in relatively limited ways: I enjoyed the Due South characters, but the show itself made me nuts more often than not, and I have no particular desire to rewatch the show qua show (although I will cheerfully scan the source for vidding purposes). Plus, while there is precedent for my being able to enjoy shows that feature a pair of leads rather than a large ensemble cast (notably X-Files), the shows I love most have all been ensemble-oriented, and that's really not on offer here.
Also: in a show (and a fandom) that seems, shall we say, preoccupied with the hotness of the two leads, I find neither one even remotely hot. I realize that this disinclination puts me in a vanishingly small minority of fannishly-inclined women, but there it is. I don't find Dean attractive, period - not when he's trying to be charming, not when he's being angsty, not even when he's dramatically lit. (I would probably find him mind-bendingly hot if he were female, but what works for me in a butch almost always fails to work for me in a boy.) I find Sam vaguely cute in a pat-him-on-the-head kind of way, but I think this is mostly because (like many tall and still-slightly-gangly twentysomething guys) he reminds me of my own little brother. My reaction to him is to want to feed him pot roast and a quart of milk and then make him go get his hair cut.
So while I don't think that I'd actively dislike Supernatural, I suspect that I would be fairly "eh" about it, and that is just not the reaction that I want to be having when people all around me are vibrating themselves halfway to another dimension with excitement and squee and OMG TEH HOT. I will almost certainly catch up with the show at some point, but I think I would rather do it when the excitement has settled down to a quiet simmer. Which at the rate you people are going may never happen. So, you know, whatever.
Torchwood
I was never all that sold on Captain Jack to begin with - I liked the idea of him (canonical bisexuality yay!), but found him not-particularly-compelling in practice (at least compared to all the folks I knew who were completely thrilled by him); possibly this is just because I don't find him even slightly attractive. So I was on the fence about this show before it started airing, and nothing that I've seen from laurashapiro or vonnie_k has made me want to watch it. Pity.
Veronica Mars
I haven't had much to say about the show this season, largely because vonnie_k's writeups have been expressing most of my reactions. It's been the slowest start to a season so far, I think, from a plot point of view; but then the plot isn't really why I'm watching. I'm watching for the characters, and as long as Veronica and Wallace and Weevil and Keith and Mac continue to delight me I'll keep watching. So though I am mildly annoyed that we're not getting enough of Wallace and Weevil and especially Mac, and I'm not particularly thrilled by the wrap-up of the campus rape plotline, the resolution didn't make me want to throw things, and I am basically still on board with the show (and praying they get enough of a budget for next year that they can afford to have my favorite characters onscreen simultaneously rather than sequentially).
The Wire
For this, I blame sdwolfpup. I've only watched the first three eps; I'd queued up the first discs of a bunch of shows in Netflix just to check them out, and right after The Wire I had Sports Night (see above), which turned out to be much more what I was in the mood for at that point in the semester. But I was intrigued by The Wire, particularly the mix of characters, so although my attention is elsewhere at the moment I'm planning to pick up the show again at some point in the not-too-distant future.