TV Show meme:
Please note the following:
One: Bold a series you saw more than three times. I’m adding here: italicize it if you thought it was dreadful.
Two: While I’m a videophile, I’m pretty snorty about what I watch. I will watch a show until I screech and throw dung at the screen due to the bad writing. Then I’m usually done.
Three: A lot of stuff you saw as a kid I didn’t see if you were a lot younger than I, and I’ll be 50 next year. Some stuff I saw as a kid, and I see it now and groan. YMMV.
Four: I lost interest in most network TV around 1978, when law school ate my free time alive, and lost interest in sitcoms long ago.
First, the category of No Way In Hell: These are things that should have been taken out and cremated before birth, and I wouldn't see them ever. Sitcoms rule in this realm. Dumb teen stuff. T&A. Sleazy stuff of any genre.
-ALF, Baywatch, Beavis & Butthead, Beverly Hills 90210, Bosom Buddies, Charlie's Angels, Charmed, Dharma & Greg, Different Strokes, Felicity, Frasier, Friends, Growing Pains, Hannah Montana, Jackass, Joey, Married... With Children, Melrose Place, Monk, Mork & Mindy, My Two Dads, One Tree Hill, Oz, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Three's Company
Second: the category of Tried it, gave up on it. As in the jet fuel gave out, and I bailed. Usually, it started with something about it that I liked, but the writers got really dumb with the plotting. Example: We gotta keep up the romantic tension, so lets turn them into human pretzels for years with all sorts of dumb get them together and split them up stunts. I can't say all of it was bad, but it's not all good, and the day came when I asked 'why am I still watching this?'
-24, 7th Heaven, Bonanza (well, when I was a kid I liked it, but it jumped the shark when Hoss died), House, NCIS, Numb3rs, Roseanne, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Profiler, Smallville, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Survivor, The Simpsons, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Waltons, The Wonder Years, The X-Files, Twin Peaks
Third: Not My Bag, Man. Just disinterested. Almost all cop and detective shows. Anime, pretty much. Horror. Most reality shows. Sitcoms. Teen angst. Sillier end of SF. I can't say good or bad, because what I was seeing in the way of information (or a randomly caught episode) didn't interest me personally as worth my time to chase after.
-Adam 12, Aeon Flux, Angel, Boy Meets World, Bug Juice, Chappelle's Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dawson's Creek, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Desperate Housewives, Emergency!, Entourage, Everybody Loves Raymond, Facts of Life, Family Guy, Family Ties, Farscape, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, Homicide: Life on the Street, Inuyasha, Invader Zim, Invasion, Hell's Kitchen, JAG, Little House on the Prairie, Malcolm in the Middle, Miami Vice, Nip/Tuck, Pokemon, Power Rangers, Prison Break, Project Runway, Rescue Me, Roswell, Saved by the Bell, Rome, Scrubs, Road Rules, So Weird, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural, Surface, The 4400, That 70's Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The O.C., The Office, The Pretender, The Real World, The Shield, Third Watch, Whose Line is it Anyway?, Will and Grace, Wings
Fourth: They Put a Gun at My Back. Someone I was hanging with dug it and I watched a few for their sake, not mine. Think kid and girlfriends and you get the picture.
-Americas Top Model (Mere's idea, and she quickly dropped it when she realized it was shrieking bitchery at its worst), Columbo (hated the whole 'ya know what bothers me' schtick), Cheers (dopey, hated it.), Danny Phantom, Gunsmoke, Happy Days, Home Improvement (some were OK, but most were horrid), Lizzie McGuire, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, M*A*S*H, Spongebob Squarepants, Teen Titans, That's So Raven, The Brady Bunch, The Cosby Show, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
Or What Was I Thinking? A lot of these were from my childhood. I enjoyed them a lot them, but I look back at them now and - well, my tastes have changed.
- Dragnet, Get Smart, Gilligan's Island, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, Hogan's Heroes, I Dream of Jeannie, I Love Lucy, Lost in Space, Love, American Style, Mission: Impossible, My Three Sons, Superman, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flintstones, The Honeymooners, The Jeffersons, The Jetsons, The Love Boat,
There's I Stuck It Out, Aren't I Brave: These are the best of the lot. If there were rough patches, I got past them and stuck with the show.
-ER, Everwood, Firefly, Lost, South Park, Star Trek, The Avengers, The Addams Family, The Andy Griffith Show, The Daily Show, The Dead Zone, The Golden Girls, The Monkees, The Munsters, The Twilight Zone, The West Wing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Commander in Chief, Dead Like Me, Perry Mason
Last, there's the Never Got Around To It. People say it's good, but I just didn't get around to watching it. They're the ones that I'll look up some day on DVD.
Revised 7/10/06 for clarity:
-Alias, Arrested Development, Battlestar Galactica (the original was totally lame, haven't seen the remake), Coupling, Cowboy Bebop, Crossing Jordan, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, Deadwood (very curious), Doctor Who (actually, this is misleading. I thought the old series stuff was largely too cheesy to watch, but many friends of mine in Chicago fandom are devoted to it. I've seen some interesting bits in the recent revival and I'm willing to give it a try again.), Futurama, MacGyver, Queer As Folk, Stargate SG-1, Taxi, The A-Team, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars