TV: ...and suddenly we're playing parcheesi instead of checkers
Day 01 - A show that should never have been cancelled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of one of your favorite shows
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of one of your favorite TV shows
Day 08 - A show that's had a significant effect on who you are today
Day 09 - Best scene ever
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
Bunch of series have had serious OMG WTF NFL finale moments. TNG's third-season "Best of Both Worlds" would've probably killed me if someone online hadn't tipped me off that it was, in fact, a two-parter, and even then, that was a looooong summer. Patrick Stewart's continued involvement in the show was a huge question mark, and given the tenor and nature of Picard's comments to Guinan, invoking the collapse of the Roman Empire, you had to wonder if the Federation was even capable of withstanding the invasion. Turned out things went more or less back to normal, but with an impressive legacy for a show that'd been rather episodic up to that point. Subsequent Trek series tried to replicate the effect, but it was never that effective or engaging.
Buffy only had one season where its return the subsequent season was assured, and as a result, it got three fantastic finales -- season two's "Becoming," in which Buffy is accused of murder, expelled, and has to kill her undead boyfriend to save the world; and even more notably "The Gift," in which our heroine has to sacrifice her life to save the world again, only this time with terrifying finality (the closing shot of her headstone is impressive, as is her epitath: "Beloved sister, devoted friend / She saved the world / A lot." The status quo is eventually reestablished upon the show's returns, but never easily, and certainly not without a price.
The first two West Wing finales were both nicely written -- the former steeped in uncertainty, but the latter's outcome all but assured in all except the eventual wording. The Office had Jim and Pam's first kiss, which you'd think would've put things in motion a bit faster than they did (they're no Tim and Dawn, that's for damn sure), but...well, they finally found their way. Even The Simpsons had "Who Shot Mr. Burns," though we had that one called a mile away. Alias had an impressive two-year time jump. BSG pulled out all the stops when it came to season finales (and mid-finales as well; "Revelations" kicked the chair out from under the viewer just in time for the writers' strike "hiatus"); season one had Boomer's sudden and startling awakening, season two had the "one year later" on New Craprica, and season three was merely middling with the Watchtower Four, but still. (And there's always M*A*S*H offing Henry Blake at the last minute. You'll notice I tend away from the TV classics unless expressly called for; I consider them self-evident.)
Edit: I almost forgot -- after a somewhat sub-par season, evidently this year Metalocalypse was saving its annual allotment of awesome for the finale. After leaving the Tribunal and the over-arching uberplot to wallow for most of the season, the finale features the band committing to play a show in Syria at the same time that they're already committed to play a show in Israel. This being Dethklok (12th largest economy in the world and, remember, 100 times more popular than the Beatles) the world teeters on the precipice of World War III while their manager not only rescues the band when they run away, but is instrumental in developing technology to allow them to...oh, hell, watch the clip. (And as for the significance of the very final scene...well, that's complicated.) Each season has featured one simply sublime track from Dethklok, and like "Black Fire Upon Us," "The Beginning" fits the finale perfectly:
But easily the winner here? Lost. Without question. No matter how I feel about the series finale, the third-season finale was beautiful enough of an absolute mind-screw to earn this title handily.
If you haven't seen the show and might want to start at some point, STOP RIGHT HERE and close this tab or window and go Netflix the series. It's worth it, if only just for this episode. I'll spoil below the clip.
So in case you haven't seen Lost somehow and still don't know what I'm talking about, in broad strokes: plane crashes on island, freaky shit happens on island, episodes are routinely peppered with flashbacks to characters' lives before the plane crash. And it's beginning to look like the survivors might actually be getting some help when the season three finale opens. But the flashbacks are unusually dour. Jack (more or less the protagonist) is shown as being depressed and despondent, drinking and drugging himself insensate, thumbing though atlases and maps, blathering about his father to his co-workers.... It's not until he calls and meets with Kate, another survivor, that the beauty of the flashbacks unfolds: they aren't flashbacks, but flashforwards. Suddenly a show which has played its cards tighter to its chest than one of those hat-and-sunglasses wearing douchebags on televised poker games answers a ton of questions -- and invites ten times as many more. It's no longer a question of if they get off the island, but how, and why is it so important that Jack insists they have to go back? Maybe not all of those questions were answered to everyone's satisfaction, but that moment of revelation works so well in that you're forced to rewatch the entire episode just to put everything you've just seen into its proper context, and at the same time, you have the outlines of a massive expanse of the upcoming narrative, and you can't wait to see how the rest of that story's filled in. That twist alone was impressively audacious and well-executed...easily that series' finest moment, and one that justifies watching it up to that point.
Tomorrow, a pilot so good they didn't make a series. Yes, that one.
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of one of your favorite shows
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of one of your favorite TV shows
Day 08 - A show that's had a significant effect on who you are today
Day 09 - Best scene ever
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
Bunch of series have had serious OMG WTF NFL finale moments. TNG's third-season "Best of Both Worlds" would've probably killed me if someone online hadn't tipped me off that it was, in fact, a two-parter, and even then, that was a looooong summer. Patrick Stewart's continued involvement in the show was a huge question mark, and given the tenor and nature of Picard's comments to Guinan, invoking the collapse of the Roman Empire, you had to wonder if the Federation was even capable of withstanding the invasion. Turned out things went more or less back to normal, but with an impressive legacy for a show that'd been rather episodic up to that point. Subsequent Trek series tried to replicate the effect, but it was never that effective or engaging.
Buffy only had one season where its return the subsequent season was assured, and as a result, it got three fantastic finales -- season two's "Becoming," in which Buffy is accused of murder, expelled, and has to kill her undead boyfriend to save the world; and even more notably "The Gift," in which our heroine has to sacrifice her life to save the world again, only this time with terrifying finality (the closing shot of her headstone is impressive, as is her epitath: "Beloved sister, devoted friend / She saved the world / A lot." The status quo is eventually reestablished upon the show's returns, but never easily, and certainly not without a price.
The first two West Wing finales were both nicely written -- the former steeped in uncertainty, but the latter's outcome all but assured in all except the eventual wording. The Office had Jim and Pam's first kiss, which you'd think would've put things in motion a bit faster than they did (they're no Tim and Dawn, that's for damn sure), but...well, they finally found their way. Even The Simpsons had "Who Shot Mr. Burns," though we had that one called a mile away. Alias had an impressive two-year time jump. BSG pulled out all the stops when it came to season finales (and mid-finales as well; "Revelations" kicked the chair out from under the viewer just in time for the writers' strike "hiatus"); season one had Boomer's sudden and startling awakening, season two had the "one year later" on New Craprica, and season three was merely middling with the Watchtower Four, but still. (And there's always M*A*S*H offing Henry Blake at the last minute. You'll notice I tend away from the TV classics unless expressly called for; I consider them self-evident.)
Edit: I almost forgot -- after a somewhat sub-par season, evidently this year Metalocalypse was saving its annual allotment of awesome for the finale. After leaving the Tribunal and the over-arching uberplot to wallow for most of the season, the finale features the band committing to play a show in Syria at the same time that they're already committed to play a show in Israel. This being Dethklok (12th largest economy in the world and, remember, 100 times more popular than the Beatles) the world teeters on the precipice of World War III while their manager not only rescues the band when they run away, but is instrumental in developing technology to allow them to...oh, hell, watch the clip. (And as for the significance of the very final scene...well, that's complicated.) Each season has featured one simply sublime track from Dethklok, and like "Black Fire Upon Us," "The Beginning" fits the finale perfectly:
Click to viewBut easily the winner here? Lost. Without question. No matter how I feel about the series finale, the third-season finale was beautiful enough of an absolute mind-screw to earn this title handily.
If you haven't seen the show and might want to start at some point, STOP RIGHT HERE and close this tab or window and go Netflix the series. It's worth it, if only just for this episode. I'll spoil below the clip.
So in case you haven't seen Lost somehow and still don't know what I'm talking about, in broad strokes: plane crashes on island, freaky shit happens on island, episodes are routinely peppered with flashbacks to characters' lives before the plane crash. And it's beginning to look like the survivors might actually be getting some help when the season three finale opens. But the flashbacks are unusually dour. Jack (more or less the protagonist) is shown as being depressed and despondent, drinking and drugging himself insensate, thumbing though atlases and maps, blathering about his father to his co-workers.... It's not until he calls and meets with Kate, another survivor, that the beauty of the flashbacks unfolds: they aren't flashbacks, but flashforwards. Suddenly a show which has played its cards tighter to its chest than one of those hat-and-sunglasses wearing douchebags on televised poker games answers a ton of questions -- and invites ten times as many more. It's no longer a question of if they get off the island, but how, and why is it so important that Jack insists they have to go back? Maybe not all of those questions were answered to everyone's satisfaction, but that moment of revelation works so well in that you're forced to rewatch the entire episode just to put everything you've just seen into its proper context, and at the same time, you have the outlines of a massive expanse of the upcoming narrative, and you can't wait to see how the rest of that story's filled in. That twist alone was impressively audacious and well-executed...easily that series' finest moment, and one that justifies watching it up to that point.
Tomorrow, a pilot so good they didn't make a series. Yes, that one.