I suppose this is the weekend where I write about TV. Ironic in the sense that I don’t actually own a tv, and haven’t had one in the home since 1999. I’m not an anti-tv elitist (although I do feel smug when I hear people have long conversations about reality show participants as if they were their friends), just sensible enough to know that I’m susceptible to being sucked into mindless channel flipping.
For not owning a television, I manage to watch a lot of it. Thanks to Comcast bundling prices, we even have a cable subscription hooked up to nothing so that our our internet service comes cheaper! Ah, the internet, which allows us to purchase tv shows from iTunes, watch live baseball games on MLB TV, and even stream free shows like the new season of Battlestar Galactica! Supplementing that, I’ve been getting lots of tv shows on DVD from the public library, which make for a great distraction during feeding times for the baby.
Anyhow, I’m unable to resist participating in memes when I come across them, so here’s the one about TV that I found on The Urban Pantheist:
1. Bold the shows of which you’ve watched every episode
2. Italic the shows of which you’ve seen at least one episode
2a. Star the shows you consider “the best”
3. Post your answers
50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – probably the dullest of all the Star Treks
46. Sex & The City – saw a few episodes at a friends house and found it pretty trite
45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. *Star Trek – I’m pretty sure I’ve only missed a few episodes, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen any. I should address that problem.
42. Only Fools and Horses – never heard of this
41. Band of Brothers – or this
40. Life on Mars – or this
39. *Monty Python’s Flying Circus – British television makes it so much easer to see every episode by having shorter seasons. Keeps the quality up too, I expect.
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. *Star Trek: The Next Generation – my favorite Trek.
36. * Father Ted – watched the whole series back in December.
35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI: Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood
30. Dexter
29. ER – I never watched this when it was new but we’ve been getting the DVDs for this lately from the library. A better show than I’d realized although it seems to decline in quality (and into soap opera-ness) with each season.
28. * Fawlty Towers – the first show I saw every episode of due to the fact that there are only 12.
27. Six Feet Under
26. * Red Dwarf – just watched the entire run over the past couple of months.
25. Futurama – I watched one episode of this show, and then watched it again about a year later and it was the exact same episode. I didn’t like it much either time.
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office UK
22. The Shield
21. Angel – watched at friend’s house. They had to explain all the in-jokes.
20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park – I watched from time to time over the first couple of seasons. It seemed to me that the writers went from “lets write something funny and outrageous” to “lets just try to be offensive and stir up controversy” much to the show’s detriment.
16. Doctor Who
15. Heroes
14. Firefly – far to sci-fi for my tastes.
13. * Battlestar Galactica – here is a great character drama that happens to be set in space. Best show on tv right now, imho.
12. Family Guy – I see references to this show everywhere on the ‘net and yet they don’t make me interested in ever watching this show.
11. Seinfeld – I never got the appeal of this show. Jerry Seinfeld is a funny guy, but the show always relied on cheap sex jokes, that annoying slap bass that I guess was supposed to enforce enthusiasm, and had the character of George Costanza who grated on my nerves.
10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends – the same-sex wedding episode was a big event in my apartment at the time. I never watched a full-episode otherwise.
06. 24 – This show appears to exist to justify the Bush administration’s torture policy. No thanks.
05. Lost – Susan, Craig & I watched an episode of this in a bar where we couldn’t hear the audio and we made up our own plot an dialog.
04. The West Wing – another show we’ve been getting from the library.
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer – saw this at the same time as Angel above.
01. * The Simpsons
Panorama of the Mountains 