Day 6: The Idiot Box

In my last post, I mentioned fandoms. This got me thinking about favorite TV shows, and I don't think I've really ever touched base on my actual favorites. Here's a short list with short reasons why I've enjoyed the given series.

Gilmore Girls

That's right, I said it. I own every season and think the writing on this show is fantastic. The quips from Lorelei and Rory are phenomenal and every single character is interesting to some degree. Except Taylor. Bastard.

The Wife: Also a fan of the show. Hell, even her mother borrows my sets.

Supernatural

A TV show that creates its own monster-based dogma loosely based off of folktales and such? Yeah, sure, it's been done. But Supernatural was the first to do it right and I absolutely love the cast on this show. Dean and Sam (who is played by the actor who plays Dean in Gilmore Girls...) can be serious or depressed or intense, but they're at there best when they're being funny. As the seasons go on, the show is definitely losing its appeal. And the lack of really interesting baddies has dragged them down, but I am about a season and a half behind, so maybe I've missed something. Either way, the first handful of seasons are gold.

The Wife: I think the relationship between the brothers really drew her in as well -- we watch this show together. It's entirely possible that the actors, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, have something to do with it, though...

You know, these guys.

Firefly

I don't think I need to write much here. It was short and bittersweet and the best damn sci-fi (and sometimes even Western) show to ever grace the television screen. In my arbitrary opinion, of course. Nothing has really come close.

The Wife: While she doesn't fully agree with my level of sadness, she does understand it and she'll watch the series with me when I re-watch it every couple months.

Mobile Suit Gundam

There are many different Gundam series, and I've enjoyed several. Giant robots with lasers and shit? Yes please. The original holds a special place in my heart, and in any game where I can change armor color, I invariably make a character dressed all in red and name him "Char."

The Wife: ANIMATED giant robots with lasers and shit? Absolutely not.

The Red Comet

Sherlock

Some of the best writing in any TV show I've ever seen. The episodes are long (1hr 45mins) and the seasons short (3 episodes), but even my least favorite episodes (Season 1, Episode 2 and Season 2, Episode 2) are still awesome in many ways. The character of Sherlock is incredibly well done. Most eccentric characters lack any appropriate character growth. They either get weirder or normalized. Sherlock's changes are minimal, graceful, and generally quietly done. Also, and this isn't something I normally care about, but the cinematography is spot on. Love the camera angles and the different styles they'll work into a given episode.

The Wife: Possibly loves the show as much, if not more, as I do. With the lengths of the episodes, this is surprising -- usually she tends to fall asleep when we watch longer things later at not. Not so much when Sherlock is on.

One of the best episodes, and I don't even like music.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It's taken a while, and I still have a season and a half left, but I eventually did fall in love with this show. Again, this is mostly do to a solid cast and witty writing. Also, I can't get the songs from the episode, "Once More, With Feeling" out of my head. I don't always like Joss Whedon's TV shows, but Buffy has been well and truly great, and I'm actually excited by the thought of going back and watching the first few seasons with my updated perspective.

The Wife: She never really got into when I started, but that's mostly because I watched the first few seasons pretty quickly. I'll try again when I go for the re-watch.

Always Sunny in Philadelphia

This is a strange one for me, because I don't generally enjoy outright comedy. Always Sunny may be dark humor, but it is, at heart, a comedy. That being said, the characters are all a kind of quirky I enjoy and the show has something I respect above all else: a sense of memory. You will still see references to season one even after half a dozen seasons, and it doesn't feel tacked on. If you'd never seen previous episodes, it wouldn't be glaring, but it adds to the humor. Apparently the gang always uses the same cassette tape when they have to record something (which isn't too often). When they eventually play any videos, you always catch a brief snippet of something that happened in one of the previous episodes. And then there's Kitten Mittens. Or that one episode where they actually repeated a previous episode, and it was STILL hilarious.

The Wife: Another show we watch together and equally enjoy.



Well, I'll end this list here, but one suggestion -- find a show you can watch with your significant other. Even if you're both dead silent during, it is a nice experience. And it'll make for interesting talk or references later. I'm often told by my wife to, "Shut up, bird."