What I've been watching the past 6 months (TV division)

[dreamshark]

Current TV shows:  Only survivor is Survivor, and we're between seasons right now.  And if Russell Hantz really comes back as a contestant again I won't be watching the next season either.  Our antenna doesn't work all that well anyway.

OLD TV SHOWS, courtesy of Netflix
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Dollhouse - Richard lost interest in this one by the end of Season 1, leaving me free to order the disks and gobble them up on my own (R doesn't like watching TV as much as I do, so when we're both watching a show it holds me back).  All done now, and I'm a little sad. That show got under my skin the way Carnivale did, on a dreamlike id-deep level, and I miss them both so much now that I'm done with them.

The Tudors - a lushly produced dramatization of the early part of Henry VIII's reign, when he was young and buff.  Not only am I addicted to it, I got ambertatge hooked as well.  I'm only up to the birth of Princess Elizabeth so far, so don't tell me how it ends.  (ha)

Connections - whee!  It's finally available on Netflix!  Although I must say that Season 1 isn't quite as good as I remembered it. Tons of interesting ideas and facts, but the pacing is uneven and some of the logical leaps are a little hard to follow. I wonder if this is one of those classic shows that hit its stride in Season 2. Another one that both of us watch, so it will take a while to get through them.

Scrubs (first disk) - Not sure who put this one on the queue, me or Thorin, but it showed up and I was pleasantly surprised by the first few episodes. Comedy disks are hard to get through - who wants to watch 8 sitcom episodes in a row?  But I watched 3 in a row on Saturday, in between bouts of playing PixelJunk Eden, and I'm not sick of it yet.

Glee (Season 1) - always a delight. Richard warmed up to this one slowly, but now he's hooked too.

Big Bang Theory - well into Season 2 and it's still funny. Honestly, I thought the joke would wear out by this point, but the writers have been surprisingly creative and consistently witty.  Make no mistake, it's total fluff. But it's pretty good fluff. In fact, I think it's time to move another disk up on the queue.

ON THE BACK BURNER
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Chuck - more geeky silliness. The plots are frankly ridiculous, but the ensemble acting chops have been good enough to keep me coming back. Well, enough to get through Season 1 with both Richard and I still enjoying it. However, Season 2 is languishing on our queue. One or two Chucks are fun, but getting through a whole disk of them can get tiresome.

Eureka - in about the same status as Chuck. Cute idea, good ensemble acting, but its appeal is starting to fade. This one would be a lot better if the writing staff were as genuinely geeky as the writers for Big Bang Theory. The characters are lovable, but the skiffy plots are tired. You could do so much more with a back story like this one if you hired some actual s.f. writers.

TRIED AND LIKED ENOUGH TO ORDER A DISK OCCASIONALLY:  30 Rock, Better Off Ted.
TRIED AND DIDN'T LIKE:  Gilmore Girls, House
WAITING IN THE WINGS: Caprica, Nurse Jackie, and *OMG did you know that Dark Shadows is now available on Netflix??*

Comments

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the multiple edits. If you have some version of high speed internet, I cannot say enough good things about the "Watch Instantly" titles that Netflix has. You can watch on a computer or on one of many devices, and you don't need to plod through a whole disc if the show's pacing is not serialized enough to warrant watching several shows at once. We have the least expensive Roku box (in the 'streaming players' category) and it's nifty.

Of the shows that you listed, Dark Shadows, Dollhouse, Eureka, 30 Rock, and Better off Ted, are all available on "Watch Instantly," as are The IT Crowd, Battlestar Galactica (new and classic), The Sarah Conner Chronicles, The Dead Zone, Bones, Veronica Mars, Monk, Psych, and eleventy bazillion movies. Combined with the post discs, you'll never watch broadcast TV again.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yes, we have recently entered the world of Streaming Netflix, and I'm excited! More on thatin a different, gadget-related post. (I tend to buy a lot of electronics around the end of the year).

However, I'm a little disappointed with how limited the selections (and I've already finished a lot of the TV series on disk). I was excited when Amber told me that "The Tudors" is available Instantly, since I'm still in the middle of that one. But guess what - only the first 2 seasons are available streaming - then it's back to DVD again! WTF? And here I am, halfway through Season 2!

Oh, yeah, I forgot about "Psych." Thorin and I watched an episode of that one when we were trying out our new streaming feature. He wasn't all that taken with it, but I thought it was pretty funny and added it to my instant "queue." Which, as Thorin correctly pointed out, isn't exactly a queue, just an ordered list.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the original Connections since the reruns on PBS many many years ago. Still, I would recommend The Ascent Of Man (far more than the parochial Civilisation).

Gave up on Chuck after about the third show, but maybe without commercials (and with extras) it'll be palatable. Not a high priority.

And while I've seen every episode of Eureka, it's never risen above a B show. Makes me want to see Eerie, Indiana, which I missed the first go-round.

Agree that 30 Rock is best dabbled in, though I like it a lot. I also liked Better off Ted. And House worked the few times I've seen it in repeats, but for the most part only the first season was good, then they couldn't get past the premise.

Just got the first disk of Wonderfalls, by the same people who did Pushing Daisies. Should be interesting. Am still enjoying Animaniacs. Brilliant, just brilliant: As clever as the Warner Bros. cartoons of the 40s, and as subversive as the Marx Brothers, with the backing of Steven Spielberg to let them roam along popular culture.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. "Ascent of Man" seems to be in my Netflix queue already. You must have recommended it before. ;-)

If you didn't like "Chuck" after 3 shows you probably just don't find the characters sufficiently endearing. It's the kind of show that completely stands or fails on that.

We did watch "Eerie, Indiana" back when it aired. And I think you're right - it's similar to "Eureka." I think "Eureka" is better - that endearing cast factor again. As I recall, the townsfolk in Eerie were just plain creepy rather than weird but lovable.

Re "Wonderfalls," have you ever seen "Dead Like Me," yet another 2-season wonder by that same creator? All 3 shows have a lot in common. All 3 are high-concept magical realism that revolve around a cutesified version of death, and all 3 have as a central character a cute but whiny young woman with a jarringly masculine name.

I took a while to warm up to "Dead Like Me," but eventually came to love it and really felt bereft when we came to the end of its 2-season run. The main character ("George") was annoying, but it was very much an ensemble show and I loved all the rest of the characters.

I liked "Pushing Daisies" a lot in the beginning, but as the series went on I found Chuck and Ned (but particularly Chuck) to be increasingly irritating and the concept to be just a little too fey. I was secretly relieved when we came to the end of that one, although I certainly was glad I watched it - for the unforgettable color palette and architecture if nothing else.

I really wanted to like "Wonderfalls" but just didn't - gave up after about 4 shows. I think the problem was that I didn't find ANY of the characters likable. YMMV.

Hmm. The Animaniacs show isn't available for Watch Instantly, but "Wakko's Wish" is. That's a movie, I take it? Is it as good as the show?

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Never seen Dead Like Me, but I've added it to my suggestions (my Netflix spreadsheet in Excel, not the Netflix Queue just yet). Sort of depends on how much I like Wonderfalls.

I agree that the concept of Pushing Daisies stretched credibility at times, but I was constantly amazed that they pulled it off time and again. I wasn't "secretly relieved" when it ended, though; I felt it deserved another show or two (instead of the epilogue) to wrap things up.

Iirc, Wakko's Wish wasn't one of my favorite Animaniacs episodes; maybe I didn't even see it, as it was a direct-to-video movie after the run of the tv episodes. Anyway, it's the very end of the characters, and doesn't give the full flavor of the show (which featured a nifty bunch of supporting cartoons including Pinky and the Brain).

I find it hard to say too many good things about Animaniacs. Not everything works, but most of it does and when it hits it hits hard. Perhaps my favorite is when the Animaniacs parody Duck Soup. Let me dwell on that for a second... a parody of Duck Soup. They light into Apocalypse Now and sing silly songs.

Slappy Squirrel was a Cute Animal Cartoon in the 40s, and is now a cranky old lady who's seen everything cartoons have to offer and talks to the audience as if they have, too. Which they have. She and her nephew Skippy rip the movie Bambi to shreds. Brilliant. The one set during Woodstock is great.

Rita and Runt are the hard luck cat and dog pairing, loosely based on Rain Man. Bernadette Peters is in great voice as the hard-knock-but-heart-of-gold cat. They rescue Let Miseranimals from jail, and try to escape from the Nazis in WWII Warsaw. When was the last time you saw a cartoon with Nazis?

Not all the Pinky and the Brain plots to take over the world are all that effective, but they're fun to watch. They spun off to their own show.

Well, I'll stop now. Except to say that all the cartoons produced by Steven Spielberg (w/ Marshall/Kennedy) in the post-Roger Rabbit period are great. Freakazoid is on my list for later.

Since I mostly order the disks (to get the extras), I don't track streaming shows. Still, if you liked Futurama you'll like Bender's Game, one of the movies made after the series was cancelled and before it was revived.

Later on my list: More of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes. Most of them are available for streaming.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Never seen Dead Like Me, but I've added it to my suggestions (my Netflix spreadsheet in Excel, not the Netflix Queue just yet). Sort of depends on how much I like Wonderfalls."

Ouch. I wish you'd do that experiment in the reverse order. Of the 3 Bryan Fuller shows, I think "Wonderfalls" is the weakest, and "Dead Like Me" the strongest.

Of course, it may be that I don't really like Bryan Fuller that much. I see from Wikipedia that although he was the creator of "Dead Like Me," he left the show after 5 episodes due to "creative differences." That was almost exactly the point where I stopped teetering on the edge of revulsion at the show's premise and started really liking it. The concept is kind of creepy (and makes about as much sense as the premise of "Pushing Daisies"), but once the characters started coming to life (no pun intended) I was won over. The whole cast was good, but Mandy Patinkin was its lifeblood.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Well, we had the Wonderfalls disk, so it was too late. Both Carole and I agreed that the pilot was the best of the four episodes on the disk by a lot. The show seems like a watered down version of Joan of Arcadia, a brilliant program for one season which couldn't attract an audience so they tinkered with the premise and the second season just didn't work. In the commentary for the Wonderfalls pilot, the creators mention being inspired by Joan of Arc, but don't mention the other show, which premiered a year earlier.

We'll watch all 13 (or 14) eps, then see about Dead Like Me.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Remember, Dead Like Me undergoes a subtle change in tone and characterization somewhere around Disk 2 or 3. We thought it was a change for the better. Other people thought the reverse.