Thread for discussing shows or whatever that don't have or need their own thread.


Lately I've been watching M*A*S*H from the beginning, I'm still only on season 1. It's so damn good, I dunno why I'd never watched more of it. I'd probably seen a random 15 or 20 episodes before, but there 11 full seasons apparently. Anyways, that's what I'm watching, as far as old shows.


Also last month I watched 'The Comeback' which ran on HBO for one season like 5 years ago. It's with Lisa Kudrow, and it's kind of great. The premise is that it's "unedited footage" of the crew shooting her character's new reality tv show, documenting her character's comeback to tv. Basically you see all this hilarious behind-the-scenes stuff about how reality shows are made. Kudrow is pretty excellent in it. There are a whole lot of cringe-worthy moments reminiscent of the British Office, but it doesn't go overboard with it. Anyways, I recommend.



Credit for the topical thread title goes to pot odds:

Watching Six Feet Under right now. Was a underated show on HBO when HBO was full of awesomeness.

I remember I use to watch Six Feet Under and Band of Brothers. HBO was awesome once...

I cannot begin to recommend BoB enough. Absolutely outstanding.

Band of Brothers was one of my first Bluray purchases

I started watching Sesame Street from season 1. It's fantastic at how much I am learning about counting and spelling.

Man, that Oscar is such a grouch!

FUCK YOU BITCH, I LIVE IN A TRASHCAN!

We didn't catch House when it first began airing. Then on a vacation we brought the First Season and watched a couple of episodes each evening. Took some time for us to catch up. Now we stay a season behind so we can get the DVD and watch it at our own pace.

Beside that we watch reality stuff like Survivor, Project Runway, and a ton of Cooking shows like Top Chef. Only "Scripted" stuff I watch with any regularity as it is aired new is CSI.

Well take heart, this is coming soon from the same folks:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e99B80crU3E

Wow, this is almost as good news as when I heard that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is coming out.

get it together, grouch

I have been getting into the West Wing on Bravo. It's nice to watch a show where at the end of the day the politicians always get it right.

Should probably be on the sci-fi channel....

I'm watching Big Love, just finshing season 1. Never thought of polygamy the way it is portrayed in this show, it's fascinating.

I think it actually *was* my first Blu-Ray purchase, although I did get the Spider-Man 3 Blu-Ray free with my PS3. One of the best film productions in history, to say the very least. I've watched it at least once a year since it first came out.

I just hope The Pacific can capture some of the same magic, only 4 more months to wait on that.



My favorite show ever.

last wednesday I got an early xmas present of the west wing box set, watched about 25 eps over the holiday weekend.

it ruled.

My bro-in-law is an editor for a magazine up here and he's going to Maui this week to...check it...INTERVIEW TOM SELLECK!!! Magnum Fckn PI!

I asked him to try and get the Ferarri keys for me...

I need that, I only have the first season on DVD (although the first season rules all).

Stupid double post.

I heard the West Wing rocks that much, so all is forgiven...

Work has gotten quite busy, and I find myself in some kind of WKRP in Cincinnati warp.

I want a butler named Hersh.

I keep humming, "Red Wigglers, the Cadillac of worms!"

I love that show.

I loved WKRP.

Some friends of mine used to have a radio show and I'd hang out in the studio and get on the air from time to time. The first time they asked me if I had anything I wanted to say I said "Booooger" as an homage to Dr. Johnny Fever.

Oh, Bailey is teh hotness.

Steven Seagal: Lawman

I've been watching a lot of "Married With Children" lately, mainly because it's on when I get home from work and winding down. I probably laugh more than I should.

As for "M*A*S*H stated in the original post, I pretty much can't resist watching it whenever it's on, even though I've seen every episode several times. The only episodes I'll turn off are the later ones, when they got too serious.

I don't get to see it very often, but if there were an "Andy Griffith Show" channel, I'd never need to use my remote.

Recently started watching "Bones". Not a great show, but OK. Took a couple of episodes to realize that the Lead is Zooey Deschantel's Sister. I find them each to be cute in a quirky kind of way.

Anybody got opinions on Twin Peaks? I watched it through about 5 or 6 years ago and loved it, and I'm thinking it might be a good time to watch it again. I love me some Agent Cooper. How awesome/nerdy would you have to be to own this? I'm not asking because I own it (I wish!), I just noticed it in an image search.

The A.V. Club, also known as the non-parody section of The Onion, came out with their top 30 tv shows of the decade. If you don't know the av club you should - they have really good interviews and reviews.


Top 30 shows of the decade

I love the way the list starts, beyond just the wire. I'm meh on the sopranos (top ten, sure, but I never really loved it that much), but the rest of the top ten is mostly very good. AD is by far #2 to me, but fine at 3. I love that breaking bad, the uk office, and freaks and geeks are in their top 10.

Then, after about number 12, I start having lots of disagreements. 30 rock, yeah it's pretty funny but...CURB! Gotta be top 10. And then they exclude a bunch of pretty good or really good shows for stuff like

20. Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (Cartoon Network, 2007-present)

And I really wouldn't put Undeclared up there if you've already got Freaks and Geeks at friggin 4 (though it really does just about deserve to be at 4).

Actually I guess overall it's a decent list. But if you're gonna have like three or four cartoons/stupid crap, how can one of them not be AQTHF!?

As a matter of fact, I do. I think it's 1b on my list of best dramas of all time ( the Wire being 1a.. but the shows are so apples and oranges, it's hard to compare them). I think it's completely brilliant, and the best drama ever put on network TV by a long, long shot. I've watched it through about 4 times (the first when it actually first came out when I was in 6th grade) and I catch new stuff each time I watch it.

I've been re-watching rome, which has been delightful ( i've had a fancy for roman history recently, sprung from " the history of rome" podcast, which I highly recommend). I'm considering watching the first few seasons of Homicide, which I've always heard were brilliant.

I really like that wonder showzen and venture bros was on the list. I really did not like that futurama was, and not say, south park or aqua teen or something. But the most glaring omission was IASIP. GTFO, list.

Ahhhh of course! I knew it was missing something seriously important. Sunny should be like #5, at worst.

I honestly have no idea how you listen to so many things. Do you have more hours in your day that everyone else?

History of rome is 20 minutes a week, give or take. I went on a History of rome binge, where I listened to it all at one sitting... but honestly, I'm listening to something about 75% of the time I'm awake.

I almost forgot why I bumped this thread. I started watching " The Shield" last week, and I find it puzzling.


I'll give you a weird and nerdy analogy. So in the mid-80's two major comic books came out, that shook the mainstream comic world... The Dark Night Returns and The Watchmen. The depth, realness, grittiness, and over all quality of the comics were shocking, and everyone thought it would cause a revolution in comics. And it did, for good and bad. Some comics came out that never would have been published before, by a major company, truly great, original ones... but mostly what happened ( in the mainstream) was that the same shitty writers were still writing, but were now influenced by DNR... so instead of shitty vanilla scripts, they were shitty ****ed up scripts, with rape and aids and brutal violence. It was like now the talentless hacks had more freedom to explore their talentless hackdom.


That's how I kind of feel about the shield. I feel like HBO TV Shows of the late 90's and early 00's, Oz and the Sopranos specifically, caused a sea change in Television, in subject matter, in grittiness, in realiness, in quality. In some cases, that can manifest itself in genius shows like The Wire, Breaking bad, Man Men.. shows that probably couldn't have been made in 92. But in other ways, you get shows like Dexter, Sons of Anarchy and the Shield. It's the same hack TV show writers that were cranking out bad, boring drama's in the 80's and 90's, but now they can be hacks that write about really ****ed up things.


And that's not to say that the Shield is all bad. I infact enjoy it, if nothing else because there's at least one moment an episode where I go " holy shit, I can't believe they put that on TV". But at the same time, it's still the same kind of bad melodrama cop show that's been cranked out for decades. THe same bad acting, the same poorly written dialog, the same format, the same sort of one dimensional characters. It's just that all the restrictions on subject matter and content have been tossed aside.


That said, there's way more pay off in a show like this than there is on Dexter or SoA. This show knows what it is, it's violence and ****ed up situation porn, and it delivers in every episode. IT's more like late Oz than early Oz, but the thing about the later seasons of Oz was.. it still delivered, it still brought ****ed up thunder every week, even if the over all quality of the show had waned. So, as long as The Shield keeps delivering car wrecks, I'll keep watching. If it veers into self-indulgence and boring subplots a la Dexter I'll jump ship. Maybe it will surprise me and will get better as the seasons go on, but I'm skeptical.

Also, FX is the king of the almost Awesome show. The Shield, Rescue Me, Sons of Anarchy, Nip/Tuck. All of them are a cut above network TV ( for the most part), but all of them just don't quite deliver in the way I want them to.


This is not including IASIP, obv, which is god.

Are you single?

I am indeed.

I guess that makes more sense. I think I would probably be listening to stuff non-stop if I didn't have a crap-ton of annoying kids running around.

Iron Chef -- the Japanese original, not the lame American remake.

I used to devour that in college. And the american one isn't lame, I still enjoy it, it's still fun watching crazy stuff get made. But the japanese one has all of the good parts of the US verison, but is alot weirder and funnier.

I had never seen an episode of the shield before last summer, and then over last summer and fall I ended up watching them all. Got hooked. Anyways, more below.




I don't know how far you are in the Shield, but I'll assume you're still on season 1 or maybe 2 (I don't remember if season 1 is a short season). In other words, I won't have any spoilers in here. I WILL however spoil the first episode, so if you (obviously not BigD, but you, the reader) have not seen the pilot, do not read the rest of this paragraph. The pilot is obviously different than most pilots I've seen. For awhile it's just a cop show, variously decent or cheesy throughout. Then our main character straight murders a fellow police officer. You're like, there's no way they're really gonna do this, how could we root for this guy if he kills a cop? And then, in an instant, it's done. For the entire rest of the series I could not get that out of my head for even an episode. Mackey, who has been presented to us as our hero, just made himself into a bad guy, and it's not the type of thing that can ever be redeemed. Literally, nothing he could ever do could make up for that, or could make me not want to see him go to jail for life. He not only murdered a cop in cold blood, but he murdered an apparently really good, certainly clean cop, and his crew was fucking in on it with him. I'm not spoiling anything by saying that the whole rest of the series the viewer has to come to terms with this, and constantly has to consider it in relation to every other event. Just in presenting us with a group of supposed protagonists who are truly evil, the show is doing something very interesting. Like the guys on The Sopranos are gangsters or whatever, but Tony sure as shit didn't murder a police officer in the first episode.



I agree with this for the most part, but like I said I was still hooked for the whole series. I've watched every season of 24 for example (save for season 6), and it annoys me on a minute-by-minute basis most of the time, but I still obviously enjoy watching it. Anyways I'll just say this as an overall critique/recommendation for the show: it is better than stuff like L&O and NYPD Blue, and not just because it's "grittier." There are interesting (and sometimes less-interesting) storylines which stretch across the whole series. Without spoiling anything at all, there are a couple of highlights late in the series: Forest Whitaker shows up for an entire season, and even though his character is almost just plain silly in his intensity, at times he's also pretty amazing. Probably the most intense motherfucker ever on tv (Whitaker's character). I can't even think of another word to describe him. And then the other thing to look forward to is the final season. It's not perfect or anything, but there are some very excellent scenes and episodes.




There is a Shield thread, but I only read parts of it after I finished the series. Anyways, you should update here if you keep watching it. I haven't ever really discussed it, so I'd probably be interested in your continued thoughts on it.





I think you'll actually be pleasantly surprised. Of course there are low points, and sometimes it'll be kind of repetitive or obvious, but they do keep the violence level and the 'holy shit!' level pretty high throughout. Really the main thing that gets silly about the violence is the idea that these same cops (not just Mackey and his boys but the patrolmen who they also show) get into like a shoot-out or high-speed-chase every week. As in, the only problem with the action in the show is that it's unrealistically omnipresent. And just know that the final season was by far the most exciting, despite being a little bit too much at times, as any action/drama is wont to do in their conclusion.

I saw all The Shield episodes when it was originally on and while not the best series is in the tier of shows just below the Breaking Bads of this world for me.

I just picked up Seasons 1,2 and 3 on dvd when I found them in the bargain for only $12.50 each and am going to rewatch them.

Tim... I'll be happy to give my thoughts throughout. I don't think I went into enough detail on the stuff I like about the show, and the idea of a truly evil, sociopathic lead character is exciting to me. That's an issue I have with dexter, is I think they try to make him too much of a good serial kiler, a just one, and in doing so make Dexter and the show jump through just absurd hoops.




Yeah, I do agree with that, that it's in a tier below breaking bad.. I just think that the gap between the BB tier, and the shield tier is a really big one. I don't really have a tier below the shield tier ( in terms of dramas) because if a show slips into that tier, I don't watch it. I just get frustrated when shows aren't as good as I think they should be, or hope they would be. I think the Shield has the ceiling of being at the very top of what I'll call the F/X tier ( though not every show in that tier is on F/x, like the Tutors for example), but I just don't think it has good enough writing to rise up into the HBO/AMC tier.

What I love about Iron Chef Japan is the extremely ritualized production and the weirdness factor, exactly the things the US version lacks.

I loved both X-Files (until the soap operaness took over) and Twin Peaks in their time, but think both have aged pretty hard, given the incredible growth in "art" TV since then.

Although I watch very little of it, I think this is a golden age of television in many ways.

You know, I just don't agree about twin peaks. I end up re-watching it every couple years, and I just think it's brilliant every time I watch it.

RuPaul's Drag Race just started its second season. This show is fantastic!

So I've started season 2 of the shield, and it's still very up and down. THere's a scene where the female officer shoots an arab, andwhen he dies, he lands on an american flag. I almost threw up.

Oh my god, best news of the year so far. RuPaul drag race, start your engines, RuPaul drag race, may the best woman win!

Is that when he (the Arab) was arguing with the black female neighbor? If yes, you can take comfort in the fact that that scene (and the terrible scenes leading up to it) stands out to me as the absolute low-point of the whole series. It's rarely, if ever, that bad again.

So I'm in season 3 now, and I have to say this show delivers in weird way.. the writing is getting a bit better, and I'm pleasantly surprised that there are no real boring subplots, all of the sub plots seem to have payoff


And the show has this pattern, where it will lull you to sleep.. boring cop stuff, boring cop integration, funny dutch randomness, boring cop drama, then BANG Tavon get's brained with an iron by the cracker's fiance , that comes out of no where... it's a pattern that started from the first episode, and it's continued through the series. Now that all the characters have been introduced, there's not as many bad and awkward dialog scenes, which I appreciate. There's almost a scandalous amount of sex crime on this show, it's absurd that they can have the subject matter they do on free cable, but can't say fuck or show a breast.

I'm currently watching Twin Peaks for the first time, and it's pretty freakin great.

Oh man is it. Easily the greatest drama on broadcast TV