Here are some questions that y’all can answer here, on your own blog, or not at all:
1. What are the TV shows that you miss the most? Not that you necessarily wish they were still on the air because perhaps they had run their course and had a good conclusion.
2. What TV show do you think was the biggest victim of circumstance or not given a chance to find its market? For instance, last year CBS’s The Class was cancelled despite decent ratings. A lot of people really believed that it could have been The Next Great Show. More popular examples are Arrested Development and Firefly, which had dedicated followings but not sufficiently large ones.
3. What fiction TV show (no reality TV) are you dumbfounded as to its popularity and longevity?
4. Have you ever discovered a band from a TV show? Ever heard a song that you really liked, looked it up, and bought the CD it was on?
5. Are there any shows that you prefer watch on DVD rather than watch in week in and week out?
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6 Responses to Reader Participation: TV Shows
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I really liked Coach, a cleverly written show that always was good for some laughs.
As for shows whose popularity and longevity puzzles me, look no farther than Seinfeld. It was pretty much the same thing over and over again.
1) I miss WKRP in Cincinnati. I also miss Mad About You because it started almost to the day my wife and I were married, and we followed Paul and Jamie’s progression as a young married couple together. It got weird, but I loved it. I miss a Star Trek series being on the air.
2) I enjoyed Alien Nation, a one-season wonder of a sci-fi show back in the early 90’s. Studio 60 was a victim of comparison to the rest of Aaron Sorkin’s legacy (The West Wing and Sports Night, etc) and because of its unfunny show-within-a-show wasn’t able to shake the cobwebs off and find its identity. And of course, there was Galactica 1980…ok, just kidding.
3) Well, my utter bumfuzzlement to Arrested Development‘s appeal is well-documented. I actually gave that show 3 tries to try and find it even mildly interesting or amusing, and it failed. I also don’t quite get the big thing for the CSI/NCIS/ABCDEFG type shows, but in truth I’ve never watched one – the previews have never excited me.
4) I actually went out and bought the album from the Rembrandts (“I’ll Be There For You” from Friends) thinking the rest of their stuff might be as good as that song. It wasn’t.
5) I caught up on the 1st season of Lost on DVD, which as great and necessary. Also a couple of seasons of The West Wing I’d missed because I came into the show later in its run. But I prefer to watch a show live, especially now when there are multitudes of places to discuss the new episodes online.
1) Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise. DS9 because it was the best-written ST, Enterprise because once they got Berman & Braga off the show it turned out really good… they just had no chance to recover an audience from the first two seasons driving so many people away.
I also miss Samurai Jack; I think it’s a great travesty that the director of the series dumped it to do Star Wars-related garbage.
2) I’d have to say Futurama comes first to mind – Fox did everything to kill it, including constantly pre-empting it for sports and moving it around on the timeslots so often that finding it was more chance than planning.
3) I could never fathom how Friends managed to be so popular.
4) Nope.
5) “DVD” being loosely defined as “on electronic media”, I’d say that Avatar: The Last Airbender and Smallville both fall into that category.
My thoughts on the various shows mentioned:
Coach – They must have done something right, I liked that show before I liked college football. Haven’t seen it in forever, though, so I don’t know how well it holds up.
Seinfeld – Seinfeld is good in pieces, but it’s not very enjoyable if you try to watch a lot of episodes back to back in the same way that other shows, such as Friends and Frasier, are. I went through season three and by the end of it, though none of the episodes were bad and there wasn’t a decrease in quality, I had my fill of the show for a long while.
WKRP in Cincinnati – I used to watch that show a lot, but I don’t remember much about it.
Arrested Development – I saw an episode way back when and then watched another much more recently. I liked them, but I didn’t find them nearly as interesting as everyone else seems to.
CSI/NCIS/ABCDEF – I’ve never been able to get into CSI and have never seen NCIS. Some people put Law & Order in this category (dunno if Barry is or not), but I like Law & Order and its various spin-offs.
Star Trek – Deep Space 9 was the only Star Trek show I could remotely get in to. Avery Brooks is a tragically under-used actor. The guy exudes toughness and authority. Never saw Enterprise.
Futurama – I liked it, though didn’t love it. There was an episode involving the buying of a car that I still laugh about when I think about it.
Friends – I didn’t want to like the show nearly as much as I did. I was reluctant to come around to the conclusion that it (in my opinion) worthy of the hype.
Avatar – Looks amazing, though I haven’t seen much of it yet.
Alien Nation, Smallville, Samarai Jack – Never seen’em
I would love to see Firefly make a comeback… One season wasn’t enough! I need closure!
Ok add one more to my list… I cannot for the life of me understand what people’s obsession with Firefly is. I saw a few episodes, saw the movie, and my reaction was pretty much “meh”…