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Here's my version of the first 19 days of that 30-day TV meme that's been going around, just because!
30-day TV Meme (days 1-19):
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled -- Though there are too many shows that I loved that were cancelled before their time, I think for me the most frustrating example was Alien Nation, the series which was cancelled unexpectedly at the end of its first season, cut short in its prime, due to the fledgling Fox network's decision to cancel all hourly drama series and concentrate on cheaper-to-produce sitcoms, rather than for any lack in quality or shortage of viewers.
The two-hour TV movies that we eventually got, years later, to resolve the season one cliffhanger and flesh out some of the other planned developments for season two helped, as did the novelizations of many of the planned but un-filmed episodes, but I'm still sore about this cancellation.
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching -- I think Person of Interest is doing okay in the ratings, though I noticed that the individuals running that show's panel at last year's San Diego Comic Con seemed woefully uninformed about even the correct names of people working on the series, but it's one of those shows that I can heartily recommend to a broad spectrum of people, whether they're F/SF genre fans or not. But possibly Vegas needs the ratings boost (and deserves to be widely viewed and enjoyed, I think).
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season) -- Among what I think of as shows related to the F & SF genres, Arrow has been growing on me steadily, after an initial episode or two that left me largely unimpressed, with the latest episode aired being particularly intriguing (including the fact that now we've not only got Captain Jack Harkness as Tommy Merlyn's dad, but also Dr. River Song as Laurel Lance's long-lost mom? Neat!). Meanwhile, among non-F/SF shows, I'd half-expected Vegas to be a remake-retread of the old Robert Urich series (Vega$), but this show about law enforcers (both male and female!) and mob-connected characters (ditto!) set in 1960s Las Vegas has turned out to be surprisingly complex and engaging, with some challenging character developments and plot twists.
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever -- I have to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer for this one (narrowly beating out all the Star Trek series incarnations as a group, and it depends on how I define "favorite" on any particular day), for too many reasons to enumerate here.
Day 05 - A show you hate -- For me, this would be anything in the 'reality' genre exploiting 'real people' in manufactured social situations or danger (I work hard at ignoring the very existence of these series, so I can't name any one show in particular). Of course, that's just among shows that are supposed to be for entertainment purposes only. Among the so-called 'news' or 'information' or 'education' programming, I could come up with quite a few others that I judge to be even more harmful to the future of democracy and civilization as a whole.
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- It's really hard to choose, but if pushed I'd probably say "Once More, With Feeling", at this particular moment in time, for a myriad of reasons that have been discussed elsewhere. So I guess I'll leave it at that.
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- Again, there is some stiff competition here (part of having a favorite show is the luxury of hating, passionately, times when you feel that show hasn't lived up to its best self or undermined important characters and themes), but generally I'd probably say it's "As You Were" (just no excuse for that, on so many levels, in my opinion).
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch -- If we're talking about shows that are currently airing on broadcast TV? Then I say Person of Interest, possibly (see Day 2 above).
Day 09 - Best scene ever -- Since 'best' is hard to define, I'll try for most MEMORABLE scene, maybe. And still I can't choose, even if I limit myself to BtVS scenes only. For me, it would probably be a scene involving Spike and Buffy . . . possibly even a scene from "Something Blue", before which I don't think I'd ever considered Spike and Buffy ever, in a million years, getting together, though I loved them both separately. Or one of the archetypal "Buffy fights back and triumphs" scenes (her own "Harrowing of Hell" in the season 3 opener "Anne", for instance). Or maybe the Pieta-like scene at the end of "The Gift", with Buffy's broken body in the foreground and her family and 'disciples' grieving in the background?
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving -- I have at least three valid ways of answering this one, I think.
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you -- Too many to choose from, again, so I'll have to subdivide this category.
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times -- Are you kidding? If I really LIKE a show at all I ROUTINELY view many episodes at least five times in re-runs through the years. Heck, I've watched syndicated re-runs of many episodes of The Big Bang Theory at least that many times over (I may not care much for most of the episodes in recent seasons, but I could happily re-watch classics like "The Adhesive Ducks Deficiency" another fifteen times without becoming inured to their charm). I've seen every one of the 79 episodes of the original Star Trek at least six times over (except for the execrable "Turnabout Intruder" -- once or twice through that was all I could stand, even as a child), and the same goes for at least half the episodes of BtVS.
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show -- Again, I have at least three ways to answer this one.
Day 14 - Favorite male character -- Toss-up between Spock (original Star Trek) and Spike (BtVS), I'd have to say. Both characters are complex, intriguing, sexy, and very liminal in their own way, and these aspects of their roles have been explored at length elsewhere, so I think that's enough for now.
Day 15 - Favorite female character -- Toss-up between Xena and Buffy, I think. There are others that I love, but those two have probably had the greatest long-term influence on my life, among female TV characters.
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show -- Currently? Maybe The Vampire Diaries (see day 10c, above).
Day 17 - Favorite mini series -- Possibly the Farscape series resolution, The Peacekeeper Wars. I watched plenty of miniseries during their heyday back in the late 70s and 80s, but none of those were so eagerly anticipated and cherished.
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence -- Probably the "whoosh" of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the vacuum of space in the original series, just because that opening title sequence still says to me "home" and "hope" and "love", and all the other things that I used to have to find on that show rather than in my RL during a critical period in my youth.
Day 19 - Best TV show cast -- I'd have to go for the original Star Trek crew, again for purely emotional reasons. Those people, forever preserved in their bright 1960s uniforms and more youthful selves, are my FAMILY, dude! Say what you want about the relative merits of any other TV series cast, past or present, I'm gonna have to choose my family, in the end.
30-day TV Meme (days 1-19):
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled -- Though there are too many shows that I loved that were cancelled before their time, I think for me the most frustrating example was Alien Nation, the series which was cancelled unexpectedly at the end of its first season, cut short in its prime, due to the fledgling Fox network's decision to cancel all hourly drama series and concentrate on cheaper-to-produce sitcoms, rather than for any lack in quality or shortage of viewers.
The two-hour TV movies that we eventually got, years later, to resolve the season one cliffhanger and flesh out some of the other planned developments for season two helped, as did the novelizations of many of the planned but un-filmed episodes, but I'm still sore about this cancellation.
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching -- I think Person of Interest is doing okay in the ratings, though I noticed that the individuals running that show's panel at last year's San Diego Comic Con seemed woefully uninformed about even the correct names of people working on the series, but it's one of those shows that I can heartily recommend to a broad spectrum of people, whether they're F/SF genre fans or not. But possibly Vegas needs the ratings boost (and deserves to be widely viewed and enjoyed, I think).
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season) -- Among what I think of as shows related to the F & SF genres, Arrow has been growing on me steadily, after an initial episode or two that left me largely unimpressed, with the latest episode aired being particularly intriguing (including the fact that now we've not only got Captain Jack Harkness as Tommy Merlyn's dad, but also Dr. River Song as Laurel Lance's long-lost mom? Neat!). Meanwhile, among non-F/SF shows, I'd half-expected Vegas to be a remake-retread of the old Robert Urich series (Vega$), but this show about law enforcers (both male and female!) and mob-connected characters (ditto!) set in 1960s Las Vegas has turned out to be surprisingly complex and engaging, with some challenging character developments and plot twists.
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever -- I have to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer for this one (narrowly beating out all the Star Trek series incarnations as a group, and it depends on how I define "favorite" on any particular day), for too many reasons to enumerate here.
Day 05 - A show you hate -- For me, this would be anything in the 'reality' genre exploiting 'real people' in manufactured social situations or danger (I work hard at ignoring the very existence of these series, so I can't name any one show in particular). Of course, that's just among shows that are supposed to be for entertainment purposes only. Among the so-called 'news' or 'information' or 'education' programming, I could come up with quite a few others that I judge to be even more harmful to the future of democracy and civilization as a whole.
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- It's really hard to choose, but if pushed I'd probably say "Once More, With Feeling", at this particular moment in time, for a myriad of reasons that have been discussed elsewhere. So I guess I'll leave it at that.
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- Again, there is some stiff competition here (part of having a favorite show is the luxury of hating, passionately, times when you feel that show hasn't lived up to its best self or undermined important characters and themes), but generally I'd probably say it's "As You Were" (just no excuse for that, on so many levels, in my opinion).
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch -- If we're talking about shows that are currently airing on broadcast TV? Then I say Person of Interest, possibly (see Day 2 above).
Day 09 - Best scene ever -- Since 'best' is hard to define, I'll try for most MEMORABLE scene, maybe. And still I can't choose, even if I limit myself to BtVS scenes only. For me, it would probably be a scene involving Spike and Buffy . . . possibly even a scene from "Something Blue", before which I don't think I'd ever considered Spike and Buffy ever, in a million years, getting together, though I loved them both separately. Or one of the archetypal "Buffy fights back and triumphs" scenes (her own "Harrowing of Hell" in the season 3 opener "Anne", for instance). Or maybe the Pieta-like scene at the end of "The Gift", with Buffy's broken body in the foreground and her family and 'disciples' grieving in the background?
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving -- I have at least three valid ways of answering this one, I think.
a) A show I thought I wouldn't like as much as I wanted to like it after seeing the first few episodes but ended up loving passionately in later seasons (and treasuring it as my all-time favorite among the post-1960s ST series): Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. For its first couple of years DS9 sort of remained my version of the 'redheaded step-child' among ST series, being darker and more uncomfortable oftentimes, even though there were exceptionally good episodes in each season. But it began to really hit its stride in season 3, I felt, and from season 4 onward it became my favorite modern Trek. All that complexity and liminality, and even the uncomfortable discussion of the Federation's generally reductionist views of religion in those earlier seasons paid off, big-time, in the final seasons, with even holographic characters like "Vic Fontaine" showing amazing growth and insight. And don't even get me started on how much I loved it when Sisko's role as Emissary became real to him, and not just to the Bajoran faithful.
b) A show I thought I wouldn't like when I heard about it, but started loving as soon as I'd watched my first episode: maybe a tie between the Xena: Warrior Princess premiere in 1995 ("Sins of the Past") and the first BtVS episode I caught in 1997, "The Witch". Both shows blew me away, subverting all my expectations and all the genre stereotypes as soon as I sat down and watched those early episodes.
c) A more recent show I didn't think I'd like after viewing the first few episodes but ended up loving as a genuine guilty pleasure: The Vampire Diaries (once Damon Salvatore started to emerge as more than 'the pretty one who's just pure evil and mean for the sake of being mean' and started to show some of the complexity of his character by the middle to end of season one, I was hooked).
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you -- Too many to choose from, again, so I'll have to subdivide this category.
a) The first one I remember loving passionately in its first few made-for-TV movies, only to see it ruined as a short-lived series by increasingly silly and insulting plots and sloppy characterization, with an even more insulting disregard of continuity was Man from Atlantis in 1977-78 (by the middle of the short first season, I was going, "Mark gains super strength from even a short immersion in water, like having his head momentarily dunked in a tropical fish tank? Since when? WTF?").
b) The first series I was really looking forward to, only to see it fall far short of my hopes and be additionally sabotaged by having its few episodes shown wildly out of order, making a mockery of essential continuity, was the Babylon 5 spin-off/successor series Crusade. I've still never seen this show's few episodes shown in a sensible order, since even the Sci-Fi Channel reruns had the captain's SECOND meeting with Elizabeth Lockley happening before their FIRST meeting in a later episode, and other, far-from-minor irritations.
c) The show that initially disappointed me the most but which was later redeemed for me by a combination of the chance to watch the episodes in proper order on DVD, the big damn movie Serenity in 2005, and a lot of excellent fanfic was Firefly. Trying to make sense of this show when it initially aired on Fox in 2002 was incredibly frustrating, and I recall resenting the fact that Joss Whedon was apparently putting his time and attention into THIS show, instead of the final season of BtVS and the penultimate season of AtS. But then my sister gave me the boxed DVD set for Christmas one year, and I was blown away by the BDM, and I started devouring Firefly fanfic by the likes ofsevangel and
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times -- Are you kidding? If I really LIKE a show at all I ROUTINELY view many episodes at least five times in re-runs through the years. Heck, I've watched syndicated re-runs of many episodes of The Big Bang Theory at least that many times over (I may not care much for most of the episodes in recent seasons, but I could happily re-watch classics like "The Adhesive Ducks Deficiency" another fifteen times without becoming inured to their charm). I've seen every one of the 79 episodes of the original Star Trek at least six times over (except for the execrable "Turnabout Intruder" -- once or twice through that was all I could stand, even as a child), and the same goes for at least half the episodes of BtVS.
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show -- Again, I have at least three ways to answer this one.
a) The first show I remember really enjoying (as opposed to watching it just because that was what was on during the daytime or because it was a chance to spend time with my parents (we'd watch shows like Gunsmoke or Daktari as a family, all laid out on Mom and Dad's bed) is also the first show I remember seeing on our first color TV set after we moved from Iowa to New York City in 1969. As soon as the TV was plugged in and the rabbit-ears adjusted, I found myself viewing the second half of a Speed Racer two-parter, and I was blown away by the visuals and the drama. I'd never seen any animation even approaching that kind of quality before. From then on, those afternoon re-runs of Speed Racer became can't-miss-TV for my 7-year-old self.
b) The show that became my perennial favorite in later childhood, though I only saw it in syndicated re-runs, was of course the original Star Trek. When we moved to Wellsboro, a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania, in 1973 I had my first experience of cable television, which meant that we received both New York City and Philadelphia television stations, allowing me to watch back-to-back reruns of Star Trek from stations in each of those cities every weekday afternoon. Although I think I'd begun watching the show before we left New York, that's when I recall first becoming a truly regular watcher and re-watcher of that series, to the point where it became my source of substitute parenting and played a large role in helping me survive childhood and adolescence with some kind of moral framework and hope for the future.
c) The first FIRST-RUN series that I remember being a rabid fan of was Planet of the Apes in 1974. I'd never before been that invested in a show that aired only once a week (when it wasn't pre-empted for something or other), to the point where I had to make up my own 'episodes' in my head (many of the predictable "Mary Sue" variety, naturally, though I had a number of rather interesting dreams about the antagonist of the series, Mark Lenard's 'General Urko') in order to survive the interminable wait for the next episode. I was devastated when it was cancelled and I discovered that there would be no more episodes shown after December 1974. My love for the series was revived and strengthened when I discovered one of the George Alec Effinger novelizations in a big book outlet store in Wisconsin in 1976 and I quickly collected and began reading and re-reading the first three novelizations (still looking for an affordable copy of #4, LORD OF THE APES).
Day 14 - Favorite male character -- Toss-up between Spock (original Star Trek) and Spike (BtVS), I'd have to say. Both characters are complex, intriguing, sexy, and very liminal in their own way, and these aspects of their roles have been explored at length elsewhere, so I think that's enough for now.
Day 15 - Favorite female character -- Toss-up between Xena and Buffy, I think. There are others that I love, but those two have probably had the greatest long-term influence on my life, among female TV characters.
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show -- Currently? Maybe The Vampire Diaries (see day 10c, above).
Day 17 - Favorite mini series -- Possibly the Farscape series resolution, The Peacekeeper Wars. I watched plenty of miniseries during their heyday back in the late 70s and 80s, but none of those were so eagerly anticipated and cherished.
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence -- Probably the "whoosh" of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the vacuum of space in the original series, just because that opening title sequence still says to me "home" and "hope" and "love", and all the other things that I used to have to find on that show rather than in my RL during a critical period in my youth.
Day 19 - Best TV show cast -- I'd have to go for the original Star Trek crew, again for purely emotional reasons. Those people, forever preserved in their bright 1960s uniforms and more youthful selves, are my FAMILY, dude! Say what you want about the relative merits of any other TV series cast, past or present, I'm gonna have to choose my family, in the end.
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