Hey Scott, theres been a lot of wrestling talk lately, but lack of love for TV. Have you had a chance to catch any of the fourth season of Dexter. It just wrapped up this past Sunday and dare I say, it was the best season thus far. John Lithgow was absolutely awesome as the guest star this season. Season Three totally sucked IMO, but Season Four totally redeemed it. Also, any House? Family Guy? American Dad? Cleveland Show? The Cleveland Show is actually a lot funnier than I expected it to be and Famly Guy started out really slow this year, but has actually had some really funny eps as of late. Carter Pewterschmidt getting hooked on the Big Bang Theory this past week was hilarious, I thought. Thoughts?
I have downloaded and not yet watched season 4 of Dexter, so please no spoilerage about it, y’all, and we’ll discuss it at a later date, I promise.
House I daresay I’m giving up on. The season premiere was so awesome and then it was right back to the same formula. I’m about 5 episodes backlogged on the DVR now and it’s way down the priority list for catching up on.
Family Guy is what it is. I watch it because I watch it, sometimes I laugh, mostly I don’t. House/Roadhouse, though, was fantastic.
Cleveland Show I’m giving chance after chance to see if they go somewhere with it, but it’s never more than pleasantly funny, unlike American Dad which frequently hits the heights of insanely hilarious. Like Steve’s Vietnam recreation flashbacks and Roger tripping to Barbra Streisand’s Celine Dion concert? AD is truly on another level.
Big Bang Theory might be my favorite show on TV right now because I not only get all the super-geeky physics jokes, but I get all the super-super-geeky comic book jokes, and they’re obviously written by people who know and love the source material enough to treat it with respect. When they make a Green Lantern joke and have Sheldon go off about it, they make sure that he’s equipped with all the background needed.
Glee has basically replaced House in my heart, as Jane Lynch can now play the Jane Lynch-iest character ever and gets paid to do it. It’s a wonderful television program with wit, heart, great songs and JOY, something lacking from all the cookie cutter procedurals and sci-fi clones.
Other shows on my DVR for those wondering what gets recorded every week:
- Diners Drive-Ins and Dives.
- Food Detectives
- 30 Rock
- The Office (barely hanging on)
- Parks and Recreation (shooting up the list every week!)
- Scrubs (yeah yeah…)
- Better Off Ted
- Cops
- Glee
- The Vampire Diaries (It’s GOOD, OK?)
- 90210 (I’m married, what can I do?)
- Dragon’s Den (and the Americanized Shark Tank if it gets a second season)
Have you ever considered watching How I Met Your Mother? A very funny and underrated show in my opinion.
The Office – Just can’t get into it. Really tired with the older episodes in syndication (back when it was supposedly good), but…no.
House – Ditto.
30 Rock – Started off slow this season, but they found the groove and I’m even liking the new guy.
NCIS – Yeah, it’s as formulaic as can be, but it works because of the cast and the developing relationships between the characters. And that’s precisely why NCIS: Los Angeles sucks, because its’ all formula and no chemistry.
Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives – Love it, but can’t decide if Guy is really that way or just one hell of a worker ala Emeril.
Dinner: Impossible – Another great show that’s clearly worked (the WWE episode left no doubt in my mind).
Better Off Ted – A show that I probably wouldn’t like under normal circumstances, but it’s amusing enough to pass the time. I’m actually shocked that it got renewed, though.
Scrubs – I swore I wouldn’t watch this new season, and then I decided that this was a stupid vow and watched the show tonight. I really should learn to follow my first instincts more.
Modern Family – Another show that I probably would have hated not that long ago. Cliches and stereotypes abound, but in a good(?) way, and it’s probably truer to life than people are willing to admit.
The Middle – Could have been a disaster, but it works surprising well and much like Modern Family probably will hit a little too close to home for some.
Community – BEST NEW SHOW OF THE YEAR. Seriously. My expectations were very low, true enough, but damned if they didn’t prove me dead wrong and then some. Hilarious writing, perfect casting (even Dr. Ken, since he’s actually supposed to be a creepy annoying douche) and great characters who start out as caricatures and then develop into something more. Plus, genuine heartfelt moments that don’t derail the show or undercut the sharp edges of the comedy. The best comedy in a long, long time.
The Seth MacFarlane Cavalcade O’ Fun (with Special Guest Stars The Simpsons) – FG is marginally better this year, but that ain’t saying much. The Cleveland Show is what it is, but I’m still not comfortable with it for a number of reasons. AD has had a rough season thus far, but hopefully they’ll get back on track. And The Simpsons is dead to me, and the sooner they pull the plug the better.
The Venture Brothers – Another great cartoon that gets no love because of Cartoon Networks hard-on for ATHF and Seth Green. It takes a while to get into, but completely worth the effort.
Doctor Who – Yeah, I know. But we’re all allowed one, right?
Agree 100% on Modern Family…thank goodness for DVR, as it’s on the same time as Glee, which I agree with Scott on.
My favorite Modern Family moment is when the gay couple is at the play date and it’s time to dance…
“Please don’t smack your butt.”
“But that’s what makes the horsey go…”
Amen on Community. That show rocks and they’ve very quickly developed funny, realistic characters.
Love Modern Family. It’s like a non-hipster version of Arrested Development (oddly not meant as a pejorative for either show).
The Simpsons has been living off faux-GenX/hipster douchenozzle nostalgia for the last ten years. Its days of being anything close to the “cutting-edge” or “subversive” program it was marketed as for so long are very much a thing of the past. It’s still on the air for one reason and one reason only – Fox wants it to eclipse Gunsmoke’s longevity record. Squeezing out just a little more cash on marketing is icing on the cake.
The only shows I watch on Television are Steven Seagal: Lawman, Ghost Lab , Looney Tunes and shit I don’t watch TV.
Like Steve’s Vietnam recreation flashbacks and Roger tripping to Barbra Streisand’s Celine Dion concert? AD is truly on another level.
And that’s actually been part of the problem for me this season: while there have been a number of great individual moments (The AntiChrist as a lame 1960’s era Batman crossed the line twice and loved it) the overall stories have been pretty weak. Granted, that’s basically a MacFarlance trademark now, but AD seemed to be immune from that particular creative weakness and was all the better for it. It’s still pretty decent, but it used to be GREAT and I’m hoping it will be again. This past week’s episode was a bold risk and an admirable one, but it didn’t work quite as well as the previous Xmas outings like “The Best Christmas Story Never Told” or “The Most Adequate Christmas Ever”.
(The AntiChrist as a lame 1960’s era Batman crossed the line twice and loved it)
The word “villain” should probably be in there somewhere…
No love for “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura”?
What a dogshit show. Jesse Ventura is a fucking nut. I lost all respect for him when he became a “Truth”er.
Right, because the THOUSANDS of people that would be needed to pull off 9-11 as an inside job and get away with it are all keeping silent.
The best people in the US government couldn’t keep the lid on a small break-in of a hotel.
Oh, and HARP. Right. All the stuff Ventura said about HARP is BULLSHIT and he knows it too. None of the stuff he claimed it does checks out. Not one.
+1 about the Truthers Charlie. My favorite is that the Bush administration, too incompetent to deal with the aftermath of a hurricane, was able to pull off the greatest conspiracy ever. Apparently George W. Bush was Keyzer Soze
Maddox had a great take on 9/11 truthers:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons
The biggest lie sold to the American public between 2001 and 2009 was that George W. Bush was in control of his Presidency.
The one episode I saw of Jesse’s show was so gloriously batshit crazy. I definitely recommend it, as long as you’re able to not take it too seriously..
You guys gave up on House too soon. After a slow start they’re really on track now.
Cuddy got the best of House… twice… House acted decent to a guy in his crazy House kind of way.
This is a solid season.
Does anyone else here watch The Mentalist or FlashForward? I realize they fall under the headings of Procedurals and Sci-Fi that Scott mentioned and I also realize FF has been very stop-start in terms of building momentum. However, as far as procedurals go, I think The Mentalist definitely has a sense of fun albeit they’re serious when they need to be (see any episode with Red John).
I wanted tol ike FlashForward- enjoyed the pilot but by either the third or fourth episode, I was out. I thought the writing was terrible.
Given that I love the novel that FF is based on, I gave it an honest chance. I think I was around the eight or ninth episode before I gave up.
I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing from the show, because something definitely was. I think it’s that a lot of it feels so cliche (not taking into account things used from the novel), the dialogue is horrible and as a result, the acting isn’t all that great. It’s got the occasional good moment, which is why I gave it a chance for so long. But I just gave up on it.
I just read the novel this past month and I loved it…until the (IMO) anti-climactic ending. I guess I was expecting more from the thing I will not mention for fear of spoilers.
On a related note, did you see the article about the Large Hadron Collider and CERN in the latest issue of Vanity Fair (January 2010 with Meryl Streep on the cover)? I had never heard of either before I read the novel so I just assumed they were both made up for the book. It was quite a shock to learn they were real.
I watched FlashForward. To be honest, I’ve found some of the editing terrible, although there’s a reasonable sense of tension about the whole thing. I suppose I’ll continue with it in the new year (in the UK they’ve taken a break).
Family Guy seems to be declining now. I just completed season 5 of House and am really disappointed with how formulaic it had become. I had been hoping Season 6 will change the format somewhat, although apparently not.
My sister recommended Community, and said it is brilliant.
The noughties have really been about The Wire and The Shield obv.
Yeah FlashForward is on a break until…March 4th, 2010 (I believe) in North America.
why doesn’t anyone mention South Park? I mean, I know they’re not on at the moment but I thought we were talking generally?
Yeah, there’s an even an episode with Vince McMahon and the WWE from this season. It would be interesting to read Scott’s opinion about that episode.
The pro wrestling episode owned it. I feel like everyone takes South Park for granted but I know I watch every new episode and most of the people I know do as well. A crappy South Park is better than 99% of comedy on television.
South park suffers from what the Simpsons did with me for it’s frst ten seasons, you just take the constant high quality for granted. Even a rare miss (manbearpig, which aired the same week Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face, proving they picked the wrong story) is noteable because a bad episode is so rare.
The reason that South Park is better than Family guy (and always will be) is that it makes fun of stereotypes rather than reveling in them
These days, I view South Park the same way I viewed King Of The Hill towards the end: decent, well-crafted but well past its’ prime and essentially a zombie. It’s just not that interesting anymore, and the whole “what sacred cow can we slaughter THIS week?!?” schtick is just as hackneyed as the manatee gags on FG and the Batman-style celebrities cameos on The Simpsons. And the pop-culture reference typically don’t hold up well at all. That said, there have been some fairly decent episodes here and there, so it’s not a total washout. It’s just pretty pedestrian to me now, especially whenever they’re clearly trying to troll certain groups to get some sort of publicity.
But you have to watch South Park because you never know when they’re going to knock one out of the park. I was bored with last season and not feeling it…then the Kanye Gay Fish episode came and all was forgiven.
And the post-2008 election episode was another winner. It’s just more hit and miss than it used to me. It’s nowhere near the zombie-state of the Simpson or Family Guy.
Bingo. Although I wonder if South Park, much like The Simpsons seems to be doing, will continue on in perpetuity? I just can’t see South Park getting up to a twentieth season like that (or at least, it’s surreal to think about), but I also can’t see them stopping it. I mean, I can imagine there will be a place and time for when Matt and Trey just don’t feel like doing it anymore, but it seems like they don’t really intend to stop, since it’s a huge cash cow and, really, what else are they going to do? A sequel to BASEketball? Orgasmo Begins?
Really, I can’t even imagine what a South Park series finale could possibly contain. Sort of the same with the Simpsons, to me. It just confounds the imagination.
oh and Scott, Shark Tank got renewed. It’s ratings actually picked up after a low series premier, a rarity in TV.
It’s coming back on in January. Five new shows already in the can.
It’s sort of coming back. They’re “completing” the first season with the five shows … airing on Friday nights in January.
For a show that started out in the prime Sunday evening slot and now in the Friday night death slot? That’s usually not a good sign.
Anyone here mentioning Sons of Anarchy on FX? Their 2nd season ended a couple weeks ago. Katey Sagal put in a performance that leaves you saying “Peggy Who?” and just shines in her role. Damn good season & overall show in all.
SoA KILLED it this season. First season was sort of middling but the second was just balls out awesome. You mentioned Katey Sagal but Ron Perlman and Charlie Hunnam were grea as well.
I caught an episode of this recently (it must’ve been the last or next to last episode of the season..), and it’s now definitely on my list of things to watch. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but SoA looks like it’s worth it.
Dexter season 4 was awesome, ’nuff said.
I still recommend as a very fun show Supernatural. Scott, you should download the first couple of seasons and see if you like it. The show didn’t truly catch its footing until late in season 1; but now I easily think is one of the funnest shows around.
I’ve been thoroughly disappointed with Fringe this season so far. Just a big step down from season 1.
Lost can’t get here fast enough in my opinion. Only 2 months to go!!
Oh, and Venture Bros. is great.
I’ve been digging the hell out of Dollhouse’s last hurrah. They had an episode entirely dedicated to another member of the Dollhouse and I realized that that was the problem: Dushku is just not a strong enough actor to carry the show. She’s probably my least favourite part of the show and I find all the others MUCH more interesting.
Although, as much as it feels like a superpower, I kinda dig what they’ve done with her character recently.
It’s just too bad about the show, as this season has really gotten MUCH stronger.
Dexter? This season is, hands down, THE best of the series and I’d be very surprised if they ever top it. John Lithgow deserves a goddamn Emmy for his role.
I gave Scrubs the 2-episode try and it failed to impress me. The replacement for Zach Braff feels WAY too much like Ally McBeal (yeah yeah; my sister made me watch it with her). If the show had brought back Sunny (one of the interns from last season), then I’d be more interested to watch.
And I agree with flair, above: Lost can’t get here soon enough.
Seriously people if your not watching Dexter your missing out on the best TV show out of all of them. It’s just on another level from anything on at present. Season 4 was the best season so far and the only programs that have ever made me scream at the TV with raw emotion is WWE or sports…. Dexter does too now.
I agree with whoever posted the question to Scott… Season 3 sucked overall.. Season 4 was the best ever.
My personal favorite season of Dexter is still #2; but what made season 4 so damn fantastic (no spoiler here) is that it’s built much more inline with how a movie would play out. There are no “stand alone” episodes for the most part and it builds to an incredible climax.
That’s the biggest problem I had with season 3. I don’t think it sucked as compared to most of the shit on TV, it’s still solid. However, the blew their wad to early and it went out with a wimper.
I really tried to like Dexter, I really did, but just didn’t find it interesting enough. I watched the first season, but much like Weeds, lost interest very quickly and I don’t get the hype. I guess everyone has there picks and they’re reason for it. Me, I like Bones the best, that show never fails to be great, and also Modern Family. That show is just to freakin’ hilarious for words. Although I do like Cougar Town I hate to admit it, it’s actually funny and I really don’t care for Cox at all. Never watched Friends, but I did like the show Joey. I think the show that jumped the shark the hardest right now is Ghost Whisperer, it was good, but this season has been hard to watch, which is brutal because I really love Jennifer Love Hewitt, she’s right up there with Alyssa Milano, as ones who I would anything the do. But this season is just bad for GW.
Is anyone out there a fan of Biggest Loser or Amazing Race? Those are the two best reality shows, Survivor has been bad this season, only good part was Monica calling out Russel, but I like Monica.
Anyway, my point, and I did have one, was what’s the hype about Dexter, seriously?
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You def. gave up to soon on House. I was fearful of this season a couple of eps after the premeire as well, esp. with that African dictator crap, but it came ROARING back with the Wilson-attempts-career-suicide episode & hasn’t let me down since. Plus the Detective is back as Cuddy’s boyfriend, and everyone loves him.
My shows are thus:
House
30 Rock
Supernatural (skip the first season, if you can, as it was just a Teenage X-files then, but by season 2 & on became a great show in the vein of Angel. The last 2 seasons have been particularly brilliant)
The Venture Bros. (which I third and fourth and millionth, Scott, you def. need to give this show a shot most of all…it’s THE cartoon for adult geeks bar none)
Iron Chef
Dexter (when I can, as I don’t got Showtime)
I steadfastly refuse to even accept that Zombie Scrubs even exists.
Oh, and I appreciate the humor on Glee (my g/f’s current fav. show so I have to watch time to time), but the singing just kills it in the end. Still, when I gotta, at least I can enjoy Jane Lynch.
Agreed on House; the Tabalia ep itself was great, but the arc leading out of it bored me. After they FINALLY wrapped that up, it got good again, especially “Wilson”, which was a great change of pace, and shows how awesome Robert Sean Leonard really is. I hear they’re doing a similar structure with Cuddy in Feb, which I’m also looking forward to.
I really like it when they “break format”; although “Three Stories” is still the best representation of this, “Ugly” and “Trapped In” are good examples as well. In fact, I was so engrossed with “Trapped In” that the small procedural part near the middle/end took me right out of the show.
I know most of you gave up on Heroes, but it has also definately had a resurgeance this year.
I like Scrubs, although when you think about it it’s basically the old show with a mostly new cast and setting.
Middle and Modern Family are great, as is Cougar Town.
Ugly Betty is fun again, now that the whole “Daniel in a cult story” is now over.
I also watch Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters, the CBS Monday comedies, and Greys Anatomy.
Mythbusters still rule.
I will second that about Heroes.
Heroes was f’n ON this season.
NCIS has to be a lot of people’s guitly secret judging by the massive ratings it gets. Definitely think a lot of it is down to the chemistry between the characters.
Scott, you watch too much TV.
Vampire Diaries is definitely one of the better new shows on TV. Everyone is taking it as a rip off of Twilight, but the books it is based off of was written BEFORE Twilight. And the people on it can actually act unlike Twilight.
No love for How I Met Your Mother? One of these best comedies on TV right now.
And the Office started off weak but has picked up big time. I think they needed to get the whole Jim/Pam wedding over with and just continue with everything else and get back to the old awesomeness.
How I Met Your Mother is definitely great but it’s verging on Friends territory of cheesiness. I was disappointed to see Barney & Robin hook up because it is so unlike either of their characters and it just seemed like a grasping at straws and a way to milk NPH’s fame. I’m glad they avoided the whole “Ross-Rachel-Joey” type love triangle crap though. And any show featuring Jason Segel’s comedic genius deserves some love.
I sent Scott a request for a thread on this.
The Torch is reporting that Brett Hart has signed a short term contract with the WWE.
Let the festivities begin!!
I’m looking for a “TUNE INTO NITRO TO FIND OUT!!!” joke.
I will not be satisfied otherwise.
I read that as well. I’d love to see it just to see how badly the writers can fuck up an angle that writes itself.
If Bret and Shawn don’t meet in the ring… FUCKING FALE!
You can hype that on free TV for weeks.
“Bret and Shawn in the ring for the first time in 12 years since the screwjob DUN DUN DUNNNNNN!!!”
Guarenteed 4+ rating.
I’m shocked – SHOCKED – that you don’t include “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on your DVR list. Funniest show on TV, IMO. Seinfeld with cussing and glue huffing.
Bret Hart just signed with WWE on a 4 month contract according to Meltzer
Yeah, I have to really jump in and sing the praises of Supernatural. The first season is iffy, then again, unless your Firefly, How I Met Your Mother, LOST, or Dexter, what show’s first season isn’t iffy? Almost everything that happens on Supernatural has a purpose, and the third, fourth, and as of right now the fifth season are really hitting it out of the park. Such an amazing and underrated show, Scott, I can’t recommend it enough.
I have to agree on the dip in quality on Fringe, the first season was great, but this second season just seems to be dragging and there’s no sense of serialization. But then again, it will probably fit together better when watched on DVD or Blu-Ray.