End of Year TV Meme
Dec. 23rd, 2013 04:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quarter_to_fiveRight, i'm finally updating my gym membership tommorow. Maybe it will help me sleep, because this weird insomnia thing is driving me crazy. Or I could take up boxing, that also sounds good.
Meanwhile, more tv:
1. Which TV shows did you start watching in 2013?
Millions and millions, it feels like:
- Sleepy Hollow: dorky show of dorky adorkability, great characters and the kitchen sink. They better end the season really well though, on that unselfconscious dorky vibe and characters, and not pretending like they take their plot seriously. Because no one else does.
- The Big Bang Theory: my current strange, bitter over-analyzed crush. I loved the end of season 6, with it's leaps and bounds of awkward character development earned through oceans of wincing weapons-grade discomfort, and while S7 so far hasn't been quite as strong, it hasn't been disappointing either.
- The Blacklist: which is somewhat less boring than it should be.
- How I Met Your Mother: I really like the really complex, twisty, one joke stretching across four separate layers of nested flashbacks (that's more than Inception) in fucking rhyme stuff, and I've watched enough of it (marathoned like five seasons while working on my final seminar essay over the summer) that I want to see the end, (and I like the conceit of the last season, because I like conceits) but overall I don't really love it.
- Scandal: for a while in Season 2 it looked like this could be a really powerful bit of storytelling, with Cyrus and James and everything Mellie, but it collapsed a little in S3 for more standard thrillery nonsense mixed in with some truly over-the-top hysterical plot twists, but in the best way. It's not quite the show I would like it to be, but this new thing of low farce via high melodrama is working for me also, albeit in a different way.
- Hannibal: I ultimately warmed up to, because I think I kind of embraced it in a spirit of parody. It's meant to be absurd, it's meant to be funny, it's meant to be emotionally and intellectually hollow, it's meant to have that edge of too-much-photoshop creepy point and laugh. As some kind of commentary on the aesthetification of sexy female corpses on television anyway. Instead of the camera glamorizing the dead, naked woman into a work of art, here it's the actual killer. Or something. Whatever, it's pretty.
- The Fall, Broadchurch, Top of the Lake: all gorgeously made, very horrible and a good way to spend a rainy weekend. Broadchurch is more immersive and more intimate, the other two more ambitious.
- Masters of Sex: eh, just ok. Some individually great subplots, but it never really felt like it added up to much for me. It doesn't manage to pull off the Mad Men thing of giving both a flavour of the public morals of the time and the way people negotiate and subvert them. Here, the 50's felt almost incidental. No one in St. Louis has ever actually internalized a more, apparently. And the center is a bit of a void - Bill just isn't interesting enough to really hold it together.
- Brooklyn 99: very charming. It's not totally clicked for me yet, but the atmosphere of the precinct and the cast of characters that it has are working (rather the way Community works.)
- Defiance: which was ok but unmemorable. Strictly speaking, the setting is very original. It just feels utterly generic, for some reason. It's toeing a difficult line between going a little deliberately old-school SF - rubber forehead aliens and everything - and making a modern show, and not always quite finding it.
Also Mom, United States of Tara and Orange is the New Black, which I wrote about two posts ago and can't be bothered to again. Liked 'em all.
2. Which TV shows did you let go of in 2013?
- Dexter: I couldn't make it through the last season. Let's make this one of those shows that never had more than X seasons, ok? Take the first four seasons as one coherent story, and it's perfect. Lets leave it there.
- Agents of SHIELD: I really, really tried, but there was just nothing there at all for me. It was like clawing at something with no friction, at all.
- Almost Human: really disappointed with this one. The first few episodes felt both dull and messy to me. Not as bad as SHIELD, which I think is largely universally bad unless something about it specifically speaks to you, but so totally removed from anything that speaks to me that there was no point. Unless I hear it like wildly improves, because it is SF.
- Dracula: it's like Sleepy Hollow's nasty asshole older brother. The mishmash that SH makes charming and light, is just a gooey lump of unidentified stuff here, mostly as it totally lacks any appealing characters to get you to wade through it.
- Haven: I enjoyed marathoning it, but it wasn't enough to actually make me want to watch week by week.
- BBC Sherlock: About half way through the Irene Adler episode, I simply could not watch one more second of it. Bye.
3. Which TV shows did you continue to watch this year that you will also continue to watch next year (or whenever they continue)?
The Good Wife - fantastic fifth season so far. Couldn't tear me away.
Community - fourth season was, well, I didn't hate it reflexively, but it wasn't the old show. The whole behind the scenes saga is too dramatic at this point not to watch it when it finally comes back.
Mad Men - I thought the sixths season was a bit didactic, particularly vis a vis Don, but Peggy and Pete made up for it.
Elementary - Meh then, still meh, but still somehow watching. I blame Watson's tunic collection.
4. Which TV shows did you mean to get into but didn't in 2013? Why?
Breaking Bad. I have to catch up on it already. My parents are ahead of me. My parents don't even watch english-language tv, for the most part!
5. Which TV shows do you intend on checking out in 2014?
God, nothing, I hope. I hope whatever is going on with this new liking for tv will clear itself up and I can go back to reading books and watching three tv shows at any given time and having no idea what anyone is talking about. I'm not dismissive of anyone elses tv habit (hey, I enjoy the hell out of mine), I just feel like this one has take over my life a bit after about eight years or so of not watching things week-to-week with any kind of investment.
Meanwhile, more tv:
1. Which TV shows did you start watching in 2013?
Millions and millions, it feels like:
- Sleepy Hollow: dorky show of dorky adorkability, great characters and the kitchen sink. They better end the season really well though, on that unselfconscious dorky vibe and characters, and not pretending like they take their plot seriously. Because no one else does.
- The Big Bang Theory: my current strange, bitter over-analyzed crush. I loved the end of season 6, with it's leaps and bounds of awkward character development earned through oceans of wincing weapons-grade discomfort, and while S7 so far hasn't been quite as strong, it hasn't been disappointing either.
- The Blacklist: which is somewhat less boring than it should be.
- How I Met Your Mother: I really like the really complex, twisty, one joke stretching across four separate layers of nested flashbacks (that's more than Inception) in fucking rhyme stuff, and I've watched enough of it (marathoned like five seasons while working on my final seminar essay over the summer) that I want to see the end, (and I like the conceit of the last season, because I like conceits) but overall I don't really love it.
- Scandal: for a while in Season 2 it looked like this could be a really powerful bit of storytelling, with Cyrus and James and everything Mellie, but it collapsed a little in S3 for more standard thrillery nonsense mixed in with some truly over-the-top hysterical plot twists, but in the best way. It's not quite the show I would like it to be, but this new thing of low farce via high melodrama is working for me also, albeit in a different way.
- Hannibal: I ultimately warmed up to, because I think I kind of embraced it in a spirit of parody. It's meant to be absurd, it's meant to be funny, it's meant to be emotionally and intellectually hollow, it's meant to have that edge of too-much-photoshop creepy point and laugh. As some kind of commentary on the aesthetification of sexy female corpses on television anyway. Instead of the camera glamorizing the dead, naked woman into a work of art, here it's the actual killer. Or something. Whatever, it's pretty.
- The Fall, Broadchurch, Top of the Lake: all gorgeously made, very horrible and a good way to spend a rainy weekend. Broadchurch is more immersive and more intimate, the other two more ambitious.
- Masters of Sex: eh, just ok. Some individually great subplots, but it never really felt like it added up to much for me. It doesn't manage to pull off the Mad Men thing of giving both a flavour of the public morals of the time and the way people negotiate and subvert them. Here, the 50's felt almost incidental. No one in St. Louis has ever actually internalized a more, apparently. And the center is a bit of a void - Bill just isn't interesting enough to really hold it together.
- Brooklyn 99: very charming. It's not totally clicked for me yet, but the atmosphere of the precinct and the cast of characters that it has are working (rather the way Community works.)
- Defiance: which was ok but unmemorable. Strictly speaking, the setting is very original. It just feels utterly generic, for some reason. It's toeing a difficult line between going a little deliberately old-school SF - rubber forehead aliens and everything - and making a modern show, and not always quite finding it.
Also Mom, United States of Tara and Orange is the New Black, which I wrote about two posts ago and can't be bothered to again. Liked 'em all.
2. Which TV shows did you let go of in 2013?
- Dexter: I couldn't make it through the last season. Let's make this one of those shows that never had more than X seasons, ok? Take the first four seasons as one coherent story, and it's perfect. Lets leave it there.
- Agents of SHIELD: I really, really tried, but there was just nothing there at all for me. It was like clawing at something with no friction, at all.
- Almost Human: really disappointed with this one. The first few episodes felt both dull and messy to me. Not as bad as SHIELD, which I think is largely universally bad unless something about it specifically speaks to you, but so totally removed from anything that speaks to me that there was no point. Unless I hear it like wildly improves, because it is SF.
- Dracula: it's like Sleepy Hollow's nasty asshole older brother. The mishmash that SH makes charming and light, is just a gooey lump of unidentified stuff here, mostly as it totally lacks any appealing characters to get you to wade through it.
- Haven: I enjoyed marathoning it, but it wasn't enough to actually make me want to watch week by week.
- BBC Sherlock: About half way through the Irene Adler episode, I simply could not watch one more second of it. Bye.
3. Which TV shows did you continue to watch this year that you will also continue to watch next year (or whenever they continue)?
The Good Wife - fantastic fifth season so far. Couldn't tear me away.
Community - fourth season was, well, I didn't hate it reflexively, but it wasn't the old show. The whole behind the scenes saga is too dramatic at this point not to watch it when it finally comes back.
Mad Men - I thought the sixths season was a bit didactic, particularly vis a vis Don, but Peggy and Pete made up for it.
Elementary - Meh then, still meh, but still somehow watching. I blame Watson's tunic collection.
4. Which TV shows did you mean to get into but didn't in 2013? Why?
Breaking Bad. I have to catch up on it already. My parents are ahead of me. My parents don't even watch english-language tv, for the most part!
5. Which TV shows do you intend on checking out in 2014?
God, nothing, I hope. I hope whatever is going on with this new liking for tv will clear itself up and I can go back to reading books and watching three tv shows at any given time and having no idea what anyone is talking about. I'm not dismissive of anyone elses tv habit (hey, I enjoy the hell out of mine), I just feel like this one has take over my life a bit after about eight years or so of not watching things week-to-week with any kind of investment.
