Television (TV)

I know many people who are proud that they watch very little (if any) television. I have no problem with this, and in fact I'm happy they're actively doing something else. But I don't mind one bit admitting how much television I watch (and have watched throughout my life). In fact, that's why I'm so glad VCRs (and more importantly, TiVos) exist. I'm the kind of person who had all 8 of the timeslots in his VCR filled (back when I used a VCR), and who now has a 120+ hour hacked TiVo. Some people say that means I watch too much TV. On the contrary, the reason I tape these shows is so I can do anything I want anytime I want, and watch the shows later. I'm confident enough with the amount of activity I have in my life that I feel comfortable declaring openly that I watch television as well when I'm tired of the rest. All that having been said, here's a few landmarks on my television history.

The Early Years

My brother Jon and I watched these shows when we were kids, and every once in a while when we're talking we'll be saying things like "Oh my god, do you remember some show where there was like this gorilla and two guys, and they went around trying to fight ghosts?!?! What the hell was that?!?!" A lot of TV channels have brought many of these back, but they still never seem quite the way I remember them through the lens of childhood memory. Here are a few that stuck with me (whether I liked it or not).

The Incredible Hulk - Arguably one of my favorite shows of youth and still today.
Bill Bixby played the part of David Banner amazingly well, compelling me to watch it every day. I vididly remember in second grade, standing in line to enter the school. John Peterson said "Did you see The Incredible Hulk last night?!", and I said no, because my Dad had taken a gamble on watching another premiere show that night, "Quark" (where Richard Benjamin is a collector of space garbage). Still, despite missing the first show (which I eventually saw many times), I was hooked, and it's now part of my TV history.
Land of the Lost - This show was so cool back then.
Every day I'd watch this. For its time, even the special effects were really cool. Parts were pretty cheezy though. Cha-Ka would run in almost like Lassie screaming "Aaarrrie, Cha-Ka.. Cha-Ka, Aaarrrie!" and Holly would be like "What Cha-Ka? You want me to go to the pylon down near the tar pit, open it, climb inside, and press the red, green, red, blue, red, red, yellow, and green crystals in that order?". Watching it now years later (it was on some local station), I wonder how it was that I didn't want to see Holly eaten by some dinosaur (since she's really whiney), but then again I was a kid.
The Dukes of Hazzard - Here's one I'm not terribly proud of.
Still, I saw quite a few episodes of it. I even have this faded memory of me and my brother saying how cool it would be when we grow up to move out to a town like that, buy a car like that (with the windows down and the doors welded shut) and just drive around. Man, people change. The fact that it's playing on The Nashville Network now kind of sums up how I feel about it: yech.
The Greatest American Hero - I remember seeing the pilot for this, and I was psyched to hear that it was going to be a series.. (I don't think I quite understood what a pilot was, back then). The pilot was in and of itself really cool, which is something you don't see quite as much of with new tv shows. My favorite scene: Some bikers had just kidnapped Bill (the FBI guy), and somehow had possession of "the suit". They demanded Bill tell them how it works, so that one of their members could fly in it.. Bill told the guy (who was dressed in the suit) to climb to the top of a barn they were near. The guy got to the top, and Bill told him "now tap the belt buckle 3 times, then jump!". Since the suit only worked for Ralph, the guy dropped like a bag of wet cement. Anyway, that's what I remember.

Everything Inbetween

Star Trek: The Next Generation - I saw every episode, I loved the show, I loved the characters, and I was hooked - so much so that I now watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager almost as religously as I watched The Next Generation (although I couldn't possibly like them as much). This was the kind of show that was so good that when the final episode aired, you got depressed afterwards.
Quincy - Something about this show grabbed the attention of not only myself, but a whole bunch of my friends from college. Every episode seemed to have a moral lesson in it somewhere. Jack Klugman did a terrific job acting the role, and actually had you believing that being a coroner was in some way of its own "fun". Be sure to check out the second drinking game I've ever written, the Quincy Drinking Game!
Quantum Leap - I didn't see this show much when it originally aired. I saw the pilot, a few in between, and the final episode, when they aired. The rest I watched when they went into syndication on the USA network. I really like shows where the action takes place in a different place (or time, in this case) each week, like The Incredible Hulk and Nowhere Man. Don't forget to check out the Quantum Leap Drinking Game!
Late Night / The Late Show with David Letterman - David Letterman is the funniest man on television.
I won't even start in on his competition (who I liked until the talk shows). Well, ok, I will a bit. People watch the competition because they want to see the guests that are on that particular night. People watch Dave just to watch Dave, and the guests are a bonus! The skits with Rupert Gee walking around in sunglasses with a hidden camera make me laugh so hard I fall off the couch. Gene Siskel said it in his review of Dave in TV Guide : Oscar isn't king Dave, you are.
Columbo - Man do I love watching Columbo. Peter Falk is a riot!
Columbo manages to act as pathetic as he possibly can, from asking about the murder victim's shoes (because he'd like to buy a pair like that himself), to asking for food during any occasion, to bringing up some tidbit about his wife, to the trenchcoat, to integrating his dog (that looks like it's in a coma) into murder investigations. Anything to appear like a complete moron, lowering his opponent's guard (even when they're aware of the ploy). None of the other mystery who-dunnit's have anything like it. By the way, if you ever get a chance to see Kevin Polak's impersonation of Columbo, leap at the chance (Kevin Polak was in The Usual Suspects). Be sure to check out the very first drinking game I've ever actually written myself (with some help from a few friends), the Columbo Drinking Game!
Connections - If I had had any history teachers in high school as good as James Burke (the host and writer of Connections), I probably would have become a history major. Connections is a series filmed a while back hosted by a British historian named James Burke. In it, he traces "Connections" from one invention that led to another, that accidentally caused another, starting some guy thinking about something else that failed but as a side effect yielded something else, etc. It is the most interesting and "fun" learning program I've ever watched. James Burke also writes the last column each month in Scientific American. For those of you who haven't seen this show, see it. It's usually shown on The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel, along with another series of his called The Day the Universe Changed.
Monty Python's Flying Circus - Monty Python's humor is liked by a certain percentage of the population. I'm within the percentage that considers it required viewing. The Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail were absolute must-see movies that came about as a result of this wonderful form of humor. What I find amazing about it is that I (and other non-British-types) can love the sketches on the TV show, despite the fact that much of the humor seems to be related to British news of the day from when this was filmed. Somehow that doesn't seem to interfere with an appreciation for what was being done, and it's still hilariously funny.

Recent Shows

Seinfeld - Originally I never watched this show when it aired. I believe Tom Royer was the one who got me into it, when he said something like "Whooooaa.... YOU don't watch Seinfeld?!". Since then, I've declared clearly and loudly that I believe this may be the best sitcom of all time. TV Guide did an article with almost that exact title, and I agreed with every bit of it.
Nowhere Man - Hands down my favorite show of the '95-'96 season. The show was best viewed if you'd seen all of the episodes, in order, so it didn't do too well in the ratings. I watched them all up to the last episode, and loved almost every one. So, no point describing it here. If you saw the show, you probably know what I mean. If you didn't, I'm sorry.
The Simpsons - I actually know some people that don't like The Simpsons. I haven't figured out why yet though. This show is filled with obscure references from hundreds of movies and television shows. It's filled with jokes that the writers know only a certain percentage of the people out there will get, followed by a joke that only another percentage of a different group of people will get. And all in a cartoon, which seems to give them licence to make fun of almost anything they want.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) - I rarely laugh as hard at any other show for so long as I do when watching a good Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. For those of you who don't know what it is, they basically show these HORRIBLE old movies, with siloettes of a guy and two hand-made robots on either side of him. They comment throughout the whole movie, making fun of every aspect of it from as many different angles as you can imagine. It simply has to be seen to be appreciated. There are SO many comments made that many of them are very obscure, and if you catch them you'll be laughing for hours. The entire appearance and mood of one of these old movies is completely transformed by this wonderful art form, and one can only wonder what ever made someone see the original movies when they came out. Too funny.
The Sopranos - I've often described this as the best thing on TV, and I stand behind that statement. This is an HBO production, and there are 13 episodes per year. As I'm writing this, the first and second season are available on DVD. The third season was great, and we can't wait for the fourth and fifth. I started watching this during episode 9, up through 13 (the first season finale). Then it stopped, and I didn't know when they'd ever rerun it before season two, so I bought episodes 1-13 on eBay. When Laurie and I started going out, we had to watch (marathon-style) all 13 episodes to get ready for the Season Two premiere. If you even slightly liked Goodfellas, then you're missing out if you're not watching The Sopranos.
Six Feet Under - Laurie and I had to watch 3 episodes to like this. The first was ok, but didn't really hook us. The second was ok, but still didn't really do much for us. We got hooked at the third episode, and haven't missed an episode yet. This is an HBO show (13 per season, just like The Sopranos). I'm not saying what it's about, because if I'd known what it was about I wouldn't have started watching it. It's not for everyone, but it's pretty good so far.
The Practice - As far as law shows go, this is our favorite, hands down. We're watching all of the old episodes on Fx, and the new ones each Sunday night on ABC. This show is addictive. Our TiVo is good at recording all of them when they come on, then we watch two or three at a time. The fact that it's in Boston is a nice plus - scenes we recognize.
Alias - Alias is one of two shows this season that we can't live without (the other being 24). They both end each week with a cliffhanger that makes us scream in agony. Alias is about a girl named Sydney Bristow who attends college and works for.. well.. let's back up (spoiler alert - if you haven't even seen the pilot, don't read on).. In the pilot, Sydney is proposed to by her boyfriend. She accepts, pulls him in the shower, then tells him quietly that she actually works for a secret branch of the CIA. Skip ahead a few scenes, he blabs this on a phone to her answering machine, and gets killed because he knows. We then learn from Sydney's father that she hasn't been working for the CIA all these years, but rather for one of their enemies - a group called SD6. Sydney goes straight to the CIA and tells them what she knows, finds out that SD6 is way bigger than she even knew, and becomes a double agent.. (going into work for SD6, pretending, then getting counter-missions from the CIA secretly). There've been some pretty interesting story lines going on in this first season. We highly recommend Alias.
24 - I can't say enough about 24. The entire series takes place in a 24-hour period of time - the day of the California Presidential Primary. The first episode was titled "midnight - 1:00am". The next, "1:00am - 2:00am", etc. It's all real-time, so when you're watching something happen to someone you don't get to see what's happening to someone else in the story (unless they split the screen). Jack Bauer works for an anti-terrorism group in the government, and info comes in that there's an assassination attempt in the works on the first black presidential candidate that actually has a shot at winning.. and that his organization also has something to do with it. Jack has 24 hours to try to stop it. Every episode seems to get exponentially better than the last one. I (Jeff) am on the edge of my seat the whole time, and the last few episodes have had me declaring loudly "I love this %$@$*ing show!!!"