Monday, October 22, 2012

The Greatest Adventure in the History of Basic Cable


I don't have a great memory, but I remember for sure one thing I did on November 1, 2005. Well, maybe two--I probably went to a drug store to buy some candy due to the after-Halloween sales. Three, if you include eating some of said candy. But the candy doesn't matter. I was 14 years old at the time, which meant that children’s shows were no longer cool, cartoons were still enjoyable but embarrassing to be caught watching, and live action TV shows were still boring. Or so I thought. I’d watched some shows casually before, if I was bored, my friends weren’t available to play, and I didn’t feel like playing video games, but I’d never seriously followed one until that day. November 1, 2005 was the day when I saw my first episode of House, M.D., "TB Or Not TB." House’s combination of deep characters, clever and surprising humor, and suspense had me hooked right away.
House became the first show that I watched on a regular basis with my mom and my brother (my dad doesn’t watch much TV, aside from NHL games). The next was Psych, a witty comedy-mystery show starring the brilliant but lazy Shawn Spencer and his uptight, book-smart best friend, Burton “Gus” Guster. Shawn, the son of a cop, has developed incredible observational skills and photographic memory, but lacks the discipline and obedience to be a police officer; instead, he pretends to be a psychic and operates a detective agency with Gus, and is often hired by the police department of Santa Barbara, California to consult on murder cases. My first episode was “Woman Seeking Dead Husband: Smokers Okay, No Pets.” Psych’s episode titles are always fun like that.
For a few years, I only watched House and Psych. In the summer of 2009, we kept seeing commercials for White Collar while we were watching Psych, and it looked moderately interesting, so we decided to watch the pilot, and we all loved it. White Collar became the first show I watched from the very beginning. Soon after White Collar, I got into Castle starting with “Vampire Weekend.” At Christmas that year, my brother received Season 1 of Chuck on DVD, and I ended up watching that and loving it, so I started watching Season 3 when it was broadcast the following month. Later in 2010, I started watching The Good Guys. I thought it was brilliant, and so did my mom and my brother, but apparently we were in the minority—the show was cancelled after only one season. This marked the first time I’d suffered the disappointment of seeing a show I liked get cancelled. I imagined this must have been what it was like for Firefly fans who watched the show when it was first on TV. I don’t remember precisely at what point I got into Lie To Me, but I liked that show, and it was cancelled, too. Chuck came close to being cancelled a number of times over the course of its run, and it ended up lasting five seasons.
Since we liked The Good Guys so much, we decided to start watching Burn Notice since it was made by the same people. It’s a bit short on humor compared to the other shows we watch, but we like smart characters, and the cast of Burn Notice is brilliant. The latest show I’ve gotten into was Doctor Who, which has replaced Firefly as my favorite TV show of all time and Star Wars as my favorite sci-fi series. At some point I’ll probably write a post devoted entirely to Doctor Who, but not today.

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