Best TV Shows Ever Watched: My Top 15 (no order)

Following the prior post, I thought of the thousands of hours of shows I have wasted time on in my life. Roughly 3 hours per day for 333 days/year x 35 years = 35,000 hours rounded.  4 years, or 10% of life, yeah, what a waste. So, I like, millions of Americans & Brits have found accidental experience in watch these shows. So here's my top fifteen watched (more than 75% of episodes in the series is my minimum to be included on the list) in no particular order:

1.  M*A*S*H. It's finale still ranks as the all time leader in the United States for most watched TV program. It was a 11-year war story - quadruple the length of the war it fictionally depicts (Korean) and half of the war it truly satirized in Vietnam. In the half-hour situation comedy genre its pace was equally adept at slow and fast messaging, while developing the arcs of the characters in ways that resonated. I was merely a 6th grade child when the show ended in 1983. I watched it as a child, a teenager, early adult, and so on. Looking back, the show was way ahead of its time, then a leader among peers - but MASH's straying from just dark comedy (including Suicide is Painless opening music) came about with Alan Alda's creative consulting, writing, and directing in the late stages. Straying is harsh; it became a drama first - pure and simple, which is no easy tasking. The cast marched in step, created a space for war depiction that was flawed, but enjoyable in its touching moments through 251 episodes. (More here)

2. ER. Buttressing the medical drama genre with more realistic doctoring - Michael Crichton's ed credentials earned at Harvard Medical School helped - ER 326 TV hours were uneven, yet it was ride worth going to surgery for. I watched the majority of the show - missing the early 2K episodes probably around 20-40 -  sticking to the end, watching the finale. This show was not a way to improve your mood. Doctors on edge, nurses annoyed, lead staff showing off, while lives at home were in tatters or strained. John Carter (Noah Wyle) days from a poor little rich boy newbie from med school to stabbing victim, drug addict, AIDs clinic builder to the Africa continent  for answers. His story is the backbone of the ER saga - in my opinion. He finds skill through personal connection after demons he did not unleash nearly destroyed. I would be a fraud to say I know all the remaining characters arcs by heart. I watch TV not for fact - but to pass the time, and live a life I do not have, often thankfully.

3. Batman: The Animated Series. Batman, really enough said. I was in college when this show launched in mid-afternoon, a 22 minute ride in the caped crusader's world of chasing the bad guys to their lairs while always being alone in his focus and thinking. Again, no expert, but Kevin Conroy's voice is what makes this Batman the ticket in animation. (It took only 150 voice auditions to find him....wow.) Only lasted 3 years - but the with Danny Elfman doing the opening score - this piece of TV history should have lasted longer.

4. House. A logical genius, Sherlockian diagnostician, and unflinchingly unethical man seeks to solve his own equation first, but has your life in his hands - and cares nothing about you - do you let him attempt his ever unique solution? I loved Hugh Laurie's snarky sexually harassing to get attention doctor - if only how unreal he truly was. While MASH gave humor only to point out war's flaws, and ER had drama to point out the life-death daily fight, HOUSE gave us humor not on death's inevitability, but on the lies that can cause it. The show had plenty of letdowns, and I missed most of 2008-2010 due to various crises, but I will pop on those episodes soon enough. Laurie attended Cambridge U, is an crack writer, and can play some tunes, charting in the UK. That explains all his talents.

5. Quantum Leap. Back to the 1980s. Sam Beckett. Literary reference and history. This show was able to make time travel have some sense to it - swapping out identities, string theory - while truly trying "to set right what once went wrong.: It was a bit hokey, of course - but 2 characters tied together Al and Sam - made it a lifetime friendship romp through time. The best episode was MIA - where Al is torn to give the truth to Sam about why he is where he is, and what Sam is there to solve. It is beautiful, and the reason for the show's finale.

6. Psych. Amongst the favorites of USA network, this one made sleuthing funny, light-hearted, a bit more about quirks than crime.

7. Burn Notice. Spy vs. USA intelligence, Miami mafia, drug lords, Columbia kingpins, and old fashion bad dudes. As with most shows, the acting is convinces enough - if the tone has darkened from the initial season.

8. Angel.  Back when the world was less Twilighty, Angel was a quirk of a show written and developed by Joss Whedon, now of Avenger fame.

9. Game of Thrones. Prior post.

10. Twilight Zone. This put some nightmares in my head in those heady early days.

11. Star Trek : TNG. Captain Picard - Engage! I am a trekkie first and always!

12. Law and Order. Twenty years of Cops, Bad Guys, and Lawyers can be enough to make you think you know something about the law. Sam Waterston (The Killing Fields) took over for Michael Moriarty made Law and Order a pretty routine affair. I watched likely 250 episodes, of the 391. But I would gather, that the ones missed were not going to get me a law degree.

13. Hustle. A group of gritty London con men seem to always get their way - I found it refreshingly British.

14. The West Wing. Actually should do summary on this show. Aaron Sorkin crafted this punchy dream team machine of a White House. Can you imagine a Republican version of this show....nope, me neither. (Course, you would have to think brilliantly and socially responsible and sound and look good. Nope not happening.)

15. The Wonder Years. Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and Winnie Cooper (Math genius Danica McKellar) were the prismatic budding teenagers through which we saw the evolving 1960s, and the frustrations of that time. The opening pilot episode set a beautiful array of emotions - and certainly it touched a 16-17 teenager that still felt Kevin's age: confused, horny, courageous, chicken, hopeful, excited, timid, sneaky, lazy, and loving all in a paragraph of dialogue.

Honorable Mentions, or likely, lacked the knowledge of entire show's run:
Breaking Bad
Freaks and Geeks
The Practice
Royal Pains
The Tudors
The Wire
Battlestar Gallactica
Rome
Homefront
Perry Mason
The Rockford Files
China Beach (Robert Picardo)
Castle
Dallas
All in the Family
Doctor Who
Spooks
Twin Peaks
Remington Steele
The Justice League
Bugs Bunny Show


I could go on all day. I am not a critic. I'd have to watch intently (and get paid) to give you a full rundown.
But here is enough television to burn your eyeballs for a lifetime.

The 2012 New Year: Advice for the Young at Heart

Chapter 16 of My Life and Times at Purdue University

A friend on Google+ posted this as a call to action, or resolution, or escape from that worn path:

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I'd like to change about my life, and what steps I can take to implement those changes. I generally do this anyway, whenever I start feeling like I'm unhappy a little too much. One thing that I do not do is wait until January 1st to implement these changes. I just don't get that mentality--this is my last cigarette ever! I'm gonna eat another pig in a blanket, and tomorrow we diet!--and I think that if you genuinely crave change, your excitement will keep you from procrastinating.

But of course, excitement is a fleet-footed creature. It's one thing to say "I'm going to get a new job" and another to subject yourself to the indignities of the process--online applications that make you manually type in all the information from the resume you just uploaded; leadership personality tests that ask you the same question six different ways; receiving a phone call, as you iron the blouse you agonized over choosing, that the position has been filled and your interview has been canceled--but why do I give up so easily? A new job would probably make me happier than anything else right now, so why do I allow myself to shrug my shoulders and continue clockwatching?

Perhaps I should set a resolution after all. I clearly need to kick through this wall.

If you need me, I'll either be thinking about why I procrastinate, or trying to decide whether I'm Very Somewhat or Somewhat Very on yet another personality test.

My uneducated response:

I can understand it all too well. I've work at about 20-25 different places in my 25 years of punching a clock, or showing up to do projects for people I know do not want to be there either. I've taken personality tests offered by the US Navy (scholarship app), Lear Corporation (cool printout), and two other places.

Since I scarcely know you, or what is the bothersome feature in your work (besides work), I suspect you'll change careers another 4.7 times during the next 20.2 years. You might conceive 2.1 kids, or forego that route, and put $151,578 more dollars in your pocket over that same time span.

The resolution is just another dream. But dreams have payment options. You must pay plenty into them, sacrifice some other route, and know that your sunk costs may infuriate someone you tend to say you love/like, but obviously they don't get what you are after and don't love/like you quite the way you want them to back.

At a younger adult age, with an IE degree, I had four goals: nice car, nice home/condo, good job that met the lifestyle, and a well, a smoking hot wife was what I wanted, but would have settle for a B- looker with DD boobs. (Hey, I'm a guy.) That said, I have no real estate, no car now (head gasket on one, repoed my moms), a freelance writing gig with FREE being the op word, and absolutely, not even the slightest tickle of a woman wanting me for a steady eddy, or a fuck buddy to soothe either her woe-beggotten trek, or the damn-good-n-rich living large existence.

So, zero for four. I should be miserable.

But, not really. Of those, only the woman would be a plus factor to the current course setting I have. Sure, I will work soon enough. But if I get so desperate...I'll find a way again to do something menial and relatively worthless to survive. Since any a-hole can entertain with words, a song, or a cool new app put up for the world at $5.99 per download, my current skill sets probably won't make a dent into my dream of being a writer that gets to do projects around the world. Why I came back for college, part deux.

So, no losses are insurmountable. The fucking existence we lead generally does not end with or begin with a job, a car, a big screen hi-def, or a semi-steady sexual encounter that you do taxes with yearly and claim kids, if you want, separately. I yearn for when I could play baseball all day, eat spaghetti dinner with my mom, and watch the Wonder Years hoping shit would be better for me in my then dream pursuit of a cheerleader I fell for in high school. Alas, the damnest thing: I wasn't popular, or a stud enough athlete, too short, also, and I talked funny too (as a hillbilly from Tennessee tends to do).

The moral is: do you. Whatever the fuck that is to you - be it. Write, build cabinets, play music, fix cars, entrepreneur something, watch Captain Kangaroo and make it a game too, I don't care. The time we got is short. You got plenty more on me because you are smart, know the story, and don't have a pecker that leads you astray like I have been led to the cliff, and fallen to a presumed death by ejaculation/masturbation. I keep on climbing back up, but I don't have a killer plan either. 

 

I write - editorialize, I'd say - my whole life. Shakespeare at least (if we believe he wrote EVERY thing) was productive. Sonnets, plays, fucking crap no one seriously could duplicate, even now. We just steal his ideas over and over and over until generation get-over-yourself forgets whomever came up with it in the first place. As you've noted, in your posting Andrew's take of The Police song When The World Keeps Running Down, that's a talent too - pirate and innovate. Do that if it doesn't land you in the fucked-in-the-ass prison. (Oh yeah, did a tour of duty in the pokey too. Didn't have Notorious B.I.G.'s legal team to get a "not guilty." I was stupid, not criminally minded. A much much longer story, if you can believe me so far.)

2012 Resolution: try for that dream and build it one day at a time. Might take 5-10 years but you will be better off, you will have really learned how you do you, and likely, will not know fuckers like me exist. The truest test of your payments to your dreams...someone else will really notice, support it, and that dream becomes a fucking reality I hear about on CNBC with Jim Cramer screaming, "Buy! Buy! Buy!" And your now-snobby ass can give me the advice.

Happy New Year! 

 

And Keep At It!

 

 

That's my advice to all of you out there between 1 and 92.

Again, Happy New Year to all of you.

The Idiot Box: Things I've watched and liked

Since we often find ourselves plopping down in front of it, while awaiting a new adventure to take form somewhere inside us, or around us, here is a list of the shows I've took an interest in over the years....

M*A*S*H - while I was growing up, this was usually high on the watched list. Between Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce and Hotlips Houlihan, I guess it was a small microcosm of the Vietnam War, although it's approach was not quite what I think should have been. Still retains title as highest rated TV show ever in its finale...And no show nowadays will ever amass that sort of audience with Cable/Direct TV.

The Wonder Years - Fred Savage as Kevin Arnold was a top-flight casting decision. He brought plenty to the role of a teenager growing up in the late 1960's, early 1970's. Daniel Stern doing that classic voice over, like The Christmas Story Red Rider Bee Bee Gun guy, also was top flight. Since the story moved in the same period, Vietnam, it was interesting how it could take on that topic, then come back down to antics of growing up, figuring out girls and getting into trouble. Olivia D'abo (left) was also a then schoolboy crush. (She's 38, plays on a show I really want to watch, but can't, since it is on SciFi and my cable company sucks - Eureka - and probably still pretty good looking.)

Remington Steele - Pierce Brosnan (pre-Bond) and Stephanie Zimbalist formed a partnership that was chaotic and funny. As a detective combo, they both worked pretty well. With Pierce's English verve and Stephanie's understated hotness (left), the show did enough for my 12-13 year old attention span. Sorta of a Moonlighting without the funny, sharp and quippy language. Which lead us to...

Moonlighting - Bruce Willis (pre-Die Hard) and Cybil Shephard (post-The Last Picture Show) did what Remington Steele couldn't usually: laugh at itself on screen. Breaking through the "4th wall" of TVLAND and adding plenty of spice in the sack that Remington didn't. A typical quote from the series:

Petruchio/Addison: You see through me, Kate. No tuner I. But I wish it were within my talents to play piano for you.

Kate/Maddie: 'Tis a sad thing indeed. You're the only man I know who suffereth from pianist envy.

House - what better way to understand a pseudo-Sherlock Holmes than to watch a drug-addicted doctor ply his craft on the cases and medical team members of his choice. It sometimes makes a good statement; other times it stretches any medical ethics to the point of absurdity. Hugh Laurie (pre-House) though does an excellent job. His pop was a doctor from a few sources.

Psych - this is a pretty decent show, though it will have to step it up a bit to garner any acclaim like Monk did. The references to old TV shows, characters and plotlines though sometimes really funny, are getting a bit too much. The characters are all likeable, which is why the show works. Gus (Dule Hill) and Sean (James Roday) are a tight duo that works well on the weird cases they solve through the photographic memory of Sean and awkward smarts of Gus.

The Black Sheep Squadron: Based very loosely on the WWII heroics of Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington, Robert Conrad and John Laroquette led this show in a short-lived airing of 36 episodes. The dogfights staged as they were with 1970's technology was pretty good. Laroquette would go on to Night Court and his own show.

The Dead Zone - Even being based on a Stephen King novel, I was surprised to see the big 3 (ABC, NBC or CBS) did not take this on their airways. (Though USA Network must be owned by NBC.) Anthony Michael Hall (of Chevy Chase's Vacation & The Breakfast Club) has really done a unique job -- though the character has ran its course. The showdown with Vice President/President is coming...Hope it doesn't suck.

Hustle - Nothing like thieves in Londontown to make an interesting adventure. Led by Mickey Stone (Adrian Lester of Primary Colors) and Albert Stroller (top character actor Robert Vaughn, who was nominated for Oscar in The Young Philadelphians) in the con game played for the moral good of others (they get the really bad men) in a Robin Hood without-the-giving-to-the-poor always scenario, I like the backdrop and the action.

I don't always get to this one. I've like the 8-12 episodes I've seen, but alas, I forget AMC plays something other that movies like For A Few Dollars More or From Here to Eternity, which are both fine, but I've seen.

Burn Notice, Heroes, Family Guy, Law & Order original, Star Trek and plenty of others are things I've watched.

A very poor segway to more educational stuff:

Connections & Connections 2 & Connections 3: Englishman James Burke takes you on a ride to see the connections in history between divergent technologies and vastly different people. How one thing or item became instrumental to the fabric of another item, sometimes 500 years removed from each other. This series started in 1979...

The Universe - New show on how this thing called a Universe is created and shifting from place to place, and time to time. It is always interesting to learn about Physics and the crazy things that are capable in just one star 1 billion light-years away.

Cities of the Underworld - Nice to see 1,000,000 skeletons (Paris), drawings from 2000 years ago (Rome) and dungeons (London) in these places just 100 feet below your feet. Entire lives and streets exist just under the parking garages of your current existence.

Just about anything on the History Channel or Discovery, is pretty cool at times.