TV

Sometimes, in catching up with my dad or talking with a friend, I'm asked what I watch on TV. While it makes good background noise (especially now), there aren't really many shows that I will make any effort to watch.


Stargate Universe is on my "trial" list, I suppose. I liked SG1, but was only so-so on Atlantis. Elements of the overall concept are interesting, but we're something like three episodes in and already I want to see some progress away from the "OMG! Life support is failing, we need X to survive!" plots. I also don't like the way that some people walked off through a stargate and one person was shot to prevent him from going, but this incident seems to have been brushed off. I imagine they'll bring back the two or three that went through in some way later, but it seems like that should have had more of an effect somehow. We'll see if I stick with this one.

Mythbusters represents the height of the Discovery Channel to me. I also liked Survivor Man, but don't know if that'll being continued (Man Versus Wild in contrast struck me as too much contrived entertainment and not enough useful information for those of us who aren't ex-SEALs). But Mythbusters rocks. The chemistry between the cast works well, the experiments are entertaining, and there's educational value to it. Oh, not every episode teaches important does and don'ts of life, and blowing things up isn't good on any everyday basis, but viewers always get a dose of the scientific process.

Star Wars: Clone Wars seems to be getting better and better the more I watch. Perhaps there's irony there, considering the more I watch the prequel movies, the most disappointed with them I am. The end of season one and beginning of season two have definitely kicked things up a notch, with a duros bounty hunter who's bested the Jedi a few times, and Anakin developing into an arrogant prick (rather than going from whiny brat to doom of the Republic almost instantly).

Venture Brothers is good enough to keep me up late Sunday nights for new episodes. It started out looking like a parody of Jonny Quest, but kept pulling in more elements from other places and its characters sort of exploded on their own. I don't think anyone on the list of characters qualifies as "normal" or "well-adjusted." It's one of the few shows that actually makes me laugh with any regularity. Over the top and sometimes incredibly random, it manages to be a lot of fun.
Amusingly, their recent season 4 premiere was told in a non-linear fashion, with scenes jumping back and forth. West Coast feeds (which we happen to get here) made a mistake and replayed the first half of the episode instead of the second half. Like many other people, I was watching and thinking "WTF? Is this intentional? Are there differences in these scenes? It looks the same..." because that's almost the sort of thing the show would actually do on purpose. Heh. It was, however, confirmed as a regional error and I've since watched the whole thing online.

Then there's the "other stuff:" shows I'll watch, but don't go out of my way for at all.
CSI and NCIS are decent filler and reasonably fun to watch. They trivialize the sciences involved, and the latter strikes me as heavier on characters than storyline, but they're both fair game for "watching" reruns while I zone out and relax.
Family Guy is mildly amusing, and often on at a time when I'm winding down.
There are some other shows I might catch on Cartoon Network. I'll watch Bleach if I'm up, even though it's typical and predictable shounen fare (and doesn't have enough Yoruichi these days).

And that's really all I care about on TV currently. Sometimes there's a decent movie. I've seen episodes of Fringe, Dollhouse, and The Sarah Conner Chronicles, but none of them really clicked with me. Battlestar Galactica was hit-or-miss with me when it was running (though jumping a battlestar in atmospheric freefall will be remembered as one of the most awesome sci-fi scenes for some time to come).