TV Shows I Have Loved
Jul. 27th, 2009 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlLately my enthusiasm for Being Human (the TV show, not the way of life) has been running really high. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it! I haven't been so pumped about a live action TV show since...
...hmm.
I don't have a great track record with live action shows. I've only really liked a small handful, and invariably they are canceled, dumped, change formats...
Let's go over five of my favorites, shall we?
5. VR5
The premise of VR5 was fairly straightforward. Via an accident with a super powerful computer and a 1200-baud acoustic modem (kids, ask your parents), Sydney Bloom finds herself able to enter the human mind via VIRTUAL REALITY. She uses this power to... uhm... psychoanalyze people for a government agency. Also have sex with her neighbor.
What happened to it? Alas, it was too good for this sinful Earth... or maybe I was the only person who watched the damn thing. Look, I'll be honest, it was PACKED with dumbass technical errors. It had really questionable design choices. (VR5 is the deepest of five virtual reality levels, involving invading people's brains... but VR3 is entirely devoted to flight simulation! Whee!) On the whole, it lasted like 14 episodes and then wandered off with a cliffhanger. Of course, VR5 ran back to back with...
4. Sliders
Leaping from Earth to Earth, a party of four adventurers search for a way home. On the way, they examine the structure of parallel worlds, having weird adventures that invariably result in them just barely being able to make the next slide. A fun, usually lighthearted adventure show that constantly showed neat tweaks to history.
What happened to it? Well, there were only two seasons before network stupid set in. The execs took a hard look at this show and said "Okay, but what if we added a massive crossover involving aliens!? And what if we kept changing the cast that make the slides? And what if we cancel the show for like five years and bring it back on the Sci Fi Channel as a parody of its former self? AWESOME!"
Fun trivia: By the time the show ended, there was only one person from the original group left, and he was from an alternate Earth. So they had actually successfully negated the premise of the show, which was "Let's get these four home". It's like if Quantum Leap had dumped Sam partway through and introduced Greg, who didn't actually want to make a leap home. I don't know how they resolved this, but I also don't care. (I do think it would be funny if they got to Original Earth, looked around, shrugged, and kept going.)
3. M.A.N.T.I.S.
A wheelchair-bound superhero FIGHTS CRIME! with the help of a suit of powered armor. He also fights evildoers from alternate worlds, invisible dinosaurs, and capitalism. Directed by Sam Raimi, who also did the whole Xena/Hercules thing. Gabrielle from Xena was one of my first live action crushes!
What happened to it? It lasted one season and then was canceled in a big damn hurry.
2. Mystery Science Theater 3000
Do I really need to talk about this? To this crew? Seriously? Okay.
1. Due South
Okay. Before this, it was all sci-fi. But... Due South was interestingly different. It wasn't based around Fantastic Situations. Due South was the first time I was interested in a -character- on a television show. Then I got interested in a character dynamic. Benton Fraiser, mountie from the Far North, comes to Chicago on the trail of his father's killer and ends up staying as an attache to the Consulate. Every week he uses his basic faith in human nature and his incredible detective skills... and the resources of his reluctant cop partner Ray... to solve mysteries or just problems.
Due South is what I've always considered to be the best live action show ever produced, based solely on the strength of the writing. Even things that would've killed a lesser show, like replacing one of the main characters with a different character, just kept the show going stronger.
Bonus: Five shows I've -tried- to love and never got anywhere with.
5. Farscape. First I watched this show looking for a fun sci-fi adventure. Then I watched it looking for a character I could get to love. Then I watched it looking for any character at all to like. Then I started looking for a character I didn't want to see punched in the face. Then I stopped watching.
4. Little House on the Prairie. My very first non-animated-show memory was of my little five or six year old self, staring blankly at this show. Eventually I realized that no, they weren't all really weird isolationist cultists, they just lived in the past. Then I lost interest.
3. Roar. "This isn't more Xena. I wanted more Xena. I will go back to watching Xena." Sometimes my reasons are as simple as they are doofy.
2. Dinosaurs. I actually had a really good fanship for this show going when I was younger... and then the ending came around. That was so depressingly soul-shattering that I didn't want to watch it ever again. AND I NEVER HAVE.
1. Babylon 5. My dull interest in this show has never managed to penetrate the thick meaty exterior of it. I really should try again one day, but... enthusiasm's at a low right now. And I have so much else to watch...
...hmm.
I don't have a great track record with live action shows. I've only really liked a small handful, and invariably they are canceled, dumped, change formats...
Let's go over five of my favorites, shall we?
5. VR5
The premise of VR5 was fairly straightforward. Via an accident with a super powerful computer and a 1200-baud acoustic modem (kids, ask your parents), Sydney Bloom finds herself able to enter the human mind via VIRTUAL REALITY. She uses this power to... uhm... psychoanalyze people for a government agency. Also have sex with her neighbor.
What happened to it? Alas, it was too good for this sinful Earth... or maybe I was the only person who watched the damn thing. Look, I'll be honest, it was PACKED with dumbass technical errors. It had really questionable design choices. (VR5 is the deepest of five virtual reality levels, involving invading people's brains... but VR3 is entirely devoted to flight simulation! Whee!) On the whole, it lasted like 14 episodes and then wandered off with a cliffhanger. Of course, VR5 ran back to back with...
4. Sliders
Leaping from Earth to Earth, a party of four adventurers search for a way home. On the way, they examine the structure of parallel worlds, having weird adventures that invariably result in them just barely being able to make the next slide. A fun, usually lighthearted adventure show that constantly showed neat tweaks to history.
What happened to it? Well, there were only two seasons before network stupid set in. The execs took a hard look at this show and said "Okay, but what if we added a massive crossover involving aliens!? And what if we kept changing the cast that make the slides? And what if we cancel the show for like five years and bring it back on the Sci Fi Channel as a parody of its former self? AWESOME!"
Fun trivia: By the time the show ended, there was only one person from the original group left, and he was from an alternate Earth. So they had actually successfully negated the premise of the show, which was "Let's get these four home". It's like if Quantum Leap had dumped Sam partway through and introduced Greg, who didn't actually want to make a leap home. I don't know how they resolved this, but I also don't care. (I do think it would be funny if they got to Original Earth, looked around, shrugged, and kept going.)
3. M.A.N.T.I.S.
A wheelchair-bound superhero FIGHTS CRIME! with the help of a suit of powered armor. He also fights evildoers from alternate worlds, invisible dinosaurs, and capitalism. Directed by Sam Raimi, who also did the whole Xena/Hercules thing. Gabrielle from Xena was one of my first live action crushes!
What happened to it? It lasted one season and then was canceled in a big damn hurry.
2. Mystery Science Theater 3000
Do I really need to talk about this? To this crew? Seriously? Okay.
1. Due South
Okay. Before this, it was all sci-fi. But... Due South was interestingly different. It wasn't based around Fantastic Situations. Due South was the first time I was interested in a -character- on a television show. Then I got interested in a character dynamic. Benton Fraiser, mountie from the Far North, comes to Chicago on the trail of his father's killer and ends up staying as an attache to the Consulate. Every week he uses his basic faith in human nature and his incredible detective skills... and the resources of his reluctant cop partner Ray... to solve mysteries or just problems.
Due South is what I've always considered to be the best live action show ever produced, based solely on the strength of the writing. Even things that would've killed a lesser show, like replacing one of the main characters with a different character, just kept the show going stronger.
Bonus: Five shows I've -tried- to love and never got anywhere with.
5. Farscape. First I watched this show looking for a fun sci-fi adventure. Then I watched it looking for a character I could get to love. Then I watched it looking for any character at all to like. Then I started looking for a character I didn't want to see punched in the face. Then I stopped watching.
4. Little House on the Prairie. My very first non-animated-show memory was of my little five or six year old self, staring blankly at this show. Eventually I realized that no, they weren't all really weird isolationist cultists, they just lived in the past. Then I lost interest.
3. Roar. "This isn't more Xena. I wanted more Xena. I will go back to watching Xena." Sometimes my reasons are as simple as they are doofy.
2. Dinosaurs. I actually had a really good fanship for this show going when I was younger... and then the ending came around. That was so depressingly soul-shattering that I didn't want to watch it ever again. AND I NEVER HAVE.
1. Babylon 5. My dull interest in this show has never managed to penetrate the thick meaty exterior of it. I really should try again one day, but... enthusiasm's at a low right now. And I have so much else to watch...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 07:14 pm (UTC)Due South was pretty rad, but I've only seen a handful of episodes.
They recently put Xena back on television here. It was a really long series and the final conclusion was interesting. I missed the part in the middle where she was in the balkans though. It was like, 'okay now we're in India' and then some stuff I missed and then 'okay now we're in China' and then the final conclusion in Japan. Did you see the final conclusion?
I didn't like those first five shows you said you didn't like, but I'm really surprised you didn't like Babylon 5. Did you start in the middle, or watch it from the beginning? The whole thing is a huge epic story, and events that happen all through the five years or so that it was on have setups pretty early on. Maybe it's just too complex? I loved it, I wanna watch it all over again one day. Ideally with friends.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 07:16 pm (UTC)Anyways do you know?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 07:26 pm (UTC)I've only seem random episodes of Xena. I didn't follow the overarching plot at all.
And actually I quite like Babylon 5... what I've seen of it. But it looks like it takes -waaay- too much work... I mean, I have anime shows that last 26 episodes that I'm considering dropping because I can't follow a show that long. How can I watch -seven! seasons! of epic!-?
Re your other post:
Uhm... "The Lost World", maybe? Relic Hunter? Jack of All Trades?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 10:01 pm (UTC)They were all like, 'You know, we've beaten armies of ghosts and escaped hells lots of times, why can't we do it now?' 'Well I kinda killed all these people and they're just going to keep terrorizing the world unless I go to hell and stay there, so I'm gonna do that.' THE END. Worst of all it's Japanese Hell which is like the worst hell ever.
You don't really have to pay attention that much, they usually do brief flashbacks for the important 'remember that?' bits. The only thing is you have to watch them all, and every episode is like an hour long, and yeah, lots of seasons. ^.^;;
If I was there I'd totally watch every episode of B5 with you. And lots of anime too. I'm on episode 118 of Naruto so you know I can watch a looooong series.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 11:54 pm (UTC)I wish there was, like... a way to stream video, with an IRC text box or something, or a way to remote-subtitle the video... something like that.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 02:54 am (UTC)