Teevee (Page 4)

Some cultural milestones make me feel old, but others do not. It doesn’t really bother me all that much to know that Star Wars is nearing 40 years old. But the fact that Friends first aired twenty years ago today? Now that hits me. We didn’t catch onto Friends immediately. It was about halfway through that first season, maybe a little less, when we discovered it, because it wasn’t even on at 8:00 at that point. NBC’s major sitcoms at the time were Mad About You and Seinfeld, and Friends got sandwiched in between those two, at 8:30. I suspect we missed it initially because itDown the rabbit hole….

It was a Thursday night, my senior year of high school, and I sat down to watch the new episode of Cheers. It was a typically funny episode, focusing on dimwitted Woody and his equally-dimwitted girlfriend, whose name happened to be Kelly. Yup, just like me. In this episode, it was Kelly’s birthday, and Woody had to come up with a gift. Problem was, Kelly was filthy rich, and Woody just wasn’t, so he decided to come up with a gift that would be from his heart. So it was that at Kelly’s birthday party, the time came for WoodyDown the rabbit hole….

The 2013-2014 teevee season is finally in the books (for us, anyway, since it took us a bit of time to get caught up!), so here are some random thoughts on shows and such. :: As always, I’ll start with Castle, which is no longer my favorite thing on teevee, but that’s not to say I think the show has slid too far in quality. But in its sixth year, Castle is more the old, comfy, familiar thing now than the fresh thing it once was. And that’s fine. The show generally took a more screwball approach this year, andDown the rabbit hole….

Ooooh, my favorite summer teevee show, Master Chef, returns tomorrow night! Huzzah! I always enjoy the hell out of this show, even with its tendency to over-inflate itself (“One home cook will win the cookbook publishing deal, the cash prize of [six-figure amount here], and most important of all, the Coveted! MasterChef! TROPHY!!!“), when it’s really just a fun cooking show to watch. I’ve blogged about the show on occasion in the past a couple of times, so I’ll just relink my favorite two such items: :: Gordon, the Fat Guy, and the Skinny Douche. This is mainly about JoeDown the rabbit hole….

We’re a little more than halfway through the teevee season, so here’s where things stand for me on the few shows I still watch regularly: Person of Interest will be getting its own post. Suffice it to say that it’s become my favorite currently-running show, and I think it’s terribly underrated. :: Castle continues chugging along. It’s a very comfortable show now, especially since it pretty much wrapped up the storyline about Beckett’s mother’s murder. Castle is, more than anything else, that warmly welcome show that I look forward to every week simply because it’s so comfortable. No real newDown the rabbit hole….

This ought to do it: I have watched two episodes of Breaking Bad: the pilot, and the one from last week that had everybody rending their teeth and gnashing their garments. All I saw was a bleak, depressing show that made me feel bad about things, but hey, that’s just me. No, what really gets my goat is the undertone of nearly everything said about this show of late, that it is so good that if you don’t watch it, you are literally — and not “figuratively” literally, not the new OED literally, but really actually literally — deficient inDown the rabbit hole….

How I feel when the entire Internet goes into "OMG BREAKING BAD" mode. Yeesh., originally uploaded by Jaquandor. So a week or two ago I watched the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, figuring to finally catch up a bit on what is apparently, to judge by online reaction, the single greatest Artistic Endeavour in the history of the television medium. (And that isn’t remotely hyperbole on my part — that is an accurate summation of opinion.) My reaction? I didn’t like the episode, so I decided not to bother with the rest of the series. (Please don’t try to talkDown the rabbit hole….