TV Shows, Sorted by Tier
Submitted by jim on Sat, 02/07/2009 - 03:26
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... Yes, the Nick animated kids show. No one is more surprised than me. Great story, characters, action, and the coolest characters are either [a] girls, [b] old people, [c] disabled, or [d] some combination of the above.Battlestar Galactica
... The new series, of course. What a HUGE surprise this was.Deadwood
... I think Al Swearengen may be the greatest character TV has yet created.ER
Homicide: Life on the Streets
... Better than The Wire. Or at least season 1 of The Wire. Haven't seen the rest yet.Northern Exposure
The Office
... BBC versionSeinfeld
The Simpsons
The Sopranos
The West Wing
Really Liked
Alias
Cheers
The Cosby Show
Dexter
Firefly
Friends
House M.D.
News Radio
Lost
... Much rides on how well they wrap it up.Prime Suspect
Sports Night
The Wire
Glad I Saw
Absolutely Fabulous
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
... I only watched a season or two though, I need to give this one a better try.Guilty Pleasures
Heroes
... Pretty precipitous decline after season 1, and it seems silly that they're going to have to spend every subsequent season jumping through hoops to keep Peter from just solving all problems in the first episode with his godlike powers. Mohinder is aptly named. "You know what our heroes need? Mo' hindering. There, now that he's thrown a wrench into the works AGAIN we can stretch this out for awhile longer." Still, I can't help myself.Too Long Ago to Remember, Big Nostalia Though
The A-Team
LA Law
Magnum PI
Stopped Watching Early - Apparently Mediocre
Extras
Monk
Stopped Watching Early - Apparently Bad
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Mr. Show
Stopped Watching Early - Apparently Sucky
- None Yet
Author Comments:
Woefully incomplete. Also, generally the ranking is based on the shows peak.
Monk mediocre?
I'm glad you're stepping down, I can't live knowing the proprietor of one of my favourite websites is so off-base.
Well maybe that's a little harsh. ;-)
:-)
I'm going to stick to my guns on this one, especially when measured against everything I have in "glad I saw" and above.
I only watched the first season, and Tony Shaloub was excellent (as usual), but by the end I felt I I knew the formula, and the writing wasn't strong enough to keep me around (unlike House, for example, which is similarly formulaic, but is better written).
But you're right, out with the old, in with the new, I say!
Ahh, you know I'm only kidding. :) (Unless you start to criticize Bruce Springsteen, in which case we'll have to hold crisis talks.)
As for Monk. Well, season 1 is easily the weakest run of the show. From S2, and especially in S3 and onwards, there's real character development, and it becomes less "mystery-of-the-week" - there's more emotion, more character moments, more background, more subplot. Having said that, I can't imagine you'd be completely sold by later seasons if you didn't really enjoy S1 at all.
No worries, the kidding came through loud and clear. :-)
I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy it, it's just that my wife and I probably make it through a season of TV only every month or two (via Netflix) and at that pace we have years of watching ahead of us on the shows we've found we like better, so Monk just didn't make the cut.
TV's tough though, because lots of shows don't hit their stride until after the initial season. The ones we end up sticking with do a good enough job of setting the hooks early.
Oh, I understand. Personally I can sometimes get through as much as a season every couple days, but I know other people usually have lives to attend to and deal with in that time. :-D Actually, Monk and Curb Your Enthusiasm aside, our tastes are pretty similar. I like all the shows you rate highly. Good to see some more ER love, I think a lot of people write it off as a mediocre procedural-come-soap when, especially early on, it was so much more than that.