Manic Monday (until further notice)
Happy Monday, all. I am heading into a wildly busy time at my Harvard Business School job, and Mr. Improbable is jetting off today to introduce the wonders of Improbable Research to Scotland, Denmark, and Sweden, so posting frequency may be low for the next week or so.
But feel free to drop a comment about whatever’s on your mind these days, and if I get a free 20 minutes and inspiration at the same time, I’ll write about it!
UPDATE: Oh, wait, I know what I want to hear from you all! Unfortunately, my work busy-ness isn’t going to come with predictable deadlines while Mr. Improbable is gone. This means I can’t make a lot of social plans in advance. Which means, probably, a fair amount of movie and TV-watching with Milo in the evenings. I’d love to find some good television show on DVD to get addicted to. What would you recommend? Shows I like include “Deadwood,” “Mad Men,” “Lost,” “Six Feet Under,” “Sopranos,” “True Blood,” and “Dexter,” so that should give you an idea of my taste. Recommendations gratefully accepted!
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19 Responses to “Manic Monday (until further notice)”
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Revisit the first 3 seasons of West Wing. Best. Writing, Ever.
You’ve probably seen Firefly, but if you haven’t, DO!
I agree with Bluemoose. Watch Firefly.
I also recommend Sports Night and Big Bang Theory (although based on the “does Sheldon have Asberger’s” conversations, perhaps you’ve already seen it).
While not really TV on DVD, watch Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.
In the guilty pleasure category, I have to recommend Castle if only for Nathan Fillion. I believe season 1 should be available.
I second the recommendation to revisit the early West Wing episodes. Well worth it.
Also, I am a huge fan of Burn Notice. I’ve only seen the first season and part of the second, but I am hooked.
For a real blast from the past, how about the old Little House on the Prairie? My daughter just got DVDs of the first season and we’re all enjoying it – the kids for the first time, DH and I reliving our childhoods.
Big Love — be sure to start with Season 1.
Veronica, my husband is a huge fan of Firefly and now Castle. I have also gotten into that show and enjoy it. Burn Notice as well is a fun show.
I’m loving Modern Family right now for comedy. And I really loved the show “Life”. That got cancelled in all the NBC-Jay Leno hubbub.
I third the Firefly recommendation!
If you are up for something on the darker end of the spectrum I would suggest the Wire. Otherwise I would say Leverage – though it has only had two seasons so not sure how much is available in Dvd yet. I also think Castle is great if you like that sort of light mystery show.
I second Sports Night. Also, House. It can be a little pat at times, but so much of the medical mystery stuff involves how/why/when people communicate, which can be more interesting than the actual diagnosis.
The Wire is fabulous t.v., but may require more of a commitment than you can make right now. Also, you definitely want Mr. Improbable to watch with, so you can dissect every episode! My favorite recent series (sadly canceled after three short seasons) is “Pushing Daisies”. Quirky, clever, word play (almost,but not quite, too cute) with the occasional musical number that advances the story. And many, many social dilemmas arising from its original premise! Fluffy but engaging. Oh, how I miss my weekly fix of new episodes…
I hated almost everything the West Wing did after season two, but the first two seasons are an absolute gem, and must-see TV if you haven’t already.
If you have a Netflix account or are able somehow to otherwise get your hands on a copy of the brilliant UK series Life on Mars (NOT the American remake), it’s well-worth your while. It ran for two seasons, eight (fully hour-long) episodes each. It’s about a cop from 2006 who is struck by a car and ends up back in 1973, trying to cope with archaic investigative techniques and even more archaic social attitudes. Meanwhile, voices from his “real” life keep bleeding through to torment him.
Another UK series well-worth watching is the political drama State of Play. There’s six episodes, each an hour long. A newspaper investigation into two seemingly unrelated murders turns up a big oil industry scandal. Lots of humor and romance in with all the drama.
Also putting in a plug for the revived series of Doctor Who (2005 to present)– ostensibly a family-oriented series about the adventures of a space-time traveling alien eccentric, this is one of the most complex and thought-provoking shows I’ve ever watched. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s hip, it’s sexy as hell, it’s tragic, it’s dramatic, and it’s very often edge-of-your-seat suspenseful and hide-behind-the-sofa scary. Also, the acting is usually top-notch, from the leads right down to the walk-ons. (And you don’t need to have seen the original series to “get” the stories–when the original series is referenced, the crucial pieces are explained in the scripts). All four seasons, plus the 2009 specials, are out on DVD in the US.
Do you know, I could never get into “The Wire.” I watched the first season and part of the fourth (a number of people thought I’d like the school-system arc) but it just never did it for me.
I think Marc wants to watch “West Wing,” so that will have to wait for his return.
I saw a couple of episodes of “Pushing Daises” on an airplane, and I liked it quite a bit. Maybe I’ll get some more of those.
Has anyone seen “Caprica”? I’m intrigued by it, but I was so disgusted by the series finale of BSG I’m not sure I can quite overcome that yet. Then again, my favorite actress (Paula Malcolmson–”Trixie” from “Deadwood”) is in it, so I may have to.
And I loved “Big Love.” Start with season 1 indeed! What did you think of season 3, It? A wee bit too action-packed?
A big old +1 on Firefly. No question.
Did you watch Friday Night Lights? a little tamer than what you mentioned, but compelling.
I was going to come recommend Sports Night and The West Wing, but it seems several people have beat me to it! (I would say, though, that the first *four* seasons of The West Wing are worth watching; it was after the fourth that Aaron Sorkin left.) Sports Night was Sorkin’s show before The West Wing, and is NOT primarily about sports, as evidenced by the fact that I enjoy it. It’s about the making of a sports-related TV show and has all the snappiness and people being really good at their jobs and also really lovable that The West Wing does.
I would also like to add another voice for Firefly, and, if you didn’t see it the first time around, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is much more brilliant underneath its kitsch than most people give it credit for. (Though the first three seasons are better than the latter four, and the seventh season is just not worth the pain. Much like significant portions of Battlestar Galactica.)
I’m curious, though–Robin, could you tell us, with the proper spoiler alerts in place, why the finale of BSG bothered you so much? There were many things I thought that show failed to do well, but I wouldn’t have singled out the finale as the worst of it.
I love The Big Bang Theory. I would also recommend Burn Notice as well. I think of Burn Notice as an updated A-Team that doesn’t travel, the A-Team is looking to clear their name as is Michael Weston. Both help under dogs out of a jam and they both involve some undercover work and blowing stuff up so the underdog wins in the end.
The Human Target is also good, but new so you might be able to watch it on Hulu rather than DVDs. But Fringe is something you could watch on DVD, I watched the first season but scheduling conflicts made me drop it, I think I will start re watching that series from the beginning.
I’ll second Sports Night (and not just because of the eye candy — there’s ear candy in the word play, too) and Leverage — Leverage is just caper-filled fun.
I am loving Caprica, almost more than BSG. It’s a completely different show, but the questions it is raising are really interesting. And having seen BSG, you know where this all ends up, so the deep implications are even more interesting.
Carolyn, I did watch the pilot of “Friday Night Lights,” and liked it a lot. I’m not sure I could immerse myself for that long in small-town football culture, though. Still, I should give it another try.
To many of you: sorry to lose my geek cred, but “Firefly” didn’t do it for me. I watched a few episodes, but wasn’t grabbed.
“Buffy” is on the list for one of these days, for sure. But dang, talk about a time commitment …
I’ve started watching “Caprica” and I’m liking it a lot so far. I always found the tensions between the different planets to be one of the most compelling themes of BSG, and wished that had been developed more. Plus, “Caprica” is so visually gorgeous!
Jenny, to answer your question, here are a few of my problems with the BSG finale:
1. To start with the positive, I did like what they did with the characters.
2. However, the notion that “we are going to get rid of all technology and medicine and live in harmony with the earth” is rampant nonsense. So, every woman left is willing to live without birth control? There are no disabled or ill people who need medicine or assistive devices? Baltar is going to farm with no seeds or tools? Yeah, let’s check back in six months later and see how that’s going.
3. They were wrong about what mitochondrial Eve actually is. Also, having a bunch of white and Asian people dumped into Africa to become the beginning of humanity is pretty much insanely racist. So, we all come out of Africa, but it’s cool ’cause we’re still white!
4. The apparent lesson that humanity was supposed to learn from the Cylon wars is not to colonize or enslave. Instead, they took the lesson that “technology is bad,” and in fact, ARE colonizing Africa.
5. We’re supposed to believe that they interbred with the prehistoric humans living in Africa at the time? How is that not totally disgusting? They don’t even have LANGUAGE. Bestiality at best, rape at worst.
6. Starbuck.
7. Using “God” to fill in any plot gaps. That’s not God, that’s grout.
8. Finally, a minor quibble: everyone on the show was a barely-functional alcoholic by the end of the series. I don’t know what happens when you have 30,000 people going through detox at the same time, but I bet it isn’t pretty.
An extremely belated comment (and spoiler alert!)–Robin, I finally read up on Mitochondrial Eve, and you’re right, they got it very wrong on BSG. Which only intensifies one of my sources of dissatisfaction, which was that I couldn’t figure out what was so special about Hera. I could see that it was important that Cylons and humans could have children together, but that almost makes a cylon-human child *less* significant, since clearly there can be more. I was hoping Hera would end up at least having some kind of special ability or something. Their setting her up as the common ancestor of all humanity, in addition to be scientifically problematic, doesn’t quite succeed at justifying all her hype. It’s just not clear why it matters that she, and not some other cylon-human baby born later, be the ancestor.
Just one of many problems I had with the show…but thanks for sharing your list!