Amen to both of those… I was definitely surprised at BG, considering what a cheese factory the first ( 70’s ) version was…

Both definitely top notch. I got both on DVD, because I don’t do commercials any more.

I’m having a sort of TV rennaissance thanks to DVD. I’ve discovered some real gems that way. This week I’ve been rushing through the first season of Arrested Development — brilliant. And I finished BSG and Lost season I. I stil have all of 24 before me.

Firefly (sadly only in reruns) was the last great show.

I was quite pleased with BSG as well. I loved the cheesetastic show when I was a kid when it was first on, but later viewings proved that I was just as dumb as every other kid in terms of taste. I’ve only watched the first season of the new episodes (I too prefer my TV on DVD), but have generally enjoyed them.

Lost, on the other hand, started out intriguing, and then turned into an on-air version of Myst or something. You had to pay attention to all of these random details and decode things and look for odd clues in odd place and it became too much like work.

Ex-Fed: 24 is a pretty good show, if they could just have Kiefer come on during every commercial break and say something to the effect of “this is FICTION people. In real life, torture doesn’t WORK!” so that the righties that masturbate to it weekly would stop crowing about the success of “their” show.

The new Battlestar Galactica’s the reason I finally broke down and got cable. Haven’t watched Lost yet. I was heartbroken, though, when Firefly got cancelled.

My brain still hurts from the Lost finale. And I don’t want to wade through the fansites, cause one of those geeks (she says lovingly) will totally guess right and ruin the whole thing. But I’m completely addicted regardless.

And BG is amazing. So happy that a show like that is taking the risks it does, and keeping things nice and morally complicated.

Anybody seen promos for Jericho? The post-apoclayptic Lost? Dunno if it’ll be any good, but I’m happy they’re programming something besides procedural crime shows…

The Star Tres and Firefly were my Sci Fi fixes. Never watch much TV, but I like Monk, Numbers and bones. That is about the sum total of my TV, except for Olbermann, BBC and Mystery! Otherwise it’s good music, decent bubbly and cuddly company-not necessarily in that order, but it’s the preferred pattern. Oh yeah. and food.

Not a television head until TIVO. I really like these two shows … umm … sorta addicted to them both.

Lost rocks! I caught the first season as reruns. Once I learned enough about what was going on, I was hooked. Sometimes it can be a bit uneven, though. In some episodes, certain characters act differently than they do in other episodes, as if a totally different team wrote and directed that episode. So far, I haven’t got the feeling that they were just making it up as they went along, the way the X-Files started feeling after a while.

BSG is really good stuff. I was skeptical at first, but now I loooove it! Damn good reimagining of the whole BSG universe.

Firefly – Was upset when it got cancelled (even wrote a letter). Fantastic show. Bought the DVD set and the movie Serenity. Get bummed out all over again when I think about it’s fate, especially when there are so many crappy shows that just keep going, season after season.

If I was a billionaire, I’d hire the entire Firefly cast to make new episodes. (and, of course, you’d have to pretend he movie Serenity never happened, because of what happened. (won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.))
Damn. Now I’m all bummed out about Firefly again. Sigh.

Early on, I thought that Lost was an awesome show. But in a stunning twist, I learned that… it wasn’t! Worse, my television set was actually a microwave! And my house was really a parakeet! And I was dreaming the whole thing!

Or… was I? It’s mysterious.

Um ABC? Three’s Company… COBAG!!

Oh god. I’m so baffled. Great TV? Easy. Olberman, Pardon the Interuption and anything Brian Lamb is responsible for. BookTV on weekends on CSPAN-2. Giants games. For the record, I HATE cop shows. Especially Cops!! But all that CSI type crap has to go. 24 is nothing but stupid, violence without consequences. Never seen Lost or BSG. I’ve found that books and music annoy me a lot less than TV. Damn, I sound like an old fart, don’t I?

mikey

Huff, Sopranos, Southpark, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Six Feet Under, Battlestar Galactica, Arrested Development…they all ended up on free-to-air tv here in Australia…uncensored.

Cable? What’s that?

Veronica Mars!

Ah, my fellow geeks…I love Lost. I don’t know how many times I’m going to let Fox break my heart, though, by cancelling amazing shows before they even reach double-digit episodes, first Firefly and then Wonderfalls, which no one’s mentioned.

Lost is like Myst on TV? Damn! I loved Myst and Riven. Lost just sounded like regular TV crap to me, so I never bothered turning it on. Too late now, I’m not going to start in the MIDDLE.

This is how I keep from wearing out my 1986 Sony Trinitron–I hardly ever turn it on. Hee hee. When I do turn it on, the picture is super though. Perhaps it will still be working great after whatever’s next after HDTV is being advertised, and HDTV, too, is obsolete 😉

I don’t go to the movies, either. The last film I saw in the theatre was the second LOTR one.

Oh yeah, and I don’t drive. That’s right, no automobile. If I didn’t have a computer, you could prolly call me a Luddite. Or unAmerican. Your choice, really, cuz I don’t care.

Let the stoning begin!

Cheers,

GW

I’ve been enjoying the “Watch Beckett pitch” show.

Lost is the new Twin Peaks. All cocktease, no payoff. The new Battlestar Galactica is strictly geek-bait. Unlike the old Battlestar Galactica, which all the cool people watched. That’s what my mom told me, anyway.

By the way, I can’t get enough of people bragging that they don’t even HAVE a tv, don’t even turn it ON, or the 21st century version, I don’t even have CABLE! This is endemic on liberal sites across the land. Please: spare us all. Puritanism is, and always has been, deeply boring.

Deadwood.

Ian McShane is tougher than Keifer Sutherland or James Gandolfini.

With “Lost,” “Sopranos,” and Bill Maher done for the year, I’ve just opened up a chunk of free time. Other than Colbert, Stewart, and the Red Sox, the TV’s gonna get a rest.

I liked season one of “Lost” a bit better than the one that just ended, but it’s IMHO still a must-see show.

I have my TIVO set for Gilligan’s Island. It’s all I really watch, the classics.

I found “Firefly” just so-so. Not bad, mind you, but not as fantastic as it was made out to be. But then again, I’m bent. I was, however, pleasently surprised at how good “Deadwood” was/is. It did occur to me while watching it, however, how silly the whole conservative hoo-hah over Brokeback Mountain was. If even half of what “Deadwood” shows of the grand Old West is true – and from what I understand, most of it is – then it really wasn’t such a golden age of humanity after all. Far from it.

Uh, America’s Next Top Model. And yes, I’m serious.

I haven’t completely fallen in love with a show since Farscape went off the air. I’ve prejudged the Lost concept as eventaully turning into the dramatic version of Gilligan’s Island, no matter what the intensions of the producers are. And all the weird mysteries generated since ( a polar bear in the tropics, an escape hatch in the island, a button that must be pressed every 108 minutes, etc ) just turns me off more. Now it will end as a cross between the worst of Gilligan’s island and the X-files with very little logic connecting the various mysteries generated for each sweeps month.

BSG I watch because it is currently the best sci-fi show on television. Still it drives me crazy too. All the faux gritty, barely mid-20th century technology mixed in with a space faring saga just says sloppy design to me. The characters also drive me crazy. I don’t mind flawed, but does every character have to take the worst, most evil option first before finding the logical or even compassionate, humane option??? I’m just saying can I have one character capable of thinking beyond the next 5 minutes? Don’t need a Spock/Kirk/Picard/Data clone, just someone who understands the long term view without a 3 episode moral struggle.

My votes for the current TV series ( in no particular order ):
Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, CSI, House, Gray’s Anatomy, The Shield, Big Love, and The Wire ( which was the best show on TV, when it left two years ago, retuning this summer ).

For Comedy: Scrubs, My Name is Earl and Two and Half Men.

I can’t watch BSG anymore, as the local cable moved it waaaay up in the channel-range, up into the high-hundreds, and since I have very basic cable, and don’t use a cable box, I can’t see it anymore. It’s a shame the DVD sets for it are somewhat pricey–not Sopranos pricey, but pricey none-the-less.
Lost, OTOH, I am insane about. I thought this year’s finale was superb, not the giant, “Fuck you, fans!” that season 1’s was. Season one, I knew exactly where it was gonna end. Season 2, I didn’t have a clue. And it was chock-full of little moments of goodness, but I’m not spoiling here–get it on DVD in October (or rent it from Netflix).

Yeah “The Wire” ! How could i forget that! The Wire also ended up on free-to-air tv here in Australia.

The networks in Australia dump America’s best tv shows in late night/early morning slots, so we get rich, creamy Wire/Sopranos/Firefly goodness between crappy informmercial wafers.

Veronica Mars!

Agreed!

I also agree with all the lamenting over Firefly. Oh, the stories Joss could have told!

Ok lost was good. I wanna knwo were all these people are comming from? I mean that plan couldn’t have been that big. And now they just got or rleast had new people comming left and right. Its like ok it’s a desserted island and now you got all these people and an appartment there? I think the first seaason was great, beacuse well it was one little bunhc of survivors. Now added with these pther people you are supposed to care about i just don’t by it. Oh ps, i wana say it’s a nazi opperation lol……

I’ve watched bits and pieces of batlestar, what i have seen I love. But like ok I don’t even remember what time it is on anymore? Can ya filll me in?

[i]mikeg
Lost is the new Twin Peaks. All cocktease, no payoff
[/i]

It’s quite possible that MikeyG and I have had this conversation on another board. I’ll reiterate my argument: it’s a feature, not a bug. I enjoy the barrage of information and complexity that is the cocktease. It’s possible the final “release” will be made disappointing by the unprecedented level of build up this represents, but I’m enjoying the ride for the time being.

I also really enjoyed [i]Rescue Me[/i]…that’s coming back soon.

I’m surprised only one person has mentioned House. If I only had one hour of non-news TV a week, that’d be it (with Lost a close second). Misanthropic characters are hard enough to write, let alone base a TV show premise around. But it’s a terrific show, and there’s lots of obscure medical trivia for a geek like myself. Even the formulaic episodes are a fair sight better than the best episodes of any other show. As for BSG, I need to reserve a few hours and watch the whole thing from start to finish – I hate coming in partway to a story arc!

Charlotte –
House is excellent! I understand that the actual medicine in the show is somewhat flawed, but that’s not really the idea. The cast and the characters are the thrust of the show, and they are all amazingly well-written. It’s also fun to see the Sherlock Holmes parallels.

Lost, though, is the one show I _must_ watch every week. I can let everything else languish in El TiVo, but the moment I get home on Wednesday, I have to watch Lost, no matter that I have to miss out on some sleep to do so.

The crew that makes Lost is going to be putting out some other interesting-sounding shows this fall, which I plan on checking out.

“since it’s the first good show ABC has ever produced.”

Pah! Apparently SOMEBODY’S forgotten “The Flying Nun.”

Evan,

I agree that the tease started out as feature. But like most teases, it is beginning to shade into bug. At some point, I needs to ‘splode, else I feel like I’m throwing good time commitment after bad.

House, Deadwood, si. All else, no.

I’m not a big fan of any of these, myself–Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, or anything connected with or inspired by Joss Whedon. But then I never got into any of the Star Trek series or Xena or Babylon 5 either. Soap operas for nerds, is what they seemed to me.

The only two series I watch religiously these days are Family Guy and The Office–so I suppose that sitcoms for nerds are really more my style.

Oh, yeah-the first season of the Venture Bros. just came out on DVD last week. It is teh funny.

Battlestar was a huge surprise to me as well. Best characters on television.

I tried to watch Lost but got bored when they didn’t show enough of Naveen Andrews and Daniel Dae Kim with their shirts off. If they want me back as a viewer, I need an episode of those two stripped and making out.

Your thought is… intriguing. 😉
And, for the record, the Lost season 2 finale had some quality time with both Naveen Andrews and Daniel Dae Kim nicely shirtless. Though not, sadly, making out. 🙁

BSG is, hands down, the best TV show I’ve ever seen.

Lost started out good but got frustrating after the end of the first season. I can’t help but get mad at the writers now. Ok, hatches, great. What about the other 15739 plotlines they started and haven’t touched for months? Silly writers, not having a plan.

BSG, Veronica Mars, Stargate and SG Atlantis, Firefly (sniff), Farscape, again with the ‘sniff’, Dark Angel ‘bawl!’ my favourite shows, but lets see how many are shown on Australian TV at the moment…..

BSG, no, we sporadically received the first season but alas, it was far to ‘smart’ to reach the australian viewing public.
VM, We got the first ten eps, then gone……. replaced by reality tv, why?
Stargate, who the hell knows where that went, I think it may be locked in some vault in the channel 9 studio’s with a big sticker across the front saying, ‘never play, people actually like this one’
Atlantis, ahh bugger it lets just pull it in the middle of a two parter, never to be seen again…
Firefly, ha why bother.
But there is Farscape which is actually being shown in one of the southern states at 2am on a thursday morning, unfortunatly where I live we get infomercials instead.
In Australia you have two options, buy the DVD’s from the states or watch crap.

It’s no wonder piracy is running rampant.

Lost is the new Twin Peaks. All cocktease, no payoff. The new Battlestar Galactica is strictly geek-bait. Unlike the old Battlestar Galactica, which all the cool people watched. That’s what my mom told me, anyway.

I think you have that reversed.

I’m not a big fan of any of these, myself–Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, or anything connected with or inspired by Joss Whedon. But then I never got into any of the Star Trek series or Xena or Babylon 5 either. Soap operas for nerds, is what they seemed to me.

Dear god, are you really this fucking stupid?