live together, die alone

I think that's a quote from LOST, from Jack Shepard, from Season 1, actually. This post isn't aboust LOST, but about my favourite tv shows in general.

To start, I should say I quite enjoy the entertainment that tv provides. I understand this is hypocritical of me, having just blasted other forms of entertainment in just the last post, but whatever. Part of entertainment is being able to criticize the ones you don't like....like, really, fashion/reality tv/gossip girl/perez hilton can go **** themselves.

Anyway, tv. I'm limiting the list to current shows...maybe a trip down memory lane is in store later, but this one is just the present. There are some fantastic shows made every year, and many series are renewed season in and season out. The list for me includes: 24, LOST, The West Wing, Dexter, 30 Rock, The Office, How I Met Your Mother and Castle.

So, yes, right off the bat, I cheated with the first three, three shows that are no longer on the air. I should probably say that out of the entire list, LOST is definitely the top one. Twist after ridiculous twist, fine acting, poignant moments, mysteries that go unsolved...there was nothing better on television than LOST for me. I had never actually rushed to go home to watch a television show before other than a football/basketball game, before LOST. It was just absolutely fantastic...and I won't even hesitate to say that I totally cried during the series finale. Jack, by the way, is the best character EVER.

I'm not spending long on each show, since there are quite a few, but the thing about Jack serves as a good springboard into the next show....24. Jack Bauer, the world's greatest badass (who is played by Canadian Kiefer Sutherland), stars in this show. Simply put, in eight days (eight different days, not consecutive ones), Jack saves the world eight times. Um...what? How is this man not the President himself by now? Granted, I've only watched the first three seasons, so many in seasons four through eight, he does some crazy things (which I've only heard of...so excited to finish watching it), so...who knows? The best thing about it being done is that I can now watch them at my leisure =P

The West Wing is a show about the inner workings of the west wing of the White House; you get to see the President of the United States and his staff in their day-to-day dealings, and the show covers everything from elections to war to terrorist attacks, and it does so with snappy dialogue and a fast pace. Aaron Sorkin, now an Oscar-nominated (hopefully an Oscar-winner, soon) screenplay writer, was behind much of the dialogue for the show, and man, it was good. Not just the dialogue, but the entire show; right up there with 24 and LOST.

As for shows that are on now, though, there are some excellent ones. The Office, 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother...all comedies, and all hilarious. The Office is done in a 'mockumentary' type deal, where the characters are aware of the cameras that follow them around on a daily basis. It's in its seventh season right now, and some of the humour is admittedly dying out, but now I'm just watching it for the final plot developments with characters who are leaving. It was great, however, in its first two to four seasons, providing some huge laughs, be it through slapstick or dry humour. 30 Rock is all dry humour, wit, and offbeat humour, which is definitely my style of the lolz to be had. Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, two of the funniest people alive, star in this show, and with a fantastic supporting cast, they tell the story of the daily workings of 30 Rockefeller Centre, which in real life is owned and operated by the television network NBC. It's great, you see cameos by many stars, and Tina Fey's background on Saturday Night Live for many years definitely helps her here, as it's loosely based off those experiences...except, magnified several times with a lens of ridiculousness. Finally HIMYM (woo for acronyms) is a sitcom (situational comedy); the characters are ridiculous, they engage in slapstick humour and puns, the situations they get themselves into are all ridiculous, and there is a laugh track. I really hate laugh tracks, I must admit, but they serve the show well here. The series makes use of an unseen narrator, telling his children how he met their mother. The entire show, then, is a sort of flashback through the narrator's life, with the year 2030 providing the narrative framework. It's actually quite awesome, as serious as that may sound =P

Dexter and Castle are two very interesting shows in their own right, and I put them together here because they are very unique, I think. Castle is a show about the smart aleck writer Richard Castle, who, in his efforts to write a new book, tags along on cases with the beautiful NYPD Detective Kate Beckett...and as you can imagine, not only do sparks fly, but so do barbed words, comments and puns...all in good fun, of course. It's a procedural show, meaning, every episode stands on its own, more or less, but involves a crime being committed (a homicide), and being solved by the end of the episode, after some interesting twists and turns. It's a great show, and Nathan Fillion (star of the fantastic but short lived Firefly, another amazing tv series) really makes it great.

Dexter, now....Dexter is probably the best tv show on television right now, and is arguably up there with 24, LOST, and The West Wing. Its premise? A blood spatter analysis tech who works for the Miami Police Department in homicide is actually a serial killer, someone who goes around and kills at his own discretion...but he only kills bad people. Michael C. Hall in the titular role is absolutely hypnotic in his role as the serial killer Dexter Morgan, as he balances his every day life, his blank soul, and his job at Miami Metro Homicide with the need to kill. It's always a thrill to see him in action, wondering whether or not he'll get got, get away, or if things will unravel further than he lets them. The show's 5th season just ended, and it was renewed for a 6th, so it'll be fantastically interesting to see what happens next. Needless to say, it is a show with many twists and turns, and I do not want to ruin it for anyone, because the show is a work of art...yes, it's that good. It's interesting...when Dexter kills someone, you don't feel bad, as the audience. I think by watching (and enjoying) the show, you as the audience are inherently approving of what Dexter is doing as the character...which is to say, you're fine with the murder that he is committing. In that respect, you can really enjoy what he is doing, because you stop going 'my goodness, he's actually just brutally killing this person', and instead think 'oh, wow, this is actually really interesting.' Maybe that's also a result of our desensitized culture, too, but that is a discussion for another time.

Anyway, those are my favourite tv shows. The Wire is another great one, but so far I've only watched S1 and S2, and while S1 was great, S2 was...well, pretty bad. I'm told that S3 onwards is some of the best television ever to be created, and this is coming from someone who was a huge LOST fan...until they watched The Wire, so I'm willing to give it a chance.

I hope you share my tastes in television, but if not....well, it's not like I have any time to watch any more tv, so I guess trying out your tastes will have to wait =D