Must See TV

What are your Must See TV shows. I don't think I have any now. When Doctor Who starts on Sci Fi I'll have that.

Not in preference order, but in week order

Grey's Anatomy

Medium

American Idol

Veronica Mars

America's Next Top Model

Lost, sorta, though I skip it when against VM and catch it on repeats. I care but not enough to give up my girl. :)

Project Runway

Survivor

Battlestar Galactica.

There are many other shows I watch and love but those are ones I get upset about if I miss. And I know y'all now have contempt for me for all the "reality" shows in there. :)

Battlestar Galactica, WWE Raw, My Name Is Earl, Mythbusters, House, Top Gear and Doctor Who.

Oh crap, I forgot Family Guy and Futurama repeats. And the Boondocks.

i have seen every episode of those shows about five billion times. we own the first three seasons of family guy and the first season of futurama. and yet...we watch the reruns nearly every night right before we go to bed.

I almost mentioned Mythbusters. It is my favorite show. The only reason I didn't is because it is on so often I don't need to go out of my way to watch it. Those guys are my heroes and I have a thing for Kari.

I adore mythbusters and it's one of my favorites but, as you say, not so much Must See TV because I know if I miss it I'll catch it eventually. And it makes the marathons more fun when you haven't seen a lot of the eps. :)

shows i�wouldnt�miss:

arrested development
boston legal
scrubs
grey's anatomy

other shows i watch occasionally:

my name is earl
the office
smallville
the simpsons
family guy

ooo.. dr. who..

otherwise:

Scrubs
Grey�s anatomy
House
The office
Lost
Myth Busters
Sopranos (yay, starts next week!)

Like Andrea, here they are by day of the week

24

Scrubs
The Amazing Race

Lost
Alias (when it's on)
Project Runway
Drawn Together

The Office

Battlestar Galactica

And there's The Daily Show. I guess I could also add House to the list, as it's an up and comer must see show for me. Oh, and then there's Degrassi: TNG, which I see whenever the episode is available for download, seeing that all the new eps are shown in Canada cause they are cool like that.

We cancelled our cable a few months ago when we realized that we never watch TV.

A lot of my favorites have gone to the great DVD-set in the sky (thank you Fox), but here's what's left...

King Of The Hill, The Simpsons, Family Guy: Ah, Sunday. Always the best night for animation.

How I Met Your Mother: Proof that you can still do a good, traditional, sitcom. Ok, maybe it's the only proof, but it's something.

NCIS: While I can enjoy any procedural (CSI: Miami excluded), this is the only one I make a point to see, and the only one, other than The Inside, to get the concept of "character-driven procedural" right.

Scrubs, House: If these weren't scheduled against each other, life would seem much more fair. I tend to lean towards Scrubs when I have to, but it's close.

My Name Is Earl and The Office: Now that Arrested Development is gone, these are the best two sitcoms left on TV.

Oh, and I haven't seen it yet, but I'm going to go out on a limb and preemptively put "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" on this list. Every new bit of information about it just makes it seem that much better.

I like How I Met Your Mother a lot too. But how can one not like Willow and Doogie? :)

Finally a show that I watch, The Simpsons. I really should watch Family Guy too.

No you shouldn't.

It wants to be the Simpsons, but it never will.

Its main flaw is that the story and characters are constructed around the gags as opposed to the other way around.

Oh, thems fighting words. The Simpsons haven't been funny for years, and they've gotten to the point where they're lifting plot ideas from Family Guy, a show that began as a Simpsons clone. The Simpsons is so far past the shark, it has circumnavigated the globe, and is coming back up on the jump again. Only problem is that they neglected to get funny again in the process.

Fight! Fight! Dogpile on the rabbit!

I should add that I love Family Guy. Conceptually, it's a Simpsons ripoff, but the gags are way wittier than the Simpsons ever were.

I don't think it wants to be Simpsons. If it does, it completly fails.
Sure, it's not as deep, not as full, pretty much a collection of gags. But it's still funny. If we're going to debate which is better, Simpsons winds hands down, but Family Guy still has its moments.

Besides, if you tried to make Family Guy character and story-driven, you'd get American Dad, which is a pretty good argument against going that route ;-)
(not that I dislike the show, but it's not that strong either. It still beats War At Home by a long shot, but that's both not saying much and completly off topic)

that's not necessarily a flaw. it's a style to be more about the jokes then about the characters and story, and not a bad one if done well. family guy, to me, is about the jokes and nothing else.

From a comedy writing perspective, yes, it is a flaw.

Any comedy writer worth his salt will tell you that jokes for jokes' sake are the product of a lazy writer.

why? why should that even matter? if the goal is to entertain, and you succeed in entertaining, who cares how you get there?

If someone were to code their Perl in a straight line with no indentations, the code would work just fine...

that analogy really doesn't work.

if no one needed to look at it or use it again, that would be fine. code has a maintainability issue, though. other people sometimes have to change it, which is why certain conventions exist.

but in entertainment, there's no such requirement. if it entertains, it entertains. it's not like someone else has to be able to reproduce it, clean it up, modify it, rework it, or anything. it just is, so why not enjoy it for that rather than try to analyse whether it was lazy or not?

You misunderstood my analogy.

To the users/viewers, the content is fine.

To those who intimately understand the construction, it's a different story. This is me speaking as a comedy writer.

don't think you're the only one

I come from an improv background. I'm an improv teacher and a writer and performer of sketch.

I never claimed to be neutral on the subject -- I'm speaking from my own personal bias as an improviser in Del Close's tradition.

I'm a comedy snob and I never claimed to be anything but.

Bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong!

Gilmore Girls
Commander in Chief
American Idol
Project Runway
The OC
The Office

And when it starts, I know I'll be hooked: Conviction

Also, when I can, any of the Law & Order series.

gilmore girls and veronica mars when i remember, degrassi (aka crack) when chris sends it to me, and family guy even tho the new season is kinda weak.

Rome (HBO) - currently between seasons

Entourage (HBO) - currently between seasons

Weeds (SHO) - currently between seasons

Bones (FOX)

Invasion (ABC)

Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

Ever since starting my boring day job, there have been WAY too many good TV shows in the evenings. Daily, again, not by preference.

Sunday: Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy

Monday: Nothing good. :o(

Tuesday: American Idol, House (when it's on), Law & Order: SVU

Wednesday: American Idol, Lost (sorta), Project Runway

Thursday: Survivor (only thing that trumps AI)

Friday & Saturday: Book days.

Daily, I DVR Starting Over. I'm sorry, it's awesome. And I think my top two favorite shows du jour are Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy.

I am going to look into watching Battlestar Galactica (when my bro comes home from spring break, I'm gonna watch his DVDs) and maybe Veronica Mars because my friend Jeff is obsessed with it, and he introduced me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer which is SO the best show ever invented.

OK, these are MUST SEE TV f'sure:

#1 Gilmore Girls (own all 5 seasons!)
#2 House (own all one seasons!)
#3 Veronica Mars (going to own all one seasons!)

After that I enjoy watching Project Runway & Beauty & the Geek on occasion. This does not count shows in reruns...

House
Lost

Stargate Atlantis when i remember. I usually clue in around 7:45 >.< and then it's too late to bother.

I keep an eye on American Idol and TAR but I don't get upset if I miss it.

With my schedule there's no such thing as must-see TV. Though if I had my 'druthers I'd be pathetically obsessed with Lost, House, possibly Scrubs, and possibly 24. And Cowboy Beebop.

I have previously been pathetically obsessed with Star Trek TNG/DS9 (it's my upbringing), X-files, Buffy, and West Wing.

Like Mythbusters the only reason Monk isn't must see TV is that I know I'll see all the episodes I miss soon enough.

Monday: How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, WWE RAW, 24.

Tuesday: American Idol, NCIS, The Amazing Race, Commander In Chief (not currently on), The Unit (premieres next week)

Wednesday: American Idol, World Poker Tour

Thursday: Survivor, The O.C., Everwood (not currently on)

Friday: Sci-Fi Friday (Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica), WWE SmackDown!

Sunday: The West Wing, Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force

-- Pauley

Why not TNA Impact?

Dunno. Hasn't interested me.

-- Pauley

Two words: SAMOA JOE. He is the reason I didn't quit watching wrestling.

We have the following shows set up to be DVRed:

For both of us: Boston Legal, The Boondocks, Best Week Ever

For Andy: Sci-Fi Friday Lineup

For Maddie: Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer

We're also pretty loyal viewers of The Colbert Report.

And download a bunch more.

I watch Gilmore Girls and Amazing Race, but it's not life-or-death or anything. Watch Lost, and that *is* life-or-death.

And I download Entourage and Veronica Mars, until the DVDs come out and then I buy those.

Yay, someone else who watches Entourage!

:)

i don't watch a lot of TV. actually i hardly watch it at all. sometimes before I leave for school I watch "Who's the Boss?". why are old TV shows so good?

once I told a friend about my lack of TV watching and I told him that I wished I watched more because I feel out-of-touch with culture. and he told me he watched a lot of TV and that he wished he didn't because he believes it to be an entirely passive act. Like it doesn't involve any thinking. Do you agree/disagree?

there arent a lot of shows on TV that we watch the night it's new, but we catch Celebrity Fit Club and Project Runway when it's on reruns.

most of our tv we get on dvd, so we are habitually 1 to maybe uh, 6 seasons behind teh rest of the world. i'm just now finishing up Lost season 1 (all we have left is the season ender 2 parter).

So have you heard about the Futurama DVDs?

there's really no show that i MUST see every week....ok...well, maybe ER...if i happen to catch them i do like How i Met Your Mother and 2 and 1/2 Men.....but, i'd much rather watch dvds of old shows or just sit and read.

I usually fall asleep when I watch tv so not a whole lot is "must see" for me.

I do enjoy watching
Monday - desperate housewives, gray's anatomy
Tuesday - nothing
Wednesday - America's next top model
Thursday - nothing
Friday - nothing
Saturday - nothing
Sunday - Flava of Love
I'm a flava flave reality show addict. It irritates me in a way that makes it somewhat enjoyable.

I totally recommend replacing nothing on tuesdays with House.

House is one of the shows I've been wanting to see but it comes on while I'm driving to work.. which though I've switched shifts I still seem to be working it on Tuesdays.� But yeah, want to see it.

don't watch all that much tv..House, prison Break, smallville, the Simpsons...I think that may be it..