Where have all the good shows gone?

You may or may not know this about me, but I enjoy television. I can't believe it is almost fall premier season once again. Unlike past summers where I pick a show or two from the early 2000s to catch up on, this summer I binge watched Scandal, Revenge, House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black. This is in addition to watching True Blood, The Newsroom, Under The Dome, Dexter and Breaking Bad.

Usually, at this point in the summer, I am anxiously awaiting the return of my favorite shows. This year is a little different. 30 Rock and The Office are over. Dexter and Breaking Bad are almost done for good. This is the first year that I haven't had a full Thursday night NBC lineup. Only Parks and Rec remains for my "comedy night done right". This is usually the time of year when I need to carefully read Entertainment Weekly's "Fall TV Preview" and pick out a bunch of new shows to try, but for some reason, I'm just not feeling it. The new Will Arnett show with Margo Martindale looks so cheesy and I just can't distinguish one spy drama from another. Last year I gave Revolution a shot and couldn't get through three episodes because I found the protagonist to be so annoying. Whose hair could possibly look like that without a hair dryer or curling iron?

My viewing schedule is looking a little light, and despite the fact that I will soon have two DVRs, I may not even need a second one! I'm sticking with my favorite shows; Homeland, The Good Wife, Parenthood and Parks and Rec, and am throwing in a few guilty pleasures like Scandal and Revenge. I could do without Elementary and The Mentalist, but I have big crushes on both Jonny Lee Miller and Simon Baker, so I'm really only in it for the eye candy.

Perhaps as the fall season gets underway, I will get inspired to check out new shows. I'm a big fan of Joss Wedon and will give his Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a chance, but I just haven't had anything else yet grab my attention. I've posted my fall viewing schedule, but if anybody has suggestions for new (or existing) shows that I just have to check out, please let me know. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to find something else to do with all this free time. :)

What Are You Bingeing On?

I have a problem. I've had it for many years. Recently, I discovered that this problem not only has a name, but almost everyone else has gone through it at some point or another. My problem is called binge watching. Binge watching is the act of watching an entire season or series of a television show in a short amount of time, sometimes not stopping to shower or sleep.

My earliest memory of binge watching was in 2004. I had heard of 24, but had never seen any episodes. The new season was starting soon and I wanted to catch up. Back then, Netflix wasn't streaming yet, but you could get television shows on DVD. Over the course of 4 weeks (keep in mind each disc was only 4-6 episodes and I had to wait for the mail), I caught up on 2 seasons of the show. That's 48 episodes! I couldn't get enough. And when I couldn't wait for the DVDs to arrive via mail, I would head to the video store to see if I could get the episodes quicker. I remember being super embarrassed on a Saturday in July of '09 when I went to Videoport 3 times in one day to rent episodes of Rescue Me. I thought I could just wait for the DVDs to come in the mail. I couldn't. The clerk just smiled at me the third time I went in and said, "Gotta love Tommy Gavin."

A lot of the time, my binge watching has been to catch up on shows I had heard a lot about and were still airing new episodes, but I just hadn't gotten around to. I caught up during the off-seasons on Grey's Anatomy, Castle, Friday Night Lights, The Good Wife, How I Met Your Mother (7 seasons in the summer of 2012), Rescue Me and Downton Abbey. To be a true binge, you really have to watch several episodes in a row and it has to take the place of something else you should be doing (like going outside or working).

In other cases, I used my binges to take on shows that I had always wanted to see, but missed when they originally aired. This was the case with Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, Alias, Arrested Development and, last month, Felicity.

But what happens when you can't maintain the binge? Maybe you start strong, but then a month has gone by, then two and eventually, you take that show off your instant queue. This happened to me with The Wire and The West Wing. And interestingly, I gave up on both halfway into the 3rd season. Is it binge overload? Would it have been better if I had watched those shows one week at a time when they originally aired? I think that's the sign of a true binge. When you can't get enough of a show. You stay up late, you call in sick to work, you order way too much take-out. You get super wrapped up in the characters and the show and when it's all over, you feel a little sad.

I'm looking for my next fix. Community and The Sopranos aren't streaming. Am I willing to wait for the DVDs? I hear great things about House of Cards. I know that I'll spend all day on May 26th binge watching the new season of Arrested Development. In the meantime, I guess I'll see what mood I'm in on the next rainy weekend.

What's your favorite binge show?



My 2012 Reading List

And here it is, my annual reading list. I'm including the audiobook I recorded, but not by name. It was a terrible book, but I would feel bad if the author ever saw this. Here goes:

1. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
2. Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson
3. 11/22/63 by Stephen King: This books was great! Great historical lesson and entertaining read.
4. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
5. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
6. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
7. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
8. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
9. The Paris Wife by Paula Melaine - Another fun historical fiction read.
10. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
11. Alice I have Been by Melanie Benjamin
12. Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
13. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
14. Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
15. Most Talkative by Andy Cohen - I listened to the audiobook. I highly recommend this read. Hilarious!
16. Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris
17. Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates
18. Crossed by Ally Condie
19. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - This made me want to go out and hike by myself for a month. Then I remembered I don't like camping.
20. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - Divisive ending, but I really loved it.
21. Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
22. The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides
23. Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
24. Defending Jacob by William Landay - Fun courtroom drama, great twist.
25. Maine by Courtney Sullivan
26. The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian
27. Home Front by Kristin Hannah
28. Audiobook I recorded - TERRIBLE!
29. Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Some of the books I'm looking forward to in 2013:

The Fault in Our Stars, Winter of the World, Carry the One and I want to finally finish the first book in the Fire and Ice series.