If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email. Thanks for visiting!
I experienced the joy of streaming Netflix over my Xbox 360 last weekend.
I watched the entire first season of 30 Rock, which I didn’t catch the first time around.
Then I tried to watch the second season of Weeds. I loved the first season of Weeds, but I didn’t get to see the second or third seasons. When we got Showtime a while back, I was so excited to be able to watch Weeds again, but the fourth season was awful. No Conrad, no Heylia, Mary Louise Parker sinking into depths of bad motherhood that apalled me, and very little funny stuff. Because it was so awful, it ruined season 2 for me.
That made me think about other shows that had awesome first seasons:
- Chuck–continues to get better and better
- Big Love–totally meh since season 1
- Veronica Mars–continued to be awesome, but season 1 was definitely the best.
- Heroes–they keep promising me that it will get good again, but it has been disappointing since the anti-climactic season 1 finale
- Friday Night Lights–stuttered a bit in season 2, but definitely back on track with season 3
- Supernatural–same as FNL, had some issues in season 2, but they worked through them and it remains a solid show.
I also thought about shows I didn’t watch in their first season:
- Seinfeld
- Friends
- Gilmore Girls
These are three of my favorite shows of all time. Maybe the key to a show’s longevity and continued artistic growth is for me to only begin watching in season 2. Or at least for me to not really care about the show after season 1.
Really, I think the key is the premise. Gilmore Girls explored family relationships, and Seinfeld and Friends explored the relationships among groups of Friends as they tried to make lives for themselves. The other shows I mentioned didn’t have a premise that was sustainable.
Veronica Mars had a compelling overarching mystery that was hard to top in subsequent seasons. Supernatural was slightly less reliant on its overarching mystery the first season, but it struggled to find something as strong as the boys working to find their father in the second season. Thankfully, the CW gave them a season 3, and the show has gotten stronger since then. Heroes keeps trying to cover the same ground over and over again. (I mean seriously, think before you kill off a character with a useful power. Giving Isaac’s power to paint the future to Parkman is just tacky.) Friday Night Lights suffered from network interference during its second season.
But, Chuck is my star. I didn’t think its premise was sustainable, but they continue to put him in situations that work while keeping true to the character’s roots. Other showrunners could take a lesson from this show.
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
OK. Back in the glory days of Gilmore Girls, Tuesdays were my favorite night of television. GG was complete appointment TV. Wednesdays were a total wasteland, when I took a late yoga class and didn’t even have to worry about recording one show.
Now, Tuesday is dead to me, and Wednesday has just the right amount of shows on. I watched Pushing Daises, Friday Night Lights, and Dirty Sexy Money. (Well, most of Dirty Sexy Money–I got a little tired and had to go to bed before 11.) And I enjoyed them, for the most part. I’m not sure they are appointment TV as of yet, but Pushing Daises is well on its way.
Friday Night Lights was not a disappointment, either. It was a little like they erased 99% of last season, but other than that, I enjoyed the show. I will be glad to see Smash gone. He is an entitled little baby. I think he is an accurate portrayal of some young athletes, but the level of reality his character includes does not make me want him as a friend or screen entity.
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
Directv subscribers, don’t forget, Friday Night Lights is on tonight at 9pm and midnight Eastern. That means that we on the West Coast still get to watch it at 9. (I get home from work at 6:30, so it is hard for me to catch some of my non-network shows, e.g., Greek, because they start at 6pm Pacific.)
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
Optimedia, a media research group (from what I can tell), just released the results of a new type of rating that assesses the value of a show on all platforms. It takes tv ratings, online streaming, quality, and a lot of other items into consideration when ranking shows. Friday Night Lights, for example, ranks 84 according to Nielsen, but 17 on the Content Power Ratings report.
I find this very interesting, and I wonder if they will indeed supplant Nielsen as the go-to information source about whether a show is successful.
Read more about and download the report here: http://www.optimedia-us.com/inside/news.html (you have to click on the news story OPTIMEDIA U.S. LAUNCHES CONTENT POWER RATINGS REPORT to expand it and then scroll to the bottom to download the report)
Sadly, Supernatural didn’t crack the top 100. I wonder if it is mainly because it is a genre show. Because it has a lot of Internet buzz and other measured qualities. I’m not sure how it does with streaming–I know I’ve heard that the CW is not always quick in posting its shows other than Gossip Girl. I wonder what we fans of the show could do to increase its power rating (or if it even matters). What do you think?
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-fridaynightlightsdirectv,0,3399176.story
According to this story, Friday Night Lights will be shared with DirecTV. Now, this raises DirecTV in my eyes quite a bit. We switch to DirecTV in my house a few months ago, and I will say tht my impression has not been favorable. I was a nine-year Dish Network subscriber, and then a one-year Comcast subscriber, and I think both offer better service. Dish is clearer and had fewer signal issues that DirecTV has so far. And, Comcast has On Demand and the western feed of cable channels. I had gotten used to being able to watch shows at decent hours. Of course, DirecTV offered better prices because of a bundle with our Qwest service, more channels in all the rooms, not just the ones with digital, and a free season of NFL Sunday Ticket.
But I digress. My beloved FNL will be back. Yay!
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
According to this post, it looks good for S3 of Friday Night Lights: http://blogs.usaweekend.com/whos_news/2008/02/a-third-season.html
I’m going to hunt for more info on this vein.
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
So, two of my favorite shows are on the bubble. If you like TV that is good, feel free to join me in my efforts to save them.
Friday Night Lights: http://www.savefridaynightlights.tv/
Donate to buy mini footballs, ship them to NBC and support some sort of charity, too.
How I Met Your Mother: This doesn’t really have a campaign set up yet, so all we can do is make sure we watch the show when it returns March 17. Get your friends to watch it, too. Host a DVD viewing party at your place March 15 or 16, then send your friends home to watch the new episode. (Bonus points if any of your friends are secretly Nielsen viewers.)
Then, talk about watching the show. Blog about the episode. Go to the CBS site (http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/) and interact with it somehow. Digg the page, share it on facebook, anything that will show that you are there, you are watching and you care enough to keep watching next year.
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
I’ve enjoyed watching Reaper this season. Sam, played by Lake Oswego native Bret Harrison, never disappoints with the funny. His loyal sidekicks Sock and Ben vacillate between funny and annoying. My biggest complaint was how many episodes Sam spent going on and on about how he didn’t want to be the devil’s lost soul catcher, and it turns out that was based on he evil and oft-cited network interference (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08031/853526-42.stm, scroll down to find the Reaper tidbit).
Now, Reaper is no Friday Night Lights, so if I absolutely had to choose only one to stay on the air, FNL would be my choice. But, I want to live in a world where I don’t have to choose!
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
How happy am I that I can expect some new episodes of my favorite series this season? How happy am I that I can go back to watching eps I missed on the Internet? And hoe happy am I that the writers appear to have worked out a favorable deal for new media? Well, happy enough to post about it.
Ausiello has a great list of how many episodes we can expect of each of our favorite shows. Certainly, some of the news isn’t great–a lot of shows won’t be back until fall–but we’ll have more eps of Supernatural, The Office, My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock and Reaper, plus some others I don’t watch. I’m hoping for the final eps of Scrubs to run on NBC. Perhaps after you write to NBC asking them to keep Friday Night Lights on the air, you could also ask them to give Scrubs a real send off…
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
Keep up-to-date on the fate of Friday Night Lights here: http://www.fnlwiki.com
Be the first to like.
Related Posts:
big love, Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, supernatural, veronica mars | thejen | 
February 24, 2009 11:00 am | 
Comments (3) 
