Tomorrow's my birthday. No big deal. I'm in my mid-'30s and am married with children, so, you know, I'm going out and partying (again: no big deal. I'm too old/tired for that.)
But I wanted to do a little something special for it. One, because I know I handle this blog-thing a little lightly. I go out into the internet once or twice a week, round up a number of videos and then schedule them to post throughout the week, so it looks like I do more work than I really do. Two, because I wanted to kind of get back to what I had hoped to accomplish for this blog. I had hoped to give more commentary and point people in the "right" direction. There's lots of crap out there, and I think I avoid it mostly. There's also lots of good stuff out there you've probably never even heard of. So I decided to do a little something for my birthday (and also due to the fact that one of the posts tomorrow will also be #1000) because Three, it gave me a deadline. You have no idea how many "essays" I've written in my head for this blog that never saw the light of day. Using my birthday was the deadline I needed.
My experiment was to find clips from 24 (actually ended up being 29) shows I really liked. Not real difficult, but I also hoped to find some of the cream of the crop (in my estimation). Maybe they aren't all the best, but they are all well above average in their own ways. And most helped remind me that I haven't seen everything possible yet. The medium of television can hit all genres and tones. I've got some very dark shows, very light shows, some silly, some very serious, some thought provoking shows, and some that are nearly pointless.
I basically just tried to go off the top of my head. Of course, I have included my Top Five shows ever (ones I hope to finally properly reveal someday); the ones who have really shaped my love of the medium. But much like my yearly Top Ten, I also included some hidden gems you may never have encountered before. Happily, they all (aside from a couple BBC shows) are available on DVD in the U.S.
I spent about 12 hours this past weekend compiling the list and finding clips, and now that I'm done, I keep remembering ones I had forgotten. And let's not forget that while I watch way too much TV, I still don't see it all; including the ones I record or buy on DVD and haven't gotten to yet (Lost, Mad Men, The Shield, etc). But I think my list is pretty thorough. It does give a nice cross-section of the shows I did and continue to like.
Hope you get something from it other than the eyestrain of a couple of hours of clips... (It's okay to skip some and go back later.)
And because post #1000 is in there somewhere (actually, I've determined it's the post for Boomtown, which is great as it's one of my all-time favorite shows), I'd be remiss if I didn't say "Thanks for reading." Keep coming back.
teameck
(Yes, someday, I hope to explain the name...)
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