I’m continuing to move all of the old TV Posts from my TV Tab to individual posts. So here’s some thoughts from the 2008 TV season. There were some updates midway through on this one, but I’ll add some updated thoughts as necessary.
With the Fall 2008 Lineup mostly underway, I’m listing the shows that we are giving a chance this year. There are some new ones, but mostly its a continuation of last year:
NEW ADDITION 11/14:
The Big Bang Theory: We watched this lat year and thought it was ok. Reviews say it has gotten better so we are going to give it another chance.
[And boy do we love it now!]
Prime Time Shows:
The Office. Still hilarious.
How I Met Your Mother. Still hilarious. Up there with The Office in terms of consistently funny material.
New Adventures of Old Christine. Continues to be reliably funny. Some tropes are a bit overdone at this point, but Julia Louis Dreyfus is in great form.
30 Rock. Started again this week. Haven’t watched it yet, but Tina Fey gets a pass for her Sarah Palin, so the first few episodes will get less scrutiny from me. That said… the early addition of some many guest stars does not bode well. UPDATE: The Oprah guest spot was very good, so all is forgiven.
Chuck. We found ourselves missing this show over the hiatus. Glad it’s back. The first ep was a bit rocky, but it has picked up in quality with each episode. And, hey, a Rush song was in the latest one we saw!
Pushing Daisies. We’ve watched 2 episodes of this season, and it’s been okay. I miss the manic craziness that seems to be missing in this season. We’ll keep watching just to see what happens, but I can’t imagine this show going much longer than this season, just for plausibility.
[Yeah, so obviously this was canceled. And, believe it or not we still have the last 4 episodes in our queue!]
The Mentalist. Sarah wanted to watch this, even though we don’t really like “cop” shows. We both agreed that it was quite good. Although we’ve only seem the first episode, we have 2 or 3 Tivo’d, so we’ll see how it goes.
[Gave up on this one. I still think it was probably okay, I just didn’t care enough].
Fringe. We’ve enjoyed a few of these episodes, but we’ve now got 2 or 3 queued up on Tivo as well. Our favorite part is the superimposed letters, and Pacey of course! I’m glad it’s following an X-Files rather than a Lost route, as I don’t want to get sucked into a 4 year TV show.
[Gave up on this one, too. Perhaps we don’t have the stamina for dramas].
America’s Next Top Model. Still tuning in, although now we do the show in about 15 minutes, FFing through anything that’s not a photo shoot.
Life on Mars. Really enjoyed the British series. We watched the first episode of the US one, and it was pretty good (if not an exact mimic of the British one). We’ve got to check out the next few to see if it maintains its quality.
[Huh, this was canceled too. Glad we didn’t get sucked in.]
The Simpsons. Still funny after all these years.
Canadian Treats:
Corner Gas. Our favorite from Canada is ending this year. Go out with a BANG, Dog River!
The Mercer Report. Still funny.
Robson Arms. Excellently written.
Cable highlights:
Project Runway: Enjoyed this season, but concerned for its Lifetime migration.
[And rightfully so, it turns out.]
Robot Chicken. Hilarious puppeteering!
Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job. Possibly the weirdest non-animated show on TV.
UPDATES: SHOWS WE’VE GIVEN UP ON: Comments in bold are from the original updates.
90210. We both enjoyed the original of this, and were intrigued about this remake. So far, the nly really interesting storie are with Kelly, and the “what will happen with Dylan” storyarc. It’s been on hiatus for a couple of weeks and I already don’t care anymore, so we’ll see how much longer it lasts.
[Not long, it turns out. ]
The Ex List. We’ve enjoyed several episodes of this. Although, really how long can this show stay on the air? They’ve given her a year to find an ex boyfriend. How many could she possible have? The problem is that don’t care at all about her friends, who seem utterly shallow, and their subplots are just annoying. And, I’m not really sure I like Bella very much as she just seems to have bad taste. (And don’t get Sarah started on her wardrobe!). I think it would be better if it were 30 minutes instead of an hour.
[I guess I was too harsh, it’s been canceled already]
And from last year:
RIP:
Aliens in America. canceled.
My Name is Earl: sorry you lost us last year.
I Just Read About That... 
I didn’t like Pushing Daisies. I found it really pretentious. I’ve only seen a couple episodes of Fringe but I really quite liked it. May I ask why you gave up?
Pushing Daisies was always on the fence between clever and obnoxious. I think it fell into obnoxious a few too many times for my liking. Although we recently watched the last couple of episodes and I found them to be stronger. Plus, Lee Pace was in Wonderfalls.
Fringe was interesting, but there was something about it that didn’t keep my interest. I really wanted to love it (I was a fan of the X-Files and I like supernatural stuff). It’s been a while since I watched it, but if I recall there was either too much or not enough of the background mythology. Hmm, I think I was getting tired of the “overall” bad guy thing that was coming after them. Or something like that.