30 Days of TV - Day 26

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Day 01 - A show that never should have been canceled
Day 02 - A show you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite miniseries
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)

First, thanks for the advice on new shows. It looks like the winners are Rome, Six Feet Under, and Dexter, in order of popularity. We'll see how far I get in watching them, and then maybe do another poll, lol.

Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale

I'm not sure how to answer this question. Does it mean WTF in a bad way, like, "WTF? I demand an explanation for this bullshit!" or in a good way, like, "OMG my mind is blown. I can't wait until next season!"

The second one is more fun to answer than the first, I think - Chuck season 2, FNL season 3, and Mad Men season 3 were all total game changers, where each show took a major risk in tossing out the premise that made it popular. The Intersect 2.0 gave bumbling nerd Chuck awesome new fighting skills, Coach Taylor lost his job with the Panthers and faced a difficult road ahead building a new team at East Dillon, and Don Draper led an advertising revolution that created Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, aka all my favorite characters working in one room. Chuck's has proven to be a wise (and awesome) move, since I've absolutely loved kung-fu Chuck (whatever problems season 3 had, that certainly wasn't one of them). I'm only a few episodes into FNL, but so far the new school alignments have breathed new life into the show. And I can't wait for the next season of Mad Men to start so we can see the ramifications of rebellion.

As for the bad kind of WTF. Well. I'm not sure it gets any WTFier than BSG season 3. I'm sorry, WHO'S a Cylon? In Xander's eloquent words, "How? What? How?" (And yeah, that was a bigger WTF for me than the series finale.) Mostly Tigh, honestly. I thought it made the most sense for Tyrol, because of all the foreshadowing with him thinking he was a Cylon, and Tory was kind of whatever because I don't care about her, Anders is a little weird but I could fanwank it, but I still cannot figure out how Tigh could've aged more than the rest of them. It doesn't make any sort of sense at all, even with Cavil's explanation of how they ended up in the Colonies.

Bones has had multiple WTF season finales, and it's honestly a toss-up which is worse: Zack all of a sudden being a murderer and apprenticing with a cannibal or that godawful coma-dream bullshit where Booth and Brennan were married and I wanted to poke my eyes out with a spork.

OKAY LAUREN STOP READING. WEST WING SPOILERS AHEAD.

Also, Aaron Sorkin's "Fuck you!" season finale when he left The West Wing at the end of season 4 was kind of shitty. I mean, I did sort of appreciate that President Bartlet's nightmare scenario from season 1 actually happened, but it seemed like a huge waste to do something as drastic as having the President resign, only to immediately reinstate him next season. Also, I had to wonder why the 25th Amendment was so popular all of a sudden, since it happened at the same time that 24 had President Palmer forced out of office by his Cabinet using the 25th.

Um, can I count "The Hollow Men" as a season finale? Because it sort of is, if you think of the "Epitaph" episodes as more like an epilogue. And it's just SO WTFy I can't not mention it.

Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHA.

Sorry. I'm giggling about your huge sign telling me to stop. AND NOW I'M SCARED.

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Hahahaha! You'll just have to watch faster so I don't have to leave stop signs. :)

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I'm watching very fast! Only three episodes last night, but still! :p

Although now I'm really, really worried about what's to come....

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Worrying will do you no good. If he's safe, then he's safe. If he's been crushed... well, then, there's nothing any of use can do about that, now is there?

/Into the Woods.

[xlivvielockex.livejournal.com]

So much word on the Bones finales. Sometimes I wonder what they are smoking over in that writer's room.

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I'm thinking homegrown 'shrooms.

[rowanda380.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, I like your icon :0)

[xlivvielockex.livejournal.com]

nikkiwawa79 made a bunch of them for the daysofourbones community after a secret on fandomsecrets called us a bunch of "elitist judgmental bitches". The whole community kind of took it as a compliment and ran with it. LOL

[rowanda380.livejournal.com]

ahh, see, I just think Angela can be kind of a bitch sometimes :0)
But hey, life would be boring if we weren't Elitest Judgemental Bitches at least some of the time!

[next_to_normal]

ahh, see, I just think Angela can be kind of a bitch sometimes :0)

LOL, that's what I thought the icon was for, too.

[silverusagi]

I also need to watch Six Feet Under...

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I saw the first season, and really liked it, but never got around to the rest of it.

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Bones is the pinnacle of WTF season finales. I've thrown in the towel.

[next_to_normal]

Same here. I have better things to do with my time.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

So much word on all of this. Though when I was marathoning TWW for the first time, I didn't go WTF at the end of Season 4. It made sense to me. I mean, it was foreshadowed back in Season 1. It always seemed like Sorkin wanted to go there all along, so I think it was probably more that he knew he was leaving and wanted to go with a bang, with this one story he'd always wanted to tell. I just think that season finale was so much intense drama and I really enjoyed it.


Ooooh and I finished FNL Season 3 last night! I loved the ending. I gotta admit--Season 2 and 3 are both below par for me (in the sense of not being as good as Season 1 which was awesome). While I think Season 3 had some great episodes (Jason going to New York being one of my faves, Smash getting into college), I honestly felt more invested in the folks that were leaving than the main story.

And I feel weird for saying this, but even though I worship the ground Tami walks on, I felt like going from Season 2 where she's a guidance counselor with barely 2 years experience to her being principal the next year doesn't.... make sense. I mean, if the show had made the effort to demonstrate her experience, her schooling, if it had shown her in some sort of advisory capacity to the Superintendent where she was clearly invaluable, if the district was desperate and couldn't get anyone else qualified for the job, I'd get it more. But they just threw it at us and I'm supposed to think that a person can enter the school system as a guidance counselor without any teaching experience or any experience in the public school system and in two years become principal? Uh, yeah.

But I get the feeling (as you say) that going over to East Dillon will take FNL back to its Season 1 glory. I think mostly Seasons 2 and 3 feel like they lack greater direction. That the stories of the individual characters aren't well-integrated into the greater arc of the season. And I figured the next time they went to State, they'd lose. It almost feels like a Catch 22. Winning State again makes it seem unrealistic. So I knew they'd have to not win State, so instead it felt predictable.

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It always seemed like Sorkin wanted to go there all along, so I think it was probably more that he knew he was leaving and wanted to go with a bang, with this one story he'd always wanted to tell.

That's very possible, although I'm pretty certain that he didn't tell anyone else where he planned to go with it, given how season 5 turned out, lol.

And I get that it's intense drama, but it almost feels TOO intense, you know? I thought the same thing when Donna was in the hospital after the bombing. Like, this isn't typical for the lives of White House senior staff. It was fine to go there once with the assassination attempt, but it starts to feel like they rely too much on putting their characters in mortal danger in order to create drama. And that's fine if it's Buffy or 24, where everything is life or death, but here? Not so much.

And I feel weird for saying this, but even though I worship the ground Tami walks on, I felt like going from Season 2 where she's a guidance counselor with barely 2 years experience to her being principal the next year doesn't.... make sense.

Oh, TOTALLY agreed. It makes about as much sense as Buffy being qualified to be a high school guidance counselor because she went to high school, lol. But I kind of don't mind it anymore, because now we have the conflict of Tami working at West Dillon and Eric working at East Dillon and the tension of everyone hating her and her still having a responsibility to the people who fired her husband.

And I figured the next time they went to State, they'd lose.

Well, the one good thing about the writers' strike is that they never had to finish season 2, so they could just pass it off as "they never made the playoffs" and not have to go through that tension of State two seasons in a row. I figured they probably wouldn't win State in season 3, but they did so badly in season 2, so it was at least possible that they'd win again.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I just started Season 4, only a few minutes in, and I'm already loving Coach being in that trashed locker room. OMG!!!

"Did you know there's a raccoon in here?"

Also, I love the moment in your icon. Mud Bowl was a great ep.

[dragonflylady77.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how to answer this question. Does it mean WTF in a bad way, like, "WTF? I demand an explanation for this bullshit!" or in a good way, like, "OMG my mind is blown. I can't wait until next season!"

Chuck season 2 finale definitely fits the second category!! I really should watch season 3. But then I won't have any more to watch for a long time.

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But it's coming back in the fall! So it's not that long of a wait. Not nearly as long as the wait between season 2 and season 3!

[dragonflylady77.livejournal.com]

Your fall... They're still showing season 2 over here, at 10.30pm on Fridays...

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Ah, but there are ways... ;)

[dragonflylady77.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's how I... hmm... came across season 3... *looks innocently back at you*