TV to marathon

I recently posted about television shows I intend to watch for the first time. But how about some shows that are so good I want to watch them again, marathon style? I’ve got a bunch.

In fact, I have already started a marathon of Middle Man with my wife and a couple of friends. It is a glorious show that should not be in the grey floaty ether of cancelation/hiatus that it is. Based on a comic book, this show is pitch perfect. You know how some people complained that the film version of Watchmen was too close to the original as to offer nothing new? And how some people said the same of Sin City? Well, Middle Man is nearly like that, except the acting and the new stories add so much more to the franchise. The episodes taken from issues of the comic are almost panel for panel the same. Then there are completely original episodes that fit in seamlessly, making for a great adaptation. This is how it should be done. The back and forth is so good that the un-filmed final episode is being released as a comic! Plus the fact that Natalie Morales is really hot doesn’t hurt anything.

• The Prisoner – I can’t believe that I have friends that have not seen this show! The show that Joss Whedon called the best TV show ever made! And yes, it is that good. The production is dated but the craft and quality of this series are still oh so fresh. Gasp as Number 6 is drugged. Marvel as he fights to keep his identity. And furrow your brow as you try to figure out what’s really going on.
  
  On the surface it’s about a former secret agent. After he resigns he’s abducted and taken to the village where various agents of some unknown organization constantly subject him to psychological torture in order to find out his secret. If you want the original Lost then look no further. This is where it all started. And nothing is as it seems.
• Nowhere Man – An unofficial sister show/sequel, Nowhere Man is about a man who has a name (or does he…). Tom Veil is a photographer who comes back from a restaurant bathroom to find that no one from his life remembers him. Not only that, but a single photograph of his has been stolen. He runs off with the original negative.
  
  It’s the inverse of The Prisoner. In The Prisoner we have a man with no name trapped in a village. In Nowhere Man we have a man with a name running from the world.
  
• Arrested Development – Possibly the most clever American “sit-com” ever written. Perfect casting doesn’t hurt either. This is a show so good that, if you like to laugh, you should have already seen.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – I know it just ended but between the cancellation and the fact that the only living part of this franchise is now the McG trilogy – well, I just need some of the magic back. Ranking this in amongst the rest of the Terminator franchise, my wife places it at a close 2nd just after T2 while I put it as a close 1st, just above it. It is that good. And it undoes all of T3 while staying in continuity. This show starts slow but once it gets rolling has some of the best drama on TV at the time and best time travel I’ve seen written for TV ever.

I believe that's it, although it's still plenty to get through. If anyone wants to tag along for a show, let me know and a schedule shall be made.


Question of the post: What shows are so good that you keep going back to them?

TV to watch

A while back I did a big write up about new television shows that I was going to follow. This time around I want to talk about the exact opposite. Instead of new TV shows I am watching I’m going to discuss old TV shows I have yet to see.

I usually feel a little anxious to get back to my regularly scheduled programming during the summer hiatus and this year is no different. What is different is that I have a sweet home theatre PC ready to soak up and squeeze out any TV show my heart desires. Sure, I can watch Conan now that Hulu works with my remote but what about all the shows I hear about but simply have never gotten around to? I’m sure everyone has that pile of books that are “to be read”. Well, my TV is no different. And the project has already begun.

What I’ve started watching

• Spaced – Currently about 3 episodes in. At this time I like it but I still don’t see what all the huge fuss is about. It’s a solid Brit-Com and there’s a lot of talent in there but it doesn’t get nearly the laugh count of IT Crowd or Black Books.
• Battlestar Galactica – Finished the mini-series and am not starting the actual season one episodes. I was waiting for it to end so I could just watch it straight through. After Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled I had this huge gaping hole where sci-fi used to live. I tried to fill it by finishing Stargate and have now moved on to this.

Still to get to

• 30 Rock – OK, I’ll admit it. I’m biased against this show because it started in the same season as Studio 60 and I threw my lot in with Aaron Sorkin. I like Tina Fey. I hate Tracy Morgan. Let’s see what happens.
  P.S. I did see the first episode or two a while back and wasn’t that impressed. But it’s streaming on Netflix so it’s easily available and therefore gets a second third chance.
• Big Bang Theory – It sounded like a US version of the IT Crowd so I put it on low priority. Now the creator is speaking at TAM (The Amazing Meeting) and a bunch of people I know swear by it so season one is waiting to be shoved into my eye holes.
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Just never got around to this one. The commercials made it look “eh” and the fact that it was on FX didn’t do anything for it either. I now hear that not only is it hilarious but also the same guys want to do a sci-fi version.
• Supernatural – I have no excuse on this one. Jess, one of my nerd-barista-friends recommended this to me when it was in its first or second season and I just never bothered with it. Suddenly it’s getting write ups left and right at the end of this past season. Literate Buffy comparisons? Dark takes on power and good vs. evil? Looks like it’s time to drop my prejudice against Honky McPaleface (Dean from Gilmore Girls) and settle down with a mini-marathon.
• The Wire/Carnivàle/Deadwood – A triple threat recommendation from someone I work with. His tastes lean heavily towards the snobby, hyper-literate and avant-garde so of course I’ll trust him.
• Twin Peaks – How have I gone this long without seeing this show? I honestly have no idea. Fox Mulder in a dress, here I come!

And that’s what’s lined up on my television plate. There are little things like Party Down and other shows that I’ll try to get around to but this is my heavy hitter list. And next up I’ll be writing up a list of shows I have seen but deserve a marathon or re-watching. And anyone I know is invited to join me for those.

Question of the post: Any TV shows that aren’t on the list that I simply must see? Drop ‘em in the comments and I’ll let you know if I’ve seen them or not. If not then perhaps I’ll take your advice and add them to this list.

Some genres defy categorization.

I’m currently working on a personal project: to rip and organize all of my music to make it easily accessible. Not only am I talking about “artist\album\track” format but also accurate tagging. At first I thought it was going to be the album art that would be the trouble but between Media Monkey, Tag & Rename and Songbird I’ve got a pretty smooth work flow down. No, it’s the simple “genre” tag that’s getting me down.

The problem is that genres, after existing for some time, become obsolete. I realized this when I finished giving everything currently ripped a basic genre. Other than a few tricky artists (I’m looking at you, Bowie) it was fairly simply. But looking at my collection afterward I saw something shocking: most of my music was in a very few number of genres. Mainly “pop” and “indie”. In fact, that’s the incredible majority of my collection right there. And the reason for that is these genres are no longer accurate descriptors for the music.

Pop is the most obvious. When “pop” was first used it wasn’t so much a genre as a market or even an industry. You had classical, jazz, maybe country and pop. Popular music. But then everything people talked about was pop so pop had to be subdivided. Today the genre “pop” is actually a sub-genre of the original pop which makes it all the more confusing. But pop was spun off into the sub-genre pop with the advent of “alternative” as a genre. It was originally an alternative to mainstream pop. So then there was pop\pop and pop\alternative. But in the 90s almost everything turned to pop\alternative. So then we end up with things like indie. Indie used to stand for independent and was used to describe unsigned bands. You could have indie\punk, indie\pop, indie\country, etc. But pretty soon that became inaccurate as well. Indie itself became a genre instead of a market description so pop\indie was born.

This means that indie\pop is a very different sounding genre than pop\indie. The first is an unsigned pop band while the latter is a signed (and most likely expensively produced) indie band. The difference becomes more pronounced the deeper the sub-genre is before it’s appropriated into standard pop. Take “emo” for instance. Originally emo would have mapped (pop or indie)\punk\hardcore\emo. That would be a band like anything from Glassjaw to At The Drive-In. That band sounds nothing like pop\emo which would be something more akin to Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance.

It looks like with a constantly shifting music system the only classification that will keep working is one based on context, hence the full lineage system of “genre\sub-genre\sub-sub-genre\etc…”. However, since I can’t work that into current ID3 tags I’m stuck. Now the question is how far to subdivide the single genre tag I’m given. And that I am still unsure of.

So how do you cut up your music collections, in terms of storage and classification?

The truth (hurts).

The truth (hurts). by bulletproofheeb

Spoiler alert

Spoiler alert by bulletproofheeb

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