Yes, I know that I missed a post on Thursday night. That is probably the first post that I missed where I wasn’t a) out of town or b) dealing with a medical misadventure in several years. I do have a vaguely valid reason for it. I was at a Flyers game that night and then came home to watch Duke screw up in a rather epic fashion and was just not in the mood to sit down and write. Over the last week or so I felt that I needed to take a momentary break from the blog and I decided that Thursday night was it. Maybe a long weekend is what I needed to refill my creative batteries after nearly four and a half years of constant writing.
However, I still owe the second half of the fifteen most inluential television shows so here they are.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Again, a pretty obvious no brainer for anyone who knows me. The epitome of television comedy and an example of what can happen when you break all of the rules. Did you know that over the entire series that there is only one episode that contains a plot from the beginning to the end? All of the other episodes are made up of the continual switching of sketches where one can start in a barber shop and end by singing about lumberjacks. I include this not just because it taught me everything I know about comedy but also because it represents the wonder that was watching PBS late at night for British shows. Dr. Who, Prisoner from Cell Block H, Red Dwarf, the original Whose Line is it Anyway all of which I found out about by staying up too late on a Sunday night watching PBS.
How I Met Your Mother: I am still contemplating suing the creators of this show for stealing my life and placing it on the air. There was a time when I really felt that there was a camera crew following me at all times to record my every misadventure to be used in an upcoming episode. Luckily an increase in my medication and the strange fact that Ted has become a bit more of a jerk in recent seasons has put a stop to that. Great show for two reasons. One is that it shows what life is really like in terms of being single in your late twenties. The conversations do seem to be taken from bar talk that I have had with my friends and everything seems to have a bit more of a realistic tinge to it. I just could never say the same thing about Friends. The other reason is that Barney may be one of the greatest characters ever created. Not only is it believable that he owns a life size stormtrooper, sleeps in a pajama suit and hires a group of actors to portray his family so his mom will think that he is happily married but when he falls for Robin you still cheer for him to get the girl. Greatness all around.
Junkyard Wars: Sigh. How I miss Junkyard Wars. Still one of the greatest ideas ever where you take two teams, place them in a junkyard and tell them “You have twelve hours to build a hovercraft. Get to it.” For engineers or people who just like to see how things get built or even those who like to study problem solving techniques this show was amazing. I still can’t figure out how some of these teams pulled off what they did. Do you know how hard it is to build a glider or an amphibious vehicle in one day? I wouldn’t even think it was possible but these teams would do it every single time. Honorable mention here to Robot Wars and Battle Bots because I would be remiss if I did not give praise to those shows that honored those upstanding members of our community who spend their free time building killer robots.
3-2-1 Contact: The greatest PBS show ever! Screw Zoom and the Electric Company, though bonus points for having Spider Man as a character, nothing can touch the wonders that was 3-2-1 Contact. I have this show to thank and or blame for my having a degree in electrical engineering. I’m not sure if there ever was a show that so enthralled me in the world of science and nature. Even Mr. Wizard’s World was a little stale in comparison. Mainly because Mr. Wizard didn’t get to go backstage at a freaking Kiss concert to show how the lighting and explosions worked. Also, Mr. Wizard totally lacked the Bloodhound Detective Agency, most likely due to the fact that twelve year olds shouldn’t be placed in harms way in an attempt to solve crime.
Beavis and Butt-Head: Ah, college. Where every night can be spent watching Beavis and Butt-head and laughing like a complete maniac. In my mind the videos were the best part of the show as the two would just rip on every stupid song that MTV would play every five minutes. It was wonderfully subversive: the networks most popular show stating that much of the music that they were promoting was crap. As the show progressed the episodes themselves became better and better and would occasionally have you rolling on the ground laughing. Bonus points for the spin off of Daria, which was one of the few shows that had an intelligent female teenage lead even if it was a cartoon. Oh, and if you didn’t have a crush on Jane you didn’t have a soul.
Head of the Class: Sigh. I wish my high school honors program was like the one in Head of the Class. I would have gladly have had a Scottish comedian or a refuge from WKRP in Cincinnati who could probably score me some pot as a teacher. The interesting thing is that while the show played on the stereotypes of who smart kids in school are they actually got a lot of them right. You do have the kids who are pushed by their parents, the tough guy who happens to be really bright, the sensitive poet girl, the computer expert, and the skinny guy with glasses who happens to be really good at math. Not that I considered myself to be Arvid or anything. Mainly this was an escape show for me growing up as it was the only show about high school where I felt that I could fit in. I would not make the cut on 90210 but here I would.
The Muppet Show: People make such a big deal about Shrek and the Pixar movies and how they were able to mesh entertainment for children together with entertainment for adults as if that is a new thing. Meanwhile The Muppet Show did it earlier and better than anyone in history. We all still know who Kermit and Miss Piggy and Gonzo are even though the show has been out of the spotlight for years. It was almost like Monty Python with puppets in the way the show would break the rules and have Stadler and Waldorf cynically comment on the show from the balcony. Slapstick comedy, interesting guests, Pigs in Space, get this on DVD now.
VR 5: You do not remember this show. Odds are you aren’t even aware this show existed unless you were really into the X-Files as this show aired at roughly the same time. It was a single season show starring Lori Singer as the daughter of this computer science expert with a massively complex plot about virtual reality and government conspiracies. Despite the fact that they were able to access photorealistic worlds via a dial up modem this was the first show that I can recall that hit upon the idea of virtual worlds as a significant plot point. I even felt it went a few steps beyond The X-Files in terms of creating an over arching plot and is more of a precursor to Lost and Heroes than anything. It is one of the shows that I remember and wish that it had a bit more of a following than it did.
Best of 120 Minutes: I’m in the mood for some old school R.E.M. tonight. Here is a video from back in the Southern Gothic era.
The five random CDs of the week:
1) R.E.M. “Reckoning”
2) Joe Ely “Live at Antone’s”
3) Kelly Willis “What I Deserve”
4) The Sundays “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic”
5) The Iguanas “Sugar Town”
1 comment:
No Big Bang Theory? Give me a break. I do like that How I Met Your Mother has become a lot more funny the last two years than it was the first year.
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