The 2009 Fall TV Preview Starring Jonathan Coulton: Geeky music dude Jonathan Coulton offers previews of new fall shows based on nothing but their titles. Personally, I think his versions are almost all way more interesting than the real things. I would totally watch the show about the bored ghosts. And the transhuman family drama. And maybe the Ren Fair one...
The Ten Rules of Time Travel: Handy things to keep in mind before embarking on your temporal travels.
25 Greatest Cult Shows Ever: There clearly weren't enough of these lists in existence, so here's Entertainment Weekly's take. It's actually a fairly interesting list, featuring some old standards, a surprising number of shows I've never even heard of, and a few bold choices of which I wholeheartedly approve (go, Team Venture!). And I cannot argue with their selection for the #1 slot.
Cranial Capacity: 10 of Fiction's Biggest Brains: Also a nicely imaginative list, but, following up on my thoughts on that last link, I do see one glaring omission. I would happily put money on the Doctor vs. any of these dudes. Well, OK. Maybe not Sherlock Holmes. Somehow, I just don't think he could bring himself to take down Sherlock Holmes.
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I'd like to know what definition they used for "cult" show. (It appears that only two shows before 1990 were even considered.)
ReplyDeleteI disagree with many of the brains. Marvin the Paranoid Android ("brain the size of a planet") wasn't on there, and it took three Trek characters combined to beat out The Brain. What about Data?
I gotta say the first 15 or so were like what? But the top 10 were good choices as I'm a big fan out 8 out of those. I was happy to see The Prisoner on there. Loved that one. I confess to being into Twin Peaks too.
ReplyDeleteWith that said there are so many more they could have put on there instead of all those sitcoms that I think the media wanted everyone to love like "Sports Night"
Comments about the Doctor aside, I've decided to give up doing the, "OMG, they didn't include x, y, and z!" thing with lists like this. Being all-inclusive isn't usually the point, and I'm sure the people who made those lists would have the same reaction to my lists if I made them. That having been said, damn, Captain C, you're right! Where's Data? (Now, Marvin... I dunno. He talked a good game about the size of his brain, but how often did he really use it?) :)
ReplyDeleteAnd Sports Night does seem to have something of a following. I know people who adore it, and am told it's an extremely well-written show, but I can't find any real motivation to watch it, given that, y'know, it's about sports. Then again, I said more or less the same thing about Freaks & Geeks and high school, and once someone pushed me hard enough to get me to watch it, I realized that it deserved every good thing that's been said about it and then some.
Sports Night is about sports in much the same way that Doctor Who is about medicine.
ReplyDeleteHaving now read the cult TV list, all I really have to say is...man, I hate those EW lists where you have to click through each entry individually. It's a halfway decent list; there are some shows on it I've not seen, but nothing I'd ever heard of. (I think Police Squad is the closest it comes to obscure.) I do think they're stretching the usage of "cult" to include Battlestar Galactica, but I can't really quibble too much.
ReplyDelete"Nothing I'd never heard of" is what I meant.
ReplyDelete"man, I hate those EW lists where you have to click through each entry individually"
ReplyDeleteHear, hear. It's not so bad for a list of 10 but gets rather tedious for a list of 25.
They were quite interesting lists. I suppose that "Star Trek" and "M*A*S*H" were too popular to be counted as cult shows.
Skimming over the comments there, I saw that there were a lot of people crying, "How could you leave off Star Trek?" But, yeah, I think Trek has almost indisputably grown beyond cult status. And I don't know how it was received in the rest of the world, but here in the US, M*A*S*H was practically a national obsession in its day. A damned good show, yes, but not "cult" by any stretch of the definition.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, a cult show is one with a brief run and small, fervent audience that tends to grow in popularity after it ends. The original Star Trek and Pinky & the Brain would qualify; the Trek franchises and Doctor Who would not.
ReplyDeleteThey forgot Nowhere Man....
ReplyDelete