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[slink]

I read somewhere the other day that the Producers of Lost are in the process of deciding an endpoint for the show, probably two more seasons after the current one. I forget where I read this. Anyone else catch this article?

I caught something claiming they were going for seven seasons overall. Which is a fairly horrifying thought. I'm already far less compelled by it than I was, and the thought of dragging it out through cast changeovers and the like...
That said, I started watching Heroes yesterday, and so far I'm now more interested in that. There are issues with it (including it being in places better comic book than TV), though some of the direction is stunning (the pilot episode's Hiro arc is pure comic book art).

My feelings regarding Lost at the moment are basically that if they had set it up as a two or three season arc and left it at that, it could have worked, but so far they're having to pace it so slow, throwing in heaps of character exposition that isn't getting us anywhere, just to soap opera it up enough to run for however many seasons it will go for.
Things like Carnivale and Deadwood that just show up, wow us and then leave before we're tired of it all are the way to go. Hell, I only keep The West Wing on as one of the best pieces of television ever by denying they made anything after the end of season four.

[AugustWest]

Always leave 'em wanting more.

[littlefallsmets]

Shows I never got into because, since I didn't see every single episode, nothing made any sense:

Lost
Heroes
The Sopranos
Six Feet Under
The Wire
Rescue Me
Babylon 5
Battlestar Galatica
Stargate SG1
Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Angel
24

I dunno. I sort of miss the days of shows where you could just enjoy an episode with only the information in the opening credits and/or the TV Guide logline.

It's a courtroom and it's wacky because they work at night and... GO.

Alien crashes into a suburban house and he's all wacky and... GO.

Renaissance man with weird accent, who gets laid like all the time, cannot die unless you chop off his head and... GO.

I miss "and... GO" television.

[jough]

TV shows don't have clever theme songs anymore.  You used to be able to get completely caught up in the "sit-" of the sitcom during the opening theme.  "Oh, they're a podunk family who found oil and are now rich and living in Beverly Hills!"

"Ah, he wanted to move to the farm but she does not like it there."

"Ah, they're teenagers in the 1950s."

"Ah, they're traditionalist bigoted Americans."

"Ah, they're poor black folk who now have money and have moved on up into the white world."

"Ah, the guy's bosses didn't like him so they make him watch bad movies in outer space.  To keep himself entertained he built a few ***** companions."

[Choop]

Frankly, I'm glad sitcoms don't have theme songs any more. I'd rather watch good comedy. If the show sucks, I just don't watch it. If I like the show, I'd just forward through the theme anyway.

And that opening to My Name Is Earl was just death on a stick. We know! Your name is Earl! Get to the damn list.

[littlefallsmets]

I don't even need... a literal theme song that spells out the premise, persay.

Cheers, for example. The song just sorta... vaguely lays out the existencial isolation of modern American living and escaping it by getting drunk in a public setting where you are charged a premium for the use of that shared space. Pictures of the main cast. People overpaying for drinks in a public setting throughout history.

The whole deal is laid out in tone if not in specifics. Everything else we need to know is spelled out in the way people talk, Shelly Long believes she's smart, Kirstie Alley believes evil aliens dropped us in a volcano and a-sploded us a million years ago, Norm likes to drink, etc.

Night Court. Funky, slightly wacky but full-on urban horns. It's totally New York City and it's totally night. Steam all coming out of grates and such. Harry is wacky because there's the freezeframe of him pulling a hat out of a rabbit's ass. Dan's in a smoking jacket because he loves random sex. The size of Christine's busoms is left a tantilizing mystery by her puffy shirts. Bull is dumb but loveable because he's big and bald.

Tone if not specifics. We know what we're getting into.

And then Lost starts up... and... the guy looks like Harry Knowles and... maybe they're in a parallel universe? Maybe they're all dead and this is hell? Are they in the Matrix? What about the other people from the other parts of the plane? From the other plane? What's that guy's name? Is it all a dream? Yikes.

It's like they're talking in an entirely different language that uses all the same words as English but no one has taken the time to tell us that. "Oh, so, cat means mustard on Lost Island... I... get it? That's interesting, maybe?"

Funky themesong. Whoa, puppet alien. Normal family. Uh-oh, what if the neighbors catch on?

That's all we need. That's all I'm asking for.

...that and a peek at Markie Post in her prime.

These are the only two things I am asking for.

[wombat]

I do not understand this nostalgia. I would rather watch The Wire than anything from the past with a catchy theme song.  Yeah, I only watch one show on LFM's list because you have to make a full time committment to any of them. But that way you are watching LESS TV, and it's actually good. Seems like a win win situation to me.

[coldfrog]

Actually, there is one show that combines all the things that are good here: An interesting continuity, a theme song that (in a way) explains what's going on, really good writing, and (despite the continuity) you don't need to have seen the previous shows to understand what's going on (important things are explained).  Also it is really funny.  That is Arrested Development.  Of course, the show is twice as funny if you've seen every episode, but it engenders pretty much every awesome quality of a TV show comedy and then some.  Definitely watch it!

(Also scrubs is good.  And it is still on TV)

[littlefallsmets]

you don't need to have seen the previous shows to understand what's going on (important things are explained)

Well, see, like, there's the point.

It HELPS to have seen the other episodes. It ADDS ANOTHER LAYER to have seen the episodes.

But at the end of the day, you could fully enjoy "Arrested Development" on most levels without having seen a frame of it before.

Because... even though it was complicated... all the major points were reset so that things made sense to a new viewer. It never used the Trendiness of Obscurity as a crutch or an excuse. Yeah, you might get running background gags or a second laugh out of a layered joke with encyclopedic knowledge of the show but...

You didn't need a CIA shortwave numbers-station one-time-pad to understand what the hell was going on. "Okay, Yankee means Buffy... Hotel means Spike and... Foxtrot means... Angel? Oh! I get it! They needed to use the Talisman of Somesuch to defeat the Great and Powerful Whatever so that they could all go home, crackwise about popular culture and then have dirty sex! It all makes sense now!"

Even though I only watched it intermittently, I was still able to get one of the biggest laughs I've ever gotten out of a half-hour comedy from... the culmination of the arc where the chick from "Monster" played the world's hottest woman with a mental disability. One-two gut punch of the world's greatest "Being There" reference and then... "it's my illusion!" I fell out of my chair, doubled-over.

Ain't nothing wrong with layered and nuanced. That can be the best television of all.

What's wrong is when... it's all nuance, it's all in-reference, it's all continuity.

Then, you're not making a television show, you're just handing out cheap fan-service handjobs to your core audience and... pissing everyone else off. Tell a story, man, not a jigsaw puzzle. Or, if you're gonna tell a jigsaw puzzle, give us one of those ones from when we were kids when... like... it was a bunch of little puzzles that you can later fit together if you like by removing the borders and putting them all together and make a big puzzle but... you can still appreciate each single picture on its own.

I had, like, sixteen different GI Joe puzzles that all fit together like that as a kid.

It was awesome.

TV, I order you to be more like that.

(note: the two Wilco references above were not planned out ahead of time, they just happened.)

[AugustWest]

Best shows on TV = Earl and The Office.

[littlefallsmets]

Best shows on TV = Earl and The Office.

On network TV? Fer sure.

They're the only primetime shows I go out of my way to catch.

Though... I'd say my favourite shows on TV are certain parts of the Sunday Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network. Probably because I am a total nerd. The Venture Brothers, Tom Goes to the Mayor and Metalapocalypse are pretty much as awesome as it gets and... often Aqua Teen Hunger Force is right up there. Futurama and Home Movies reruns also punish.

Everything Seth MacFarlane touches turns to crap but, during that time, I just listen to Art Bell on the radio.

(In "Earl", the Bargain Bag store is actually the Big Lots kitty-corner from my apartment. Los Angeles is weird.)

[theinevitable]

oh, Arrested Development is my obsession. so much.

good lort.

also: it never occurred to me that it was a Being There reference.

a-so: I enjoyed when Henry Winkler literally jumped over a shark, immediately after making a comment about going to Burger King (apparently Burger King was one of their sponsors.)

the best were the episodes near the end, where they kept making jokes about trying to appeal to people, some more Meta than others.

[CortJstr]

I can't stand Tom GTtM. I only watched the first Metalocalypse and I guess I just don't get it. It mainly bugged me that the one character is clearly Jack Black but doesn't sound like him at all.

The Venture Bros turned really awesome after a sub-par pilot.

[coldfrog]

Venture Brothers has become the epitome of reference-laden television.  AND it's a cartoon!  Man I love that show so hard.  Plus, to keep it at least somewhat on topic, Venture Bros. is only the second show to make a reference to Lost.

Also, I love home movies and wish Metalocalypse was as good as HM.  It has some great moments, but never as much as, for instance the Marbles episode of HM.

[theinevitable]

HM is lovely. But also, Venture Brothers is awesome. Sadly I have missed much of the series-- my cable box thing stopped recording it after the first season, and I didn't really think about it until later.