Media confessions

[grammarwoman]

My husband has given up being surprised when I know all about a movie or TV show despite having never seen it, because being fandom adjacent is a sort of omniscience.

However, I feel compelled to confess the gaps in my fannish experience, ie the things I haven't finished or never got around to seeing that it seems EVERYONE else has:

Leverage
Due South
Fringe (though this one is less my fault, as I was specifically asked to not watch it so my TV killing curse would spare it, and then never got back to it)
Orphan Black, season 3ish and onward
The Librarians, season 2 and onward
Avatar: TLA, season 1sh and onward
Legend of Korra
The Clone Wars
Star Wars Rebels
Slings and Arrows
Person of Interest
Supernatural
Parks & Rec
Community


At some point, I would love to get around to working my way through this list. It'll probably mean watching less HGTV, for starters.

So which do you think I should start with? And what fannishly popular media have you missed yourselves?

Comments

[kass]

Leverage is thoroughly delightful. So is Slings & Arrows, especially the first season! Actually S1 of S&A is one of my favorite pieces of media anywhere, and it's only 6 eps long, so I think you should start there because it is short and charing and awesome.

[grammarwoman]

Your recent Leverage fics are what prompted this post; I definitely have that on my watch list for sooner rather than later.

From what I've gather, S&A sounds so made for that I really need to get to it. I should see if my library has it...

[ghost_lingering]

My opinions of what I've seen:

Leverage -- delightful but forgettable (delightful ot3)
Due South -- the canon didn't live up to what I wanted from it based on my experience with the fandom
Fringe -- I love the first two and a half seasons, HATE the end of season 3 and rage quit. I am not numb enough to watch the rest
Orphan Black, season 3ish and onward - SHOW OF MY HEART
Avatar: TLA, season 1sh and onward - SHOW OF MY HEART
Slings and Arrows - SHOW OF MY HEART. GEOFFREY WAS MY FIRST HAMLET (as in the first time I saw Hamlet, Paul Gross was Hamlet). Dislike Richard's plots and a few other things but the central trio, Anna, and all the theater ARE SO GOOD.
Supernatural - HISSSSSSSSSSS DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE GO AWAY AND NEVER COME BACK
Parks & Rec - will never live up to the hype for me. I've tried watching it twice and bounced back HARD both times and then was made to feel bad by people who love it because my reasons for bouncing back apparently aren't as valid as their reasons for loving it. VERY BITTER HISSSS.
Community - First two seasons were SHOW OF MY HEART, but I dropped off mid-season 3 and haven't yet picked it back up (got fed up with Pierce and then Harmon was ousted and I had a mix of feelings about some of the season 3 episodes/plots, would like to finish it)

[ghost_lingering]

(I should say YMMV -- this is just my take on these shows, I don't expect anyone else to have the same reactions. People love what I hate and hate what I love and that's cool.)

[grammarwoman]

Hee! This is fandom; I would expect nothing less than a dizzying array of "Your show is not my show and that's OK".

Thank you for such a great response list! It sounds like I hit a few of your favorites and big disappointments. I will definitely take those into account. :)

[princessofgeeks]

Slings and Arrows. It is so incredibly wonderful. In a class by itself.

[princessofgeeks]

And YMMV but I thought the canon for Due South was awesome. I go back to it over and over, and the fanfic is indeed amazingly awesome in all ways.

[grammarwoman]

I seem to have unearthed a lot enthusiasm for S&A. :)

Due South is one of those that the number and reported quality of its fanworks is impressive, so even if I only watch a few, I feel like I'll have a better basis for diving in.

[princessofgeeks]

There are so many great eps of Due South! I'm sure if you asked for "best episodes to start with" you would get a lot of ideas.

So many fandoms; so little time!

[anoel]

I would most recommend Parks and Recreation (hilarious, warmhearted, Leslie Knope is pure love BUT s1 is bad, if you need to skip it's okay to skip to S2), Due South (for the amazing characters/ship(s) but especially because of the vids) and Slings and Arrows is a slice of pure goodness, all three seasons. If you do Supernatural, I would recommend S1+2 and then S3 is not good and you can watch S4+5 if you like the show. But S1-2 is most important for vids.

I need to finish Fringe as well and I need to get back to my X-Files watch (I'm on early s2) as well as FINALLY finishing Hannnibal.

[grammarwoman]

I am loving the varying responses to this list, and where everyone seems to be in agreement. :)

I think I've grokked the essence of Supernatural enough that I probably don't need to watch it, but I will definitely keep your recs in mind. Sames goes for Parks & Rec. The others definitely need to bump up to the top of my list.

X-Files! Oh, I loved that show so hard. I used to get together with a roomful of friends to watch the later episodes; I miss that camaraderie.

However, as gorgeous as people have presented Hannibal to be, it is far too gore-geous for me to watch, alas.

[umadoshi]

I agree pretty strongly with the above re: Supernatural. IMO, S2 was by far the strongest (of what I saw); S3 made me angry with the extra-rampant casual misogyny in the dialogue (even more of a shame than usual, because it had interesting female characters), and then I broke up with the show abruptly mid-S5 after it did something that made me too angry to continue. (It was a really well-written episode, too, IIRC--and beautifully performed by the cast. If the show had given me any reason to TRUST it, I might not have fled screaming.)

[grammarwoman]

I would definitely want to set down with a specific episode watch list before even attempting SPN. Heaven knows I could probably find 10 of them without trying very hard.

[gwyn]

I'd pick Community and Due South, but I hate the last season/two seasons (it was shown as one season, but all the fans of it seem to insist it's two) so I can never recommend it (I felt Paul Gross had no idea what made that show so great when he took the reins of it after it was rebooted, and reboots of shows really rarely do what made them great in the first place). So you might want to take my advice with a grain of salt. Still, man, I loved those first two years of Due South. I love Leverage, too, and Slings and Arrows is really unlike anything else you'll watch on TV. Fringe was fantastic but they changed the focus from the female character to the male, and it kinda went off the rails--still, Olivia will always be a favorite character.

[grammarwoman]

Due South has certainly inspired some fierce responses in people; I'm relieved I got to miss the Ray wars. :)

Leverage and S&A seem to be the strong contenders for favorites across the board, and the common theme of Fringe falling down in later seasons makes me sad.

Thanks for your advice, and the peek into your fannish opinions!

[shati]

Hah, the only ones I've seen all of are A:tLA and Korra. You may not care about color palette variety in your TV to the extent that I do, but they both make good palate cleansers after something grim (esp A:tLA) and/or desaturated.

I watched parts of season 2 of Korra on fastforward and I know a lot of people didn't like A:tLA season 1 at all, but they're not really much like any of the other shows on the list (that I've seen episodes of), in good ways. Mostly good ways, I guess I never watched season 2 of any of the others on fastforward.

Someday I want to vid HGTV.

[grammarwoman]

You make an excellent point about palate cleansers. I really enjoyed what I saw of A:TLA, but once my son lost interest, I didn't have a watching buddy anymore and it got lost in the shuffle. I intend to get back to it someday.

You did such an amazing job with that "Chopped" vid that I would be first in line to see an HGTV offering from you! :D :D :D

[heresluck]

Personally, I would vote for Slings & Arrows; it's delightful, there are only three seasons, and the seasons are only 6 eps. Also it is one of my favorite shows ever ever ever -- though parts of it, especially the parts that are supposed to be ~funny!~, are not entirely to my taste and I do a fair amount of fast-forwarding when I rewatch.

Leverage was a mixed bag for me. I can whole-heartedly recommend the first season; the second season was also fun, and then I got bored -- though I did go back for parts of the final season, and that was happy-making. Part of the issue, for me, was that the show could not make up its mind whether it wanted to be episodic or arc-driven. Normally I go for arc-driven, but this was a show where I just wanted Shenanigans of the Week, especially because the writers' choices about arc material did not highlight what I found interesting about the characters.

Orphan Black is worth watching just for the tour de force that is Tatiana Maslany. Again, it's been a bit of a mixed bag; S1 is good, S2 is better, S3 is... less good, and S4 was better than S3 but kind of bewildering.

I liked Fringe all the way to the end -- the latter seasons have some hiccups but are still worth watching, imo. S2 and S3 are some of the most thrilling SF I've ever seen, honestly.

Avatar: TLA is charming. I found it fairly forgettable, ultimately, but YMMV, and it was certainly enjoyable.

Due South... ahahahaha. So many people love this show. I vidded this show because of some of them. And I do genuinely like the characters. But I cannot really recommend the show itself, not least because it hit my embarassment squick with a HAMMER. If this is not an issue for you, and if you are willing to be quizzed about which Ray you like best, then godspeed, my friend. Alternatively, you could just watch the pilot episode and the first episode of S3 and then read all the fic.

...and the rest I haven't seen (or I saw a few eps and they didn't ping for me).

[misbegotten]

Alternatively, you could just watch the pilot episode and the first episode of S3 and then read all the fic.

Heh. This is so true.

[grammarwoman]

I am definitely taking this under advisement. :)

[princessofgeeks]

You are I were watching the same version of Leverage!

[heresluck]

Our version of Leverage was an excellent show! Heh.

[grammarwoman]

Oh my - I would have never guessed that you'd have opinions on all these. ;)

It's looking like S&A is a clear favorite for the responders. Let's see how fast my library can process my hold request!

I am already anticipating that I'll be watching Leverage for the wrong reasons, mainly the shenanigans and the delicious development of the Hardison/Parker/Elliott OT3.

I'm glad to hear that my wandering away from Orphan Black was a season 3 thing, and not all on me. In any case, Maslany is a masterpiece.

It's ridiculous that I haven't watched Fringe yet, because I have it all on DVD! I guess I really am that lazy, because I love a tasty SF story.

I'm hoping to coerce my son into watching A:TLA with me again. He bailed and I shrugged and forgot to keep watching.

My embarrassment squick is continental-sized, so if I do get around to Due South, I may just take your advice.

Thank you for the detailed reply! :)

[heresluck]

I am nothing if not a fount of strong opinions about TV!

FWIW, I think Leverage might be well served by marathon watching, which could make it easier to handwave its attempts to construct a narrative arc. I will also say that I was fond of the show pretty much any time Hardison and/or Parker and/or Eliot were onscreen -- and I say that as someone who was not especially OT3ish about them, I just *liked* them all.

S3 of Orphan Black -- that was not just you, my friend. I mean, I still liked it, but there was quite a bit of WTF even among those of us who stuck it out.

I think you will like Fringe a lot, I have to say. I understand why a lot of people were disappointed in the last couple of seasons, and I do think that Olivia -- who is the show's biggest draw, and for good reasons -- becomes somewhat less central in some ways, and that was legitimately a bummer. But what I liked about the show, all the way to the end, was that it was not afraid to GO THERE -- to do some truly batshit crazy stuff. Those risks did not all pay off equally well, but I really respect the show for NOT treading water, for not simply reprising itself, and for following through on some of its weirdest ideas. I was occasionally bewildered, but I was NEVER bored.

DS telegraphs the embarrassment humor pretty well, so if you watch the pilot and fall hard for the characters, it might be well worth watching -- possibly with your finger on the mute button. It is a very charming show, and I do not regret watching it! But for me, the charm-to-squick ratio was not high enough to get me through a rewatch with the sound on.

[umadoshi]

When Fringe is on the ball, it is INCREDIBLY good. I'm in the "disappointed in S5 (and late S4)" camp, but ohmyheart, that show. Olivia Dunham is a glory on this earth.

I pass on this warning, which I was given too late: ep. 1x02 is astoundingly awful. Like, one of the worst episodes of TV I have ever seen in my life. It is not representative.

[grammarwoman]

Hee! Very duly noted. Farscape comes with a similar caveat: the first half of season 1 is a bumpy ride, but after that it will sweep you away.

[umadoshi]

I have no thoughts on which you should start with, but that list includes many of my favorite shows. *^^* (And I second anoel's take on S1 of Parks and Rec. The show is otherwise amazing and joyful, but IMO season 1's sole redeeming quality is that it's very short. >.<

There's so much media I've missed entirely that fandom adores--due South, all the Stargate versions, and the West Wing are the first ones that come to mind. Oh, and Farscape. And I've seen hardly any Doctor Who.

There's a reason my tv-to-watch tab is up to almost 200 shows. ^^;

[misbegotten]

Your haven't watched list makes me sad. So sad. Watch The West Wing, dammit! :D

[umadoshi]

It probably doesn't help to say that I at least own most of that short list? (I don't have due South, as the better DVD version was a pain to get last time I looked for it, but I have Farscape and TWW, and I have SGA and SGU [but not SG1].)

I keep semi-prioritizing newer things. >.> So right now the things I most want to get to are The Expanse, Underground, The Good Fight...

[grammarwoman]

I will admit that I am completely fannishly biased, but I would say tiptoe through SG-1 to get the highlights, get recs for best of SGA (because that was a show of my heart but I will freely admit it was very flawed and not for everyone), and skip SGU.

But first watch Farscape.

[umadoshi]

I doubt I'll ever watch SG1 at all--I picked up SGA because I know SO many people who're fannish about it, but AFAIK I don't know many people who're that into SG1.

I do wanna see SGU, though. ^^;

And yeah, everyone tells me to bump Farscape up my list, and C keeps wanting to watch something in that vein. We shall see? I do want to see it for its own sake as well as the "knowing what so many people are into" aspect, which I admit is most of why I want to see SGA.

[grammarwoman]

SG1 does have some really great episodes, but much like SPN, there's just so much of it to cover! Though SG1 is much better with the female characters.

SGA is almost pure crack, plot-wise, with actors doing a fantastic job with less than stellar scripts. The characters they created are iconic, which is why the fanworks are so amazing. Literally ANYBODY could have written better stories than TPTB.

FARSCAPE FARSCAPE FARSCAPE. FAAAAAAAAARSCAAAAAAAAPE. :)

[grammarwoman]

I feel like it would almost hurt to watch The West Wing right now, especially for those of us USians trapped under this regime. But YMMV, of course.

[umadoshi]

That's definitely a factor in TWW not being super high on my list right now. :/

[grammarwoman]

Be careful! If word gets around that you haven't watched Farscape yet, you will attract the attention of its fans who will puppy-pile on you to watch it. Like MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Farscape FARSCAPE FARSCAPE!!!!!

Doctor Who is lovely but massive, and West Wing is almost cruel during the current Evilstration. So definitely watch Farscape first. :D

[lizbetann]

Lordy, I should so totally do a rewatch of Farscape. Man. The late nineties were HOW long ago?

[grammarwoman]

Long ago, and yet not far away. At least that's how it feels... :)

I have due South feels!

[lizbetann]

Aaaaahhh, I am resisting just saying "Why why why do people recommend skipping season 1 and 2 when THOSE ARE THE ACTUAL GOOD SEASONS" and reminding myself that people swing both Rays.

Actually, it's more of a case of which Paul you swing -- Haggis or Gross? The original creator, Paul Haggis, created a loopy magical realism show -- of which one of the most unrealistic realism bits was that there was this perfect, beautiful, honorable, noble man... who lived in Chicago with a deaf wolf.

75% of the time, that's what due South was -- juuuust this side of self-consciously wacky. A lot of fun, but not a lot of deep.

But. One of my favorite moments in the show comes in first season when the Perfect Canadian (TM) is confronting a childhood enemy of Ray #1 (said enemy grew up to be the local petty mob heavy, said Ray grew up to be a cop).

Said petty mob guy has been trying to buy Frasier's approval in a heavy-handed sort of way. And Frasier cuts him down: "What I want, Mr. Zuko, and what the law allows, are two entirely different things."

And you realize that Frasier (Benton Fraiser, or Benny) is not as aw-shucks ignorant as he comes off. He's not a good, decent, honorable person because it has never occurred to him to be anything else. It's a chilling moment because it is so quiet -- without a lot of drama, we see that this person we respect so much could do horrible (or not-so-horrible but maybe be just as petty) things -- if it wasn't for his sense of honor.

When the show hits those moments, it is stunning.

As for Season 3 (or Seasons 3/4 -- I think the difference is that in the US it aired as one "season" and in Canada it aired split as two short seasons, but I could be wrong) -- in my humble opinion, it upped the wacky without really digging into that core of stillness in the center. I gave up on the show not because it pissed me off, but because it BORED me (mind you, I bailed during a Rashomon ep, which are always tricky). But, among other changes, they took a strong female character who was rather self-consciously prickly and "difficult" but who was attracted to Benny regardless and... massively over-saturated her in Photoshop. She became MORE prickly, MORE attracted (losing-places-in-sentences-attracted, which was in contrast to her hard-assness from before) and it just squicked me.

Now, there is a huge dividing line in the fandom -- whether the first season closer two-parter Victoria's Secret is massively awesome or an abomination unto this earth. I actually was hooked on the show due to that two parter (a woman from Benny's past comes back and basically attempts to trash everything he stands for) so I think it's massively awesome.

Paul Gross is on record as saying he didn't think it worked with the show and didn't really feel it was in keeping with it. And I think the divide between my opinion of Victoria's Secret and Paul Gross's points to why I didn't much like his version of the show.

Um. *blush* Did I mention the due South feels?

Re: I have due South feels!

[grammarwoman]

Awwww! I love to see people so excited about a show, and I definitely appreciate hearing the backstory and your reactions to it.

There's a reason DS is on my potential rewatch list, and that's because so many fans have such strong feelings about it. Well, that and all the fanworks. I will keep your advice in mind - thanks!

Also with Community feels too

[lizbetann]

I liked all seasons of Community (the last three are all half-seasons, so basically you have 4 and a half seasons total).

While the roots of what the show would be were there in first season, it kind of wasn't until second that it starting really getting its feet under it. Its another one with the massive wackyness (although it never slips out of realism to become magical realism -- unless you count the 6 alternate universes...)

Season 4 (the creater-less half-season) tries too hard to prove it is still The Same Show, but it doesn't suck. But I think seasons 2 and 3 are my favorite -- there is the zombie apocalypse Halloween, the Christmas where they all turned into claymation figures, the day they played D&D to save someone's life, the Blanket versus Pillow Fort civil war, the Law & Order: Community episode, the time they played a crappy 8-bit video game to save their friend's fortune... that's not mentioning the show that DETAILED all the 6 alternate universes, the time they became the school's glee club, the time that the (former) Spanish teacher took over the school and attempted to blow it up (by playing keytair) and any of the paintball episodes. Or Inspector Spacetime. Or the Air Conditioning Annex. Or... *forcibly stops herself*

The thing is, in all that full-out wackiness, there was (usually) a central core of character. People acted the way they acted because of their personalities and because of the stresses they were enduring. Most of the above wackiness followed from friendships with people who were broken but (cue Stitch) still good, still family.

So yeah... I whole-heartedly recommend Community.

Re: Also with Community feels too

[grammarwoman]

My tentative approach to Community (and Parks & Rec, too) is because I have a huge embarrassment squick that comedies tend to poke mercilessly. I did watch the Claymation ep to get a clip for my Fembots vid, but I haven't really touched any of the rest. I also find Chevy Chase really, really annoying, alas. So, maybe? And thank you!