Favorite TV Shows

Breaking Bad, The Office (US), That 70s Show, Sex and the City, The Twilight Zone, The Big Bang Theory, Top Chef, and a bunch of trashy reality TV shows.

I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty.

The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood top my list. Maybe the best TV ever made.

Current shows? I like science fiction and action. I like the Salvation show about the meteor drama. Supernatural , and several old science fiction shows. When those aren't on I'm watching ancient aliens on the history channel or the science channel or discovery channel when they go on expeditions searching for lost cities, ruins, etc. I find it easy to fall asleep with the science channel on. I have an interest in Astronomy and science as well. Sometimes I watch shark tank.

Drama - The West Wing, ER, Breaking Bad

Comedy - The Carol Burnett Show, MASH, Big Bang Theory

Sci-Fi - Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG1, X-Files

Cartoon - Looney Toons, Simpsons, King of the Hill

Boob Tube - Baywatch, VIP, Stacked (yeah I had a crush on Pamela Anderson), Dollhouse

Oh shit! Whodey you reminded me - X-Files should totally be on my list. I was so mad when they took it off Netflix. I love X-Files. I could talk X-Files all day long, and have watched it all day long too many days to count.

Nina it's available on Hulu

No particular order:

Firefly Cowboy Bebop Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z Stranger Things One Punch Man Late 90s/early 2000s Cartoon Network South Park

Echo, Breaking Bad is my favorite series of all time. I doubt anything will ever top it.

And the girl you had the link to, I first was introduced to her in that movie "She's out of your league". She didn't have many speaking parts in there but it was enough, especially the first scene with her on the plane. youtu.be

When I saw her in Breaking Bad I was like, oh shit it's Patty.

Sons of anarchy.

As an adult: Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Deadwood, The Girlfriend Experience, Eastbound and Down, Penn & Teller's Bullshit.

As a kid: The Simpsons, Southpark, The X-Files, Highlander, reruns of the Twilight Zone, various reruns from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s (Quantum Leap, All In The Family, Magnum: PI, Dallas, etc.). Once in a while I used to watch Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210, too.

@DC9428,

Yeah, Riley Keough is actually a pretty good actress, considering that she's Elvis' granddaughter (and Elvis was only barely plausible as an actor, from what I recall). Anyway, the show is an anthology so there are different girls depicted in each season. Riley Keough's character isn't featured in the second season at all. The second season follows two unrelated storylines: one was about the relationship between a female Republican lobbyist and a call-girl in Washington; and the other was about the mistress of a drug dealer in witness protection in New Mexico. It was entertaining, but slightly preachy at times. The first storyline touches upon the alleged "evils" of money in politics and the supposedly corrupting influence of lobbying. The second storyline deals with intersectional feminism... I think. Thankfully, you don't have to agree with the political views of the writers to enjoy the show.

Game of Thrones, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Arrested Development, Seinfeld

I loved the original Two & a Half Men. The early ones where Charlie had an infinite stream of beautiful babes at his Malibu beach house. After Charlie Sheen left, the show got weird.

I agree - Two and a Half Men was great with Charlie Sheen.

I’m not much of a TV show watcher - but SOA was great, The Shield was also great. I enjoy some of the NatGeo shows about Alaska - Alaska State Troopers and Life Below Zero. I watch Survivor and American Ninja Warrior too.

Chapelle’s Show was great. I love the reruns. In Living Color is fun to watch in reruns too.

Sopranos

Used to like Walked Dead but got burnt out, same with Game of Thrones.

Loved ATeam and Alf when I was a kid. Watching them now they are horribly cheesy.

It seems the older I get the less I watch TV. Because I travel often the tube might be on but it's more background noise than me paying attention.

About the only network shows I watch are Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon anymore, at least with any regularity.

I was a huge Two & Half Men watcher, especially with Sheen and even more so when the kid was young. To me it started to get weird when Charlie got a girlfriend. It never seemed to jive with his character up to that point.

I do watch Game of Thrones but they are skipping a year ( not sure why) before the final season.

Cheers was also a huge favorite of mine when it was running.

Frasier has to be my all time favorite comedy. I still watch it on Netflix occasionally.

Deadwood, Sopranos, Breaking Bad....great television dramas and characters there. I think Al Swearengen is the best character ever.

I'm not a big Sci-Fi fan but I never missed X Files...maybe Scully had something to do with that?

Current: Into The Badlands, Preacher, Claws, Handmaid's Tale, Atlanta, Insecure, and 600 lb Life because thoe fat mf's are hilarious

Hope it to be Mayans MC, now the Sons and The Americans ran their course.

Cartoon- Felix The Cat Sitcom - The Honeymooners Music Show - The Lawrence Welk Show Variety - The Howdy Dowdy Show

Rawhide, I Love Lucy, Red Skelton.

^I kinda figured you for a Howdy Doody kinda guy;)

Drama - The Wire

Cartoon - Rick & Morty

Comedy - Fawlty Towers

Music - old MTV 120 minutes

Current: Better Call Saul It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Alone Atlanta Rick and Morty A lot of the HBO series

All Time: The Wire best of all time, Soprano's almost best of all time, Deadwood (cancelled too soon, hope they make the two movies). Breaking Bad The Simpson's especially mid and late 90's In Betweener's UK show This Is England the short series of every few years after the movie Seinfeld

forgot Game of Thrones but that fits into HBO series I guess. American Gods and Fargo are great too, hopefully have new seasons soon

I don't watch much TV but two past sitcoms that I enjoyed back in the day were Married With Children and Seinfeld. I'm home watching Jeopardy right now.

Law and Order and old 1960’s westerns. i.e Rawhide, Maverick.

Oh shit. I forgot, Friends.

The Wire- by far and away the most ambitious show (such a travesty it never won any awards, but that says so much more about the awards shows themselves)- followed not at all close by Breaking Bad

The Simpsons(early seasons) and Arrested Development

Don't watch any new shows now a days.

I clearly have to give The Wire another shot. My ex wanted to watch and finish the entire series before his sentencing last year (he went back to prison lol), so we/he binge-watched it. I was only paying attention like half the time, whereas I own Breaking Bad and have seen every episode multiple times. I don't know how any TV drama can top it, but I'll have to re-watch The Wire. All I know is that Breaking Bad left such an impact on me that I didn't work for like a week after finishing it and the impact it left on me is something I still feel today. I actually got a tattoo that is a quote directly from Breaking Bad.

@ninabambina

The Wire is the one show you have to pay attention to, too much characters and too much subtleties to keep track of. The thing is there's 50+ characters that I can name as some of my favorites, characters that you hate in the beginning but love in the end. All of them, you sense have their own stories, and not filler characters that are there to make the main characters/protagonist look better. They all matter. All of them. In telling the story, which is so much more than about the police, the drug trade, the schools, the politics, the union workers, etc, but about the city and institutions, which in this case is Baltimore. But it could be about any city anywhere (Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, etc) and as David Simon the series creator spoke, it's about America, the America that got left behind.

Somebody of your caliber would enjoy it. It's just a slow burner, but the payoff is worth it and after multiple re-watches still catch new themes every time.

BTW is it the "I am the one who knocks" quote??

And don't worry, The Wire's very, very quotable too ;)

Stripfighter - thanks for the info. I definitely need to give it another watch. I agree that it's very ambitious (successfully so), but my mistake was, with all the characters involved, not paying enough attention to it.

With Breaking Bad, my sister tried to get me to watch it and explained the premise in a way that was very uninteresting, while maintaining that it was the best show she's ever seen. I didn't give it much thought, until my best friend got into it and told me how amazing it was. Then I visited my mom and she also told me how phenomenal it was, and since I was already at her house and she wanted me to watch it so badly, we started watching it together on Netflix even though she'd already seen it all. I ended up sleeping at her house several nights in a row doing nothing but eating, showering, and watching Breaking Bad from start to finish. Totally binge-watched it. She made her man stay in the guest room every day/night while she and I chilled in her bed watching BB from start to finish.

I have Netflix at home, too, and as I said earlier I love X-Files. I am usually not into sci-fi stuff but Mulder and Scully (plus AD Skinner) make it all worth it. I got into X-Files after I'd seen Breaking Bad, so it was funny to see so many familiar faces, since several actors from BB formarly made appearances in episodes of X-Files. In fact, since Vince Gilligan wrote a decent amount of X-Files episodes, I really think he drew casting inspiration from it. He wrote the season 6 episode of X-Files called "Drive," with Bryan Cranston in a lead role. No doubt that's what led to his decision to cast him in BB. Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, and the guy who played Tuco whose name escapes me right now, were all also featured in different episodes. I am probably forgetting a few others, too.

I know I'm rambling right now. But no, it's a different quote. Although I love that one, I wouldn't get it tatted - plus it's so full-heisenberg, I don't want to have something so menacing tatted on me. Lol. But I AM the one who knocks. Haha.

Beavis & Butt-head, South Park, Impractical Jokers

@IME: "Better Call Saul"

Great, funny, writing, and about the only thing I'm watching these days. Love the theme of a small-time lawyer/Con-man and the sibling rivalry between the main character and his brother who was a partner in major law firm.

Hardly watch any TV except for some of the political shows on MSNBC (to everyone's surprise).

How could I forget Married With Children? I used to watch that shit all the time as a kid. (In retrospect, that may explain a lot.)

And I didn't know we were counting talk shows and political shows. I usually have one of the "Big 3" cable news networks on in the background whenever I'm home.

During the Bush years, I mostly watched MSNBC and CNBC. During the Obama years, I almost exclusively watched Fox News and the Fox Business Network. And now, during the Trump era, I mostly watch CNN. As a good rule of thumb, whichever network the administration seems to hate the most, that's the network I'll watch the most frequently.

My current favorite political talk show is S. E. Cupp Unfiltered on HLN. I also like Special Report on Fox, The Journal Editorial Report (Fox), The Last Word (MSNBC), MTP Daily (MSNBC), Hardball (MSNBC), Cuomo Primetime (CNN), Kennedy (Fox Business), and anything hosted by Steve Kornacki (MSNBC). I used to love Stossel, Freedom Watch, and The Independents (all on Fox Business), and Red Eye (on Fox), but they were all eventually cancelled by the networks. And I used to watch The Five and The Greg Gutfeld Show (both on Fox) but they have both gotten ridiculous and annoying of late. The Cycle (MSNBC) was a decent show, but it was cancelled years ago. It's impossible to watch all this stuff every day, so I watch whatever's on whenever I'm home, but these are the ones I tend to choose from.

@DC9428,

I understand what you mean. I liked it, but the series will leave some people feeling a little uneven. It's one of Steven Soderbergh's hallmarks, I think: when he produces drama, he doesn't like to leave things tidy and neat with a made-for-TV ending. Life doesn't work that way, I guess.

If you think about it, there's actually not too many sex scenes throughout the series, considering the storyline. If the show had been on Cinemax, for example, there would have been blowjobs and big titties flopping out in every other scene, you know? But I thought the masturbating/camming scene was very telling and very real (I think that was in the last or second to last episode).

@NinaBambina,

I agree with stripfighter's assessment of The Wire. As David Simon said, audiences were expecting just another Police Procedural, and the TV landscape was already littered with those. But the Wire builds slowly and it doesn't reward casual viewing. It's not NYPD Blue or Law and Order SVU. It's really a portrait of an American city, and of the compromises that people are forced to make with various institutions. It's also a brilliant exploration of the War on Drugs in all its pig-headed stupidity.

No Fat Albert fans? Wtf? Great Saturday morning cartoon!

The Cosby show was a true classic too. Good wholesome tv! Aside from the sweaters - it probably would be worth a watch today.

@nina

So you didn't watch BB until your sister, best friend, and mom told you to watch it.... Sooo what you're reaaaally saying you're very stubborn haha... Don't worry I'm much worse :P

Dr. Who, Battle Bots, Kung Fu, Survivor. Outside of Kung Fu, I have bad taste in TV shows.

Game of thrones, breaking bad, walking dead, dexter, shameless

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I have to admit I just couldn't get into the Wire. I hear all about how great a show it is, but for some reason it just could not maintain my interest. I also never really liked the characters of Omar and Snoop, especially Omar.

While I didn't get too into it either (but explained why earlier in the thread), Omar is a character who stands out to me and I actually liked him. At least he didn't target the innocent.

@ NinaBambina

I think my main issue with Omar is that he went against what I was expecting when I got first watched the Wire. I was expecting a really gritty, really realistic, on-the-streets view of crime and justice in Baltimore. Omar seemed almost too good, almost like he was the cowboy hero from a Western who got dropped into the middle of the show. I also felt like they made his character gay just to have a gay character.

Breaking Bad could be kind of ridiculous too, but it worked because the premise of Breaking Bad was kind of ridiculous to start with. Dorky chemistry teacher turns into a drug kingpin with the help of his loser, stoner buddy. Much props for the show and Bryan Cranston's acting for making something so unbelievable seem so tense and real.

Don't watch too much television these days, almost none in real time except the occasional sporting events. Just on the back burner for many years now. But i've been fairly recently using my friend's netflix account and binge watching several tv shows, sometimes almost an entire season in one day even, especially with shorter episodes (comedy).

I think i watched all of Breaking Bad in two or three weeks. While extremely well done, i think it's slightly overrated (considered by many the greatest TV show of all time). So much of the show's premise was based on the idea that such a small difference in purity of a drug could be so important. Don't do drugs, so i just accepted the premise and watched on. A similar idea was used in the TV show Weeds (MILF weed as opposed to Crystal Blue) which was recommended to view after i finished Breaking Bad. Not as good but still very watchable and almost as addictive.

Other shows, Shameless was great fun. Orange Is The New Black was okay. Definitely prefer a female setting compared to a male one, lol. Still couldn't avoid unnecessary male nudity (and there was way more in Shameless) and not as much gratuitous lesbian sex as i might have thought. Also watched quite a bit of stand up.

Speaking of Krysten Ritter, she was only in BB for a limited amount, but i watched both seasons of Jessica Jones after watching Daredevil (probably the best series in the Netflix Marvel universe) which i watched after Punisher. So didn't get the chronological order exactly right. Also watched both Luke Cage seasons and Iron Fist (the weakest series IMO, but surprisingly important to their universe) and Defenders. All of these shows were surprisingly graphic (if not unneccesary) in violence and to a degree language. Way more than the movies. No decent nudity (female of course) in any of them though; feel like they're being overly politically correct or something.

Agree with King of the Hill over Simpsons (which got long in the tooth and shark jumping many seasons ago) and Family Guy (which i can't stand). Never got into American Dad or South Park (just can't get pass the terrible animation and design). Never got into Game of Thrones or Walking Dead. Really liked the first season of Prison Break (even recognized some venues) but it just couldn't sustain.

Didn't like All in The Family at all, but loved Three's company. What more can i say about John Ritter? I was just a child when i was first exposed to these shows, so i didn't understand or appreciate AITF or even MASH at the time. Just found them boring and hard to sit through. I could probably say the same about many of the older shows (pre 80s). Just found shows like Roseanne, Cosby show (very piled on shows now, lol) and Married with Children much more interesting and funny.