TeeVee: Like A Long Movie (Part 1)

Upon arrival in Japan, one of the first things I did was to disconnect and sell the satellite dish my predecessor had left for me. I’m usually pretty useless around a solid TV connection, wasting away and switching the channel for hours and hours, wondering where all my time went later when I have to rush through projects. I purposefully did not have a cable hookup for anything more than internet all during university – the web is enough to keep me distracted, thankyouverymuch.

This doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t enjoy television. With the internet being a great conduit, I am now not only able to catch up on missing seasons of shows that I’ve missed, but am also able to nab new episodes anywhere from 4-12 hours after they air in the States.

Here are the “older” shows I’m watching – by “older,” I mean they’re not in their first season.

Old Shows:

Lost. I started to watch this last winter, getting completely wrapped up in the intertwinging backstories, wacky hijinks and the fabulous ensemble cast. A planeload of strangers crashes onto a mystery island in the Pacific Ocean, where it seems like there’s some kind of larger nefarious plot behind everything. The show has its ups and downs, and is six or so episodes in to its third season, which I’m a bit ambivilant about but cannot stop watching. Pick up or Netflix the first two seasons on DVD to catch up; you’ll fly through them, and can join in on speculation with the rest of the internet.

Battlestar Galactica. Not the 70s adventure fest, but the re-imagined series that began running in 2003. When I heard the show’s title, I near-instantly wrote it off in my head as “too sci-fi.” Now, that’s not to say I don’t like sci-fi TV (Star Trek: The Next Generation is a great show, though mostly for Patrick Stewart), but I don’t like having to juggle a million alien races, crazy and involved civilization histories, and techo-jargon; I’d rather have good characters that I can get to know and care about, and have thier lives be what I care about, not Planet XYZ. Fortunately, BSG, while taking place in a far future, is not a complex world to get to know – actually, the similarities to modern society and conflicts we face are what make the show especially compelling.

Basic back story: The Cylons are a race of androids, created by mankind to serve them. They revolted and there was a long, bloody war, at the end of which, the Cylons left for their own homeworld. Forty years after the war ended, the Cylons returned and annihilated the Twelve Colonies of Man with a nuclear attack, killing billions. Approximately 50,000 humans escaped and fled, and are now persued in deep space by the Cylons while defending themselves and looking for the legendary Thirteenth Colony… Earth.

The writing is top-notch, the acting excellent, the effects wonderful. I cannot say enough good things about this show – a must-see, for sure.

Others: I’m also getting my fill of medical shows by watching the first season of House (which my friends are addicted to and I want to get into) and Scrubs (this is largely due to my crush on Zach Braff’s character, J.D. My perpetual giggling and nattering like an 8-year-old in front of an issue of Tiger Beat would probably drive someone else to murder me, hence it’s good I watch the show on my own).