TV Corner: The Television Tag!

The Television Tag was created by Tiffany at Bookish Tiffany but I found it on Fatma’s blog! And I’m a total TV junkie, so of course I had to do this immediately.

I…probably spent way too much time on this, but it was very fun, so I have no regrets.

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Favorite Shows

• Parks and Recreation
• Desperate Housewives
• Supernatural
• The Office
• Friends
• Elementary
• True Blood
• The Americans
• Grey’s Anatomy
• The Good Wife
• Avatar the Last Airbender

Favorite Genre?

If we were going purely by quantity it would have to be crime dramas, but you’ll notice there’s only one crime drama on my list of favorite TV shows, and that’s because I watch them in the same way that people mindlessly eat popcorn, which is to say they don’t always make a very strong impression on me, but they’re fun. However, if you backed me into a corner and made me choose a single genre, I’d probably have to say dramedy. I love that balance of humor and seriousness, especially if the humor is dark.

Least favorite show?

I used to be very against DNFing books or TV shows and would force myself to watch all shows to their end, but thankfully, I’ve stopped doing that, so if I don’t like a show, I’ll generally just…stop watching it. Hmm…I did stop watching Peaky Blinders after they fridged a main female character in a pretty horrendous way (I did not like their treatment of female characters in general). But the plots were also starting to get far too convoluted for my liking.

Most rewatched show/favorite show to binge watch?

There are four sitcoms that I’ll rewatch often for comfort, and they are: Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Parks and Recreation, and The Office. But I’ve also rewatched the entirety of Desperate Housewives twice and will likely go back and rewatch again. I also enjoy rewatching episodes of True Blood and Supernatural, and I think I’ve watched the S1 finale of Elementary like nine times. Oh, and Lost!

Do you prefer watching things week by week or binge watching?

You know, I used to be really, really good at binge-watching TV, but for some reason my attention span for TV seems to have waned, which makes me really sad. In any case, I find that I often have better luck completing shows if I watch them as they air, week by week. I’ll still binge-watch shows occasionally, but they have to either be crime dramas or really spectacular.

Favorite television characters?

I have a whole Woman Crush Wednesday series where I talk about my all-time faves, but here are some of my top gals:

Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans)

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Emma Swan (Once Upon a Time)

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Katherine Pierce (The Vampire Diaries)

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Daisy Johnson (Agents of Shield)

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Juliet Burke (Lost)

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Favorite television ships?

Jim & Pam (The Office)

Do I need to explain? Everyone loves these two. They’re the dream. Wholesome and pure. What we all strive to be.

Sawyer & Juliet (Lost)

THESE TWO. Part of the reason I love them so much is because they initially DESPISED one another, but very slowly became allies, then friends, then lovers. Watching them support each other in S4, first reluctantly and then whole-heartedly, is spectacular. They’re also both such complex, multi-layered characters that all their interactions are so fascinating to watch.

House & Cameron (House)

I’m a sucker for the ray of sunshine gal and the asshole dude. I think the show even lampshaded this particular trope. It helps that there’s an age difference too, because May/December relationships are my jam.

Reddington & Elizabeth (The Blacklist)

Okay, so I stopped watching The Blacklist very early on because I hated what they did to Lizzie’s character re: Tom in seasons 3 and 4, but also because I could no longer take the weird teasing out of Reddington potentially being Lizzie’s dad when the narrative CLEARLY portrayed them romantically. This is an interesting one, because Lizzie is the Good Guy and Red is the Villain, but I would argue that Red is actually the Sunshine and Lizzie the Broody One, which makes for a fascinating dynamic. Also, May/December romance.

Anne & Cotton (Salem)

This is one heck of a toxic relationship, from start to finish, but oh, I can’t resist their tragedy! In another world they might have been perfectly happy, but alas.

Belle & Rumpelstiltskin (Once Upon a Time)

I love the Morality Pet trope and I love the Sunshine Girl/Evil Guy trope, so of course I just wanted to inject this ship straight into my veins. It was often handled terribly, because this show is like…the epitome of messy on so many levels, but I still absolutely adore these two.

Show you could never get into?

Poldark and Outlander are both beautiful period dramas that, in theory, I should be happily devouring, but for some reason I can never consistently watch them. I watched one whole season of Outlander and a single episode of season two and keep vaguely meaning to go back, but somehow just…don’t. I watched quite a bit more of Poldark – I think I got up to season 3? – but then I just kind of stopped watching it, for reasons I don’t understand. I love the actors on both shows, and the cinematography, and the time periods, but for some reason I just can’t get into either of them, though I keep making half-hearted attempts.

Show you fell out of love with?

iZombie, sadly! It used to be one of my favorite shows, but there was a major plot shift in the fifth season that completely changed both the tone and the procedural aspect of the show, and it just got kind of…boring. I’m assuming they were just following the comics so I can’t blame them, but I was still super disappointed.

Canceled too soon?

Legend of the Seeker was based off a series of pretty awful books, but the show took the source material and improved wildly on it. This was a gorgeous, fun, adventurous fantasy show so beloved that when it was cancelled in 2008, fans maintained a campaign to get it back on the air for like five years. It’s an example of a fantasy show that leans hard into the fantasy but also doesn’t take itself super seriously, so it’s very feel-good and sometimes silly.

A more recent show taken before its time was Still Star-Crossed, which I will never get over. It was a Shonda Rimes show, a gorgeous period drama taking place after Romeo and Juliet kill themselves, and FULL of people of color in lead roles. The actors were all spectacular, there was a wonderful hate-to-love relationship, a burgeoning f/f relationship, fascinating political machinations, and so much high drama. It was incredible. Was it a little cheesy sometimes? Sure. But it was endearing and genuinely compelling and I am SO MAD it only got one short season.

Guilty pleasure show?

Once Upon a Time probably fits this bill. I LOVED that show. Granted, my favorite season was the first, which I genuinely think was all kinds of brilliant, but there were gems in the later seasons too. Plus it gave me Belle and Rumpelstiltskin, a ship featuring my beloved Morality Pet trope. The last few seasons went decidedly off the rails, in my opinion, and things got far, far too messy, but I still go back and rewatch the first season sometimes for that small-town goodness feel and the relationship between Emma and Mary Margaret before they know who they really are. In another universe this could have been a Hart of Dixie type show where a lonely city girl makes friends in a small town (Hart of Dixie, by the way, is a vastly underrated show).

What are you currently watching?

Well, I’m rewatching S3 of Avatar the Last Airbender and on a whim I started rewatching Blood+, which is one of my all-time favorite animes. Otherwise…nothing, though there’s a lot I would like to watch, but for some reason I’m not really feeling TV these days, which makes me SO SAD because I usually adore TV and watch so much of it, but I don’t know what’s going on with me this year. But anyway check out my TV Masterlist to see everything I’ve ever watched and am kind of/sort of watching.