A bit over six years ago I wrote down of which TV shows I’ve seen more than one season, many of them more than half and often enough 90-100% of a show. Back then it added up to 247 shows.
Now I’ve checked again and noticed that I’ve missed shows back then (e.g. Alias and Community). Also a lot more current shows have added the ranks as well as older stuff I’ve only just discovered.
This new list contains 86 more shows and brings the total up to 333.
And on the very bottom are shows that started just this year and have not yet filled the “one season” quota.
I’m currently on a vacation at home – or as it called now: staycation – and on Monday I had lunch at one of my favourite Italian restaurants (Actually, it’s an Italian deli that also serves warm food and it’s soo good!). Upon driving home in the early afternoon I thought to myself: what a wonderful world what now to do with the rest of the afternoon. And it just so happened that I drove past a local movie theatre. So at 3 in the afternoon on a Monday I decided to check out what was playing (I had a decent enough idea going in though). And what have you: At 3.15 an airing of Thor: Ragnarok. And at 6.00 an airing of Justice League. Quick calculation: Is Thor done when JL starts? Probably. OK, so both tickets were bought. Both movies were in German dubbing because watching O-Ton as we call it would have required a bit more planning (not every theatre shows them and only on specific times).
At the Thor airing we were three people in the theatre. A mom with her kid and I. Which is not suprising considering it was the afternoon of a regular workday in week 4 of the movie. Justice League at 6pm was also only watched by six people (including myself) in week 2 at a bit more accessible time.
Then two days later I had also caught up with the episodes of Supergirl, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow to watch the big crossover event (Arrow being the fourth show to cross). And so I watched Crisis on Earth-X.
And here’s what I thought about all of them:
Thor: Ragnarok
Plot: Thor’s long-lost sister Hella comes back and wants to destroy Asgard. Thor gets banished to an intergalactice waste disposal and has to find his way back.
I liked the first Thor movie. I don’t remember much about the second one. But nor do I remember much about the second and third Iron Man movies. To be honest, I don’t remember much about any MCU movie that doesn’t have Loki in it, except maybe for the Norton Hulk movie.
That’s one of the issues of the Marvel movies. They are great fun while you watch them (and that’s where and how they make their money) but they are not for the ages. They’re like a good rollercoaster ride. You remember the thrill but you don’t remember the details.
The same will be true for Ragnarok. The villain was once again pretty forgettable and to be perfectly honest not really needed at all for the movie. Because the best parts of the movie took place on the waste planet. Especially all the interactions with Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster (Gamemaster? Whatever.).
I did have a problem with the jokes. Not any one in particular, most of them were at least amusing. More with the frequency of them. Sometimes this felt like it tried to be a laugh-track comedy were every sentence had to have a punchline. IMHO, that was a bit too much. In this regard I loved the more sporadic approach of the first movie where he’d just randomly smash his glass after he’d emptied it, praising the brew within.
As for CGI, Marvel has this part down. Although I could have sworn that the Hulk looked different than before, even a bit smaller. This nagged at me for a bit. Also, I noticed that for the sake of the plot the pathway to the Bifröst was changed, especially what’s supposed to be – or not be – under it.
I loved that Thor wised up for once and predicted Loki’s inevitable betrayal. When I saw that scene, the opening scene of Firefly sprung to my mind:
When I saw Karl Urban, I just thought: You’re in this, too? Considering how small his part was, it was astounding – or depressing depending on the point of view – how much more developed his character was in comparison to Hella’s. And at least he had a part to play in comparison to the disposal of the Warriors Three.
All in all it was once again an enjoyable ride but again no deeper meaning to be gained from it.
Synopsis: No, not that one. 😉 The Flash is a spin-off series of The CW’s Arrow where it started as a sort-of backdoor pilot until it got an actual pilot episode.
In Arrow‘s second season police lab technician Barry Allen visits Oliver Queen’s home town Starling City and actually meets the vigilante.
Back in his own town an experiment in a nearby research facility goes horribly wrong and puts Barry into a coma.
When he wakes up, his body is going into overdrive, allowing him to move and heal at incredible speeds.
But the accident changed other people as well and not all of them are such decent citizens as Barry.
My Opinion: They basically re-used the idea that Smallville had when Clark’s arrival on Earth did not just bring Clark but also the meteor shower that caused mutations and gave Clark enemies to fight against.
But that’s not such a bad thing. This way you don’t need to explain where suddenly all these people with weird powers come from, so that the Flash has something to do week after week.
I also enjoyed the cameo casting of John Wesley Shipp who used to be the Flash in the 1990s (also Barry Allen*).
To be honest I was a bit sceptical when Barry appeared in Starling City because I thought he looked a tad bit too young.
But over the course of these two Arrow episodes and the pre-released pilot episode of The Flash he already grew on me and I will be tuning in when it actually begins.
*The person carrying the moniker “The Flash” is not always the same person, just like there are different Green Lanterns. There were at least for people who used that name: Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West and Bart Allen. Smallville‘s version of the Flash (who went by “Impulse” in the early days) was Bart Allen.
I watched a lot of TV shows over the years. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. And I watched accross the board.
Keep in mind that I’m only 35 years old.
I watched The Guiding Light for two years straight (it’s a soap opera whose German title was the Springfield Story). I watched medical shows like Trapper John M.D. and lawyer shows like L.A. Law. I watched the 80s action shows from MacGuyver to Riptide. I even watched Love Boat every weekday on one of the first private channels in Germany: Sat.1. I got up at 6am on every Saturday morning to watch Rawhide (Tausend Meilen Staub, lit. “A Thousand Miles of Dust”) with a very young and pre-Fistful Clint Eastwood. I knew who Daniel Boone was around the same time I met the Cartwrights as well as the men from the Shiloh Ranch.
And last weekend I binge-watched the first Netflix show House of Cards (Big recommendation! Kevin Spacey is a brilliant Magnificent Bastard!) and I got curious as to how many shows I watched intently over the past two and a half decades.
With the help of the list on the German site Wunschliste.de I created a list of “my” shows.
I only counted live-action fiction shows, no animated shows may they be Saturday morning cartoons like Yogi Bear or Scooby-Doo or evening shows like The Simpsons or South Park. No scripted reality (which I’m avoiding to 99% anyway with the exception of Comic Book Men). In this list are only shows which I followed for more than a year unless the show itself didn’t last that long.
And the answer was: 244246 247. Two hundred and fourty foursix seven different shows I watched with active interest since I’ve started watching television. And the worst thing is: Of most of these shows I watched 90% or more episodes at least once.
Howard the Duck (1986)
