5 Times The Perfect Show Found Me Too Late
For all that I am one of the most obnoxiously punctual people you will ever meet, I am so often late to the party when it comes to entertainment that I channel Audrey Hepburn with my fashionableness. That award-winning, fan-obsessing show that everyone’s watching?
I haven’t seen it.
I probably won’t for a few more years.
Despite my inability to watch anything at the right time, when I do find what I term “perfect” shows, I get just as obsessed as the early adopters. Here are five shows that I inhaled with the gusto of the fat kid eating Mrs. Trunchbull’s cake in Matilda:
Maybe you’re a long time fan of Joss Whedon and his merry band of actors who troop from project to project in his wake. Maybe you just discovered him when he killed off (spoilers) Agent Coulson in The Avengers this summer. Maybe you’ve never heard of him. But you’ve definitely heard of his shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse…they must ring a bell. Unlike his long-running sci fi adventures with Buffy and her Scooby gang, Firefly was axed by FOX after only one season.
It had the actorly talents of Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau and Ron Glass.
It had cows in spaceships.
An actual western adventure set on a spaceship 500 years in the future. There were government conspiracies, evil-doers, and a ship with a captain and crew just trying to make a living in any legal and illegal way they could.
For years and years I heard, “Rachael you have to watch this show. You will love it.” And I scoffed because, cowboys? Spaceships? No thank you.
Clearly I can be dense sometimes. I didn’t finally sit down to watch it until last year, and within a weekend I had watched it all and was tweeting things like, “THAT’S NOT A SERIES FINALE, JOSS.” at the internet and being laughed at by my friends.
Friends was on from 1994-2004 and while I am now caught up, I completely missed the anticipation of would Ross and Rachel get together? What would Rachel name her baby? Would Joey sleep with all of New York? I only jumped on the weekly-watching bandwagon at the end of the tenth season and then went back and watched all the seasons in a row.
For a show that is now incredibly dated (check out their cellphones) and completely unrealistic (check out those apartments), the comedy totally holds up, and I’m still watching random episodes from the box sets almost ten years after it went off the air.
Feel sorry for my roommate.
I came into this show while it was in its second season. I know that’s not the same as finding it after it went off the air completely. And I know it’s coming back in a fashion. *squee* But I still missed out on the original mystery of Lily’s death when it was on the air the first time, and I still freaked out all over the internet when I did discover it in all its high school noir glory.
Have you watched it? Go watch it. And don’t try to tell me you’re more of a Duncan fan than a Logan fan. That’s how I know you didn’t make it all the way through all the seasons.
You guys all know I love Doctor Who. I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Doctor Who was one of those shows that I put off watching. I think that I knew, somewhere deep inside, that if I gave into the peer pressure from all of my friends (and I do mean all of them) and watched it, I would never be able to pull myself back out of the TARDIS.
I was right. The reason I include it in this list is because I really wish I had found it sooner, wish I had caved and gotten cable so I could watch last season in real time rather than sitting around waiting for Netflix to get the latest season (YES I’M STILL A SEASON BEHIND), wish I had listened to all my friends sooner.
They’re really all very smart. They didn’t even make me say that.
But anyways, don’t get overwhelmed by the fact that 2013 is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. You can do what I did. Start with New Who – that’s Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith – and move forward from there. Then you have nice little summer breaks where you can go and watch Classic Who – Doctors 1-8 – on Netflix when the shows are off air for the summer.
Really, you won’t need to watch anything else for months.
Aaron Sorkin is obviously a person, not a show, but I’m including him in this list anyways because I really came into all of his shows too late or they were cancelled too soon. The West Wing changed my life. Studio 60 made me laugh and fall a little in crush with way too many actors. Sports Night was just charming and lovely and actually dealt with issues we still see in the media today way before they were prominent. I’m not totally loving everything about his new show Newsroom but I’m also kind of hoping that it will redeem itself in later seasons. Right now it’s too much of a hodgepodge combination of every single other plot and character he’s ever written.
No really like lines straight out of The West Wing.
The true show I came into too late in this bunch was actually The West Wing. I started watching it the winter after it went off the air for good. I was a hardcore Josh/Donna ‘shipper, and I watched the show in this order: Season 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think I spent more money buying up seasons on DVD in one month than a year’s subscription to cable. I’m not embarrassed. I fully admit my ridiculousness. By the time I finished watching it, I was completely convinced that he needed to write more seasons. I’m still kind of convinced.
Don’t let this insanity happen to you, dear readers! Go! Watch current TV! Find perfect shows while you can still wait on pins and needles for the next episode and babble about them to your friends at the water cooler! Learn from my mistakes!
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