Just Straight Up Talking About My Favorite TV Shows

In the past two months I have written two blog posts about my favorite movies.  First I straight up talked about my top 3, then I discussed some of my selections from the BBC's list of the greatest American films of all time.  As much as I love movies, I might like TV even more.  I certainly spend more time watching it.  After all, I'm a hip young person living it up in the golden age of television.  It's only fair that I give the medium the attention it deserves so here are my 3 favorite TV shows as of now.

The Flash

The Flash is only going into its second season this fall but the first was so strong that I don't have any hesitation calling it one of my favorite shows.  It's an exceptionally fun show with a great cast and stellar effects that would be impressive even on a premium cable budget.  Like its parent show Arrow, The Flash does an excellent job of pulling from its decades of source material while still defying expectations.  The season finale alone was one of the best hours of television since Breaking Bad went off the air.  It was also one of the best sci-fi episodes in recent memory, combining fantasy science with sentiment, philosophy, and a dash of action in the tradition of Star Trek.  If future seasons are even half as good as the first the series will be a success.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

https://1481hyperionavenue.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/ten-years-on/

I was introduced to the Buffyverse through the spin-off Angel.  I happened to see Angel himself on the front page of Hulu and recognized the actor David Boreanez from Bones.  Once I finished watching Angel I went back and started on it's parent show Buffy.  After that I would have still said Angel was my favorite because I saw it first.  Then I watched the two side by side and came to the conclusion that Buffy is not only my favorite of the two but might be one of the greatest TV series of all time.  It's consistently funny, smart, and as relevant and topical today as it was over a decade ago, which is a lot.  Also, I'm admittedly a sucker for a dense mythology.  Maybe it was a mistake to watch all seven seasons of Buffy twice in the span of about eight years, which is almost as long as it took for it to air once, but the worst part is having to fight the temptation to do it all over again because that would just be too much.  Also, I skipped the first two seasons the second time.  That was a huge mistake because I missed a lot of quality Seth Green time.

Seinfeld

I typically try to not pit creative works against each other.  Even thought I prefer Buffy to Angel I'm the first to admit that the latter is still a fantastic show.  However, for some reason I can't help but compare Friends to Seinfeld which is really not fair to the former.  I can understand the appeal of Friends but next to Seinfeld it looks like a middle school production of a transcript from Keeping Up With the Kardashians.  No other show in history has so perfectly captured the desperation to make sense of the world and carve one's place in it as well as Seinfeld.  The characters spend all their time reaching for their desires while observing, if not following, the rules of society.  They'll do whatever it takes to get what they want even if it's just to get in that perfect comeback and there is no better comeback than "the jerk store called and they're running out of you."