How I Spent My Summer Vacation

For some reason, network television still hasn’t figured out if you actually put quality television on during the summer, people may tune in. Instead during the summer months we get crappy reality show and scripted shows that the network figure no one would watch during the fall. So that left me only three shows to watch this summer, Rescue Me, Leverage and The Philanthropist while occasionally catching Raising the Bar, Royal Pains and Defying Gravity at my leisure. I am in no way complaining about the lack of television because it gave me to time to catch up on these shows via DVD:

Alias (Season 5): If my memory serves me correctly, the last season of Alias was moved to Thursday pitting it against Survivor, My Name Is Earl and Smallville and something had to give. The show always had some serious writing flaws, but Rachel Nichols was a great addition and Amy Acker surprisingly made for a good bad girl. Alias ranked in at #62 on The Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.

Dead Like Me (The Complete Series): Thoroughly enjoyable series but Brian Fuller certainly perfected the jaded twenty-something with Wonderfalls. And the Desmond Hume staring movie wasn’t as bad as the fanatic would have you believe once you get beyond the fact that they ruined Daisy Adair with poor recasting. And the writing certainly did help things either. I wouldn’t be against more. Dead Like Me ranked in at #17 on The Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.

Deadwood (The Complete Series): You really cannot boil down a series like Deadwood down to one paragraph but let me try to do so in one word: (expletive deleted). Nothing funnier on television possibly ever than when Al and Wu would try to communicate when he only knew three words, Sweargen, San Francisco and (expletive deleted). Good times. On the flip side, it was extremely weird to see Veronica Mars seduce Matt Saracen’s mom. Deadwood ranked in at #13 on The Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.

The Secret Diary of a Call Girl (Seasons 1 and 2): A show where Billie Piper plays a hooker? Yes please. The Secret Diary of a Call Girl ranked in at #92 on The Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.

Weeds (Seasons 3 and 4): One major problem with watching shows on delay is that you inevitably get spoilers and knowing that Agrestic burning down and Nancy ending up pregnant is included at that. Weeds ranked in at #90 on The Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.


And since networks have been nice enough not to put anything on worth watching on Tuesday this fall I may be able to check up on some more television in the next few months. I recently won Mad Man season 1 and hopefully that lives up to the hype. And I will be checking out Dexter season 3 as soon as I can steal it from my sister after she buys it.