My new TV shows
Mentioning Battlestar Galactica in the last post reminded me that my viewing habits have changed recently, so I thought I’d do a rundown of the shows I watch now — basically, these are the shows for which my Tivo has Season Passes.
Mondays:
My law school friend Heather Hedquist recommended Medium on NBC. It’s quite an interesting show, about a woman with psychic powers who helps out a District Attorney. The show not only contains some intriguing mystery plotlines, but also some good interaction between the woman and her husband and children.
Tuesdays:
Steve Evans at By Common Consent recommended Veronica Mars as “the new, better written BtVS [Buffy the Vampire Slayer].” Well, he’s wrong about it being better-written than Buffy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad show — it’s actually very good. Steve was also wrong about it being a “soon-to-be-cancelled show”: UPN has picked Veronica Mars up for a second season.
My brother Michael recommended House, a medical show. While the plots tend to be standard medical mystery fare, what makes the show is the main character, a brilliant doctor with a very acerbic personality.
Wednesday:
After seeing various references to the show, it was Orson Scott Card’s review of Lost that convinced me to give it a try. I was hooked fairly quickly.
I’ve been watching the original Law & Order for years, and still enjoy it.
Thursday:
I still watch the original CSI.
Friday:
Last year, I had no TV shows that I watched on Friday nights. But then, as a prelude to canceling it at the end of this season, UPN moved Star Trek: Enterprise to Fridays. The episodes this final season have been some of the best and most rewarding for Trek-Americans like me — they’re even finally explaining the Klingon forehead mystery.
The Sci-Fi channel moved Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis to Friday nights to be part of their new Sci-Fi Friday lineup alongside the new Battlestar Galactica series. (The assumption seems to be that sci-fi fans have no social lives. And I’m not exactly proving them wrong.)
But science fiction is not the only thing worth watching on Friday nights: there’s also math fiction. CBS’s new midseason series Numb3rs has been fun to watch. The basic premise is that a mathematical genius with a brother in the FBI uses math to help solve cases. And here’s what’s really impressive: it has dealt with advanced mathematical ideas such as the Riemann hypothesis, P versus NP problem, chaos theory and more without making a mistake I could catch. I’m no math expert, just a knowledgeable layman, so they may be making mistakes that a better mathematician would groan at. But they must have a real mathematician on staff. (Of course, they do make the occasional science groaner typical to TV, such as looking at a portion of a three-dimensional image of a DNA helix and recognizing it. But I forgive them that because of their math.)
Well, at least you’re watching VM, even if you don’t think it’s the best thing since BtVS. Allison Hannigan was on the other night!
Oh, VM might be the best thing since BtVS, although I might go with Lost instead.
I tried to watch Lost at the very beginning. The whole Jurassic Park aspect of the Jurassic Park meets Gilligan’s Island is what bothered me. The endless freaky music because someone’s going to get himself eaten……not my thing.
Numb3rs rocks :) Check out my site about it at http://aspyre.net/numb3rs :D
I’ll have to try numbers again. I watched the first but thought the math seemed wrong.
My husband loves Numb3rs. He’s taken enough classes as a computer engineer that he was thrilled by the visuals of mathematical concepts. The math is interesting to me, but I mainly watch it for the character interaction, especially when it involves Peter MacNicol’s character. :)