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.)