Maius Intra Qua Extra

Going through the list of TV shows really brought back a lot of memories! If you were to pay attention to the shows I bolded and when they were broadcast, you can probably make out the gist of my TV-watching history (as well as my age). I watched a lot of TV as a kid, both old shows in syndication that played every day in the afternoons, like Gilligan's Island and Hogan's Heroes, as well as new and current series in the evenings. Of course I've seen all of the episodes of Magnum P.I.: I was a straight high school female in Hawaii; I couldn't not! So, my list is full of the TV shows from the 50s through the mid-80s.

Then I went to college and stopped watching TV. No opportunity, since we never had TVs in the dorms. I bothered to get one once I was out of grad school, but found I never used it. When I got married, we got satellite TV and used it so little that after about six years, we discovered that it was unusable because we'd neglected to install a software upgrade that had come out two years prior. We stopped paying for the service at that point.

Since that point, the shows we watch are "curated" in a way. We pretty much only watch things that are recommended to us, and only after we either research it to be assured we're going to like it and then buy the first season, or we finally get off our butts and procure it through streaming or borrowing. Otherwise, we rewatch things we already have.

So, very little on that list from the 90s on, and what's there from that time period is mostly carefully chosen.

A few random thoughts on specific shows.

M*A*S*H: Though this was a current show in high school, it was also re-run every night after the news - every episode from every season, in broadcast order - and I watched it religiously. It was fun, but also had the cleverest dialogue and was not afraid to tackle serious issues. I loved sitcoms when I was a kid, but M*A*S*H was miles above them. And the finale was just... wow.

The Greatest American Hero: This show captivated me in high school. Fantasy/scifi/superheroes were not popular where I grew up, and there were definite overtones of an anti attitude. I remember being fascinated by the first season, enjoying the second season, and then hating the third season (though I did watch it through). I've watched the first two seasons recently, and frankly, they amazed me. Despite the show being a comedy-drama about a superhero in tights, the first season was surprisingly serious. The pilot episode was about the dangers of religious fanaticism. One of the others dealt with teenage depression and delinquency. In what was ostensibly a kids show! Then the network (ABC) told the producer (Stephen J Cannell, the brains behind GAH, The A-Team, and a bunch of other popular very 80s shows) to make it fit a more traditional formula - villain-of-the-day kind of thing - and season 2 came out as more fluffy. And then after that, the network took full control over the show, making it what they wanted, and season 3 tanked.

Forever Knight: This was part of the "Crime Time After Prime Time" set of shows on CBS (I think) that aired at 11 p.m. (five shows with weekly episodes, one shown each weeknight), which was basically an excuse for broadcasting shows with a lot of sex in them. It was after grad school, so I had a TV that I didn't use. During a Christmas break at my parents' house, I happened to turn on the TV and caught the last scene of an FK episode, where Nick had just caught the criminal and was talking him down, and that scene was so fascinating, I had to watch the rest of the series. CTAPT didn't survive the year, but FK was picked up for a second, and then a third, season by another network. (Of the others, only Silk Stockings survived CTAPT, doing a few more seasons on cable.)

One more observation: I seem to really like shows that start with "F".