Top 5 TV Series

Simpsons Seasons 1-9 with commentary

Watching this made me realize how fundamental The Simpsons was to my sense of humour. I don't often directly reference the show (but occasionally I still do), yet the way they told jokes, the style of jokes, the topics they joked about has had a deep influence on me. The Simpsons, Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, MST3K, Space Ghost - these were the weirdoes who taught me absurdist humour.

Listening to the audio track then brought me to the heart of the beast: how jokes are pitched in the writing room, how different scenes have different animators, how much each clip of music cost in licensing fees. I think I actually understand how an animated show is produced now.

Jacques Cousteau series

These series of nature documentaries are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s and I love them for their French style as much as their adventures. The music is Moog, the underwater subs are like flying saucers, everyone is smoking and drinking wine, Cousteau always wears his signature red Smurf hat and little else, the voice-overs border on the poetic. The French style also reveals itself in the number of artistic shots filmed and their is an artistic flair to the science too.

Cousteau's crew are always on an eco-adventure and their enthusiasm is contagious as try to tame fur seals, get drunk on nitrogen intoxication, ride sea-sleds, see what happens when their pet cat meets a beavers, dive for sunken treasure in Roman galleys and Japanese battleships.  The episode where everyone is on helium (to help against hte pressure) in one of their deep sea shelters is crazy.

Also Jacques Cousteau looks a like a older dignified Torgo with a boy's wonder and curiosity about the sea so he is hard not to like.

Monster Inside Me

It started with rabies and then migrated to tapeworms, and soon my interest expanded to all things parasitic. This is a modern American show so it is too light on the science and too heavy of the victim's personal drama, but I watched the British version that focused on the doctors and not the victims and preferred this one (there is something more democratic to it). The hour long show is three cases of severe parasitism - mostly protozoa, bacteria, and nematodes but sometimes a nasty fungus (or in later season a ingested foreign object) - and it can be a harrowing experience as you try to read the clues of the show to predict whether the patient will survive or what the parasite is.

Outside of the largest nematodes, this is a largely an invisible world but watching 6 season of this has made me more conscious of it. It has not made me a clean-freak because the parasites are so rare in North America - but we did replace our BBQ steel brush with a pumice stone after the episode on swallowing a wire bristle....


Black Jesus

https://roadtonowhere.forumotion.org/t25-black-jesus-v-the-sons-of-anarchy


Steven Universe

This show was made by some of the creators behind Adventure Time, but it seemed so 'girly' I just ignore it, having an egomaniacal kid as the lead character didn't help. Yet during some media drought during the summer I tried it - and found myself intrigued as the concept of the 'Crystal Gems' that are rising the kid and especially the idea of how the gems could fused with each other to create hybrid personas. Fusion is presented as mixture of dancing, sex and being in a relationship.

That sort of sci-fi/anime weirdness (helped by dimensional hopping, clones and uncontrollable metamorphism) was enough to keep me interested enough to enjoy the laid back humour and friendly characters of the show.  Then the end of the first season came and they gave a finale that was that show at it's best. A re-watch of the season showed how many good episodes it actually contained, it is 'girly' in it's focus on relationship like Adventure Time is 'boyish' in it's D&D aspects - but both are so much more and like the early seasons of Adventure Time this show combines song, humour, adventure and drama into a compact 11 minutes of animation.