The Best TV of 2006

Now that Christmas is over and it'll be the New Year tomorrow, I figure I'd do a bit of looking back on things. So, the best TV of this year:

New TV

This was the year that the television networks picked up on the fact that serialized TV might sell really well. Following the sucesses of LOST and Prison Break, it seemed like a no brainer. Odd thing is, it didn't really work as well as people'd predicted. Critic favorites like the Nine and Six Degrees bombed and were cancelled, although a couple held on nicely.

1- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - I like TV, the industry, writing, everything. I'd heard about the show earlier on in the year and thought that it sounded bad, but when I saw the pilot episode online, it hooked me from then. This show's the most important one on there. It takes on religous, governmental, politics, broadcasting theory and ethics in its episodes, stuff that you don't really see. This is smart TV. The dialogue, characters, plots, all fantastic stuff, and it's a shame that this show didn't catch on as well as it should have. Hopefully, we'll see a season 2 to this.

2- Heroes - This is a fun show. Can't take it too seriously, but it's just one of the best geek shows out there. There's a good kick back to the community with references and things like that that makes it fun to watch, as well as a really cool storyline and characters to match it.

3- Day Break - This was cancelled just the other week, which makes me very unhappy. The good news is that this show's got all the 13 episodes filmed, or so I heard, so they'll be out sometime. Detective Hopper's reliving the same bad day, and while this show couldn't last very long, it's got the strongest of all the storylines of any tv show. They should have just billed this as a miniseries or something.

TV That Came Back

Battlestar Galactica - I didn't think that it could get any darker, but it did, and man, the opening five episodes just blew my mind. There's been a couple of episodes that I wasn't thrilled with, but on the whole, Battlestar's back and kicking ass. Can't wait to see the next ten episodes. As far as Season 2 went, this year's half of the episodes was weaker than season 1 and the first half, but they really pulled themselves together towards the end.

Veronica Mars - Season 3's on a new network and doing pretty well, although they're not going to be doing an overall mystery this time around. The rape mystery was brought to a conclusion, which was pretty good, and the writing and characters are just as good this time around. Can't wait to see the next half of the season.

House, MD - House was cured! Sort of. After getting shot, he could walk for four months. Then he's back to drugs again, and he's got a cop after him, a former actor from the show Hack, who's one of the cooler new characters that's been in the show, much better than Vogler from season 1. House is sarcastic still, and downright mean at times, and they're really pushing his character around, which doesn't happen that often.

Prison Break - Okay, they broke out of Fox River, and they're on the run. A good chunk of them have been killed, right from the first episode. It was good to see the show change gears so quickly, but I don't think that this has much life left in it. While they're still alive, they're still running, and they've done a terrific job with it.

Other good ones this year - Supernatural, LOST, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis. Supernatural's gotten into more of an arc, which is interesting, and they've really forced some characterizations out of the brothers, LOST has been interesting and Stargate's really gotten into it's stride again, only to be cancelled.

Foreign TV

1- Life on Mars - Aired earlier this year on BBC1 while I was over there. I didn't catch the show while I was in England, but I did recently. It's one of the more imaginative and interestin series that I've seen, mixing police drama with science fiction and the 1970s. Brilliant show.

2 - Green Wing - This show is hilarious. Simply brilliant show, great acting, really fun sense of humor there.

Misses this year were The Nine, which should have been a movie, Six Degrees, which had an interesting concept, but handled poorly with some bad characters. Smith was promising, but it never took off, which was a shame, that one I actually liked.

In the upcoming year, I'm only looking forwards to one show, and that's The Dresden Files, airing on SCIFI in January, based off of the books by Jim Butcher. It looks really good, and I can't wait to watch it.

Liptak Christmas Trees

This morning, I got up early again and did my last English exam, which came out pretty well, and turned in on time. One more exam to go - Can't wait for that to be completely over with. I've had enough Economics to last me a while.
After that, I went home, and arrived just in time to catch my dad and sister before they went out to select a Christmas tree for the holiday. We don't buy our trees - we live on 27 acres of mostly forested land, so there's a lot to choose from, and we usually get some good ones. The only problem - the good trees are usually around 40-50 feet tall. Too tall for our house, so we usually take the top six feet out of the whole tree. Sounds wasteful, but it opens the forest up a little, and there's more trees that'll fall down on their own anyway. So our usual tradition is going out to find a tree, cutting it down and dragging it out.
We had fun today - took us about half an hour of walking around in the woods before we found what looked like a good one, a 40 fir tree with a good top. We went back, got a chainsaw and cut it down, only to have it land in a second tree, in a fork, where it got stuck. We tried pulling it out from the base, after cutting some of it away, but trees are heavy. And this one was spectacularly stuck in a maple tree. So we cut the maple tree and managed to get it down without damaging the top. It's a bit of a goofy looking christmas tree. It's extremely tall and thin, but it's pretty dense. For the first time in like ten years, we've stuck the tree in the main living room, with a very high ceiling, so the tree is about 14 feet tall, but it looks good with decorations on it.

In other news, ABC pulled their show Day Break from the schedule. I've been reporting on it in my TV Recaps, which I skipped last week because of time, and I'm incredibly annoyed by this. 1 - It was one of the best plotted and acted shows on TV, even though it didn't get a whole lot of attention from the media. 2 - Black main character, which doesn't happen too often. 3 -Serial storyline, tight plot, with only a 13 episode order. It was to be a closed off series with a possibility of a sequel, but the main story would be just that 13 episodes. That should be done more often. The good news is that is seems all the episodes have been filmed already, so they'll be airing all of them on ABC.com. At least we get the complete run, unlike with Smith. Arg

And the Light Shines on, While we all Ride On

The viewing/funeral was depressing. There was probably over a hundred people there, packed into the house. Sam looked different, like plastic, which was hard to see. Looked like Sam though, with snowboarding goggles, a Flogging Molly shirt, headphones and a couple cans of Red Bull. Good for him. I saw a couple of other guys from camp, and Sam's brother Gabe, who's been either in my cabin or village for the past four years. He looked good, as did his dad. They're opening up a scholarship for kids to go to camp in his name.I broke down in the car on the way back. This shouldn't happen.

I've had a little to divert me though. I called Sarah, which always seems to help. Watched Daybreak and got pissed off at the recent Veronica Mars news*, ate dinner. It's been a crappy day.

* Turns out that they're going to be abandoning the Season-long mystery thing after the second arc this season, and going with standalone episodes. They'll also be doing some overarcing romance things with the show, which is just plain annoying. Hopefully the show'll still be good after that.