Hmmmmm.... trrricky.

[captainsblog]

The story so far:
Day 01 - A show that should have never been canceled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04- Your favorite show ever

Subjective much?

I could go any number of ways with this one. Certainly, anything current can't be for me, because none of that has built the body of work (for me, anyway) that could be tested for time, quality or influence.  My first thought was Hill Street Blues: I watched it religiously when it was on, it changed much of how dramatic television worked, it was impeccably cast and written for, and it didn't have a sucky ending.

MASH lost out mainly for that last point. In terms of sheer exposure, it's by far the winner. At one point when I was in college, before market-protection rules came about, you could, and I often did, watch that show as many as five times a day (once syndicated on Syracuse TV, another early-evening oldie from Channel 5 in New York, the new Monday episode on CBS, another "Henry," as we called them, on WNEW, and finally a CBS late-night broadcast they put up against Carson). It has more comic lines burned into my head than anything before or since. Casting was great, and the early writing was even better, but after eleven years, it headed way too deep into anachronistic PC smarm by the end; and the finale, despite its longtime status as the most-watched show ever, was just weird and wrong. I've never seen it since.

So I'm going to answer the question that was asked; my favorite show ever is not the best show ever, but may have been the most important show ever.

----

Star Trek's original run wasn't much to look at, and in retrospect gave us so much to laugh at. The redshirts; the cheesy special effects; the two dozen plots out of 78 from the What Were They Thinking anthology. Yet think about how much has come about since then, in and outside the Trek universe, that wouldn't have happened if Gene Roddenberry hadn't sold that show. No Leap. No Firefly. Maybe no Who revival.  ST:TOS showed, before but especially after its cancellation, that fans cared about this stuff, even when the writers were wrecking its credibility with "wow look, another planet just like ours only 100 light years away" scripts.

It is arguable that it all would have happened anyway after George Lucas came along with Star Wars. Yet, THAT never translated to the small screen. (Two words: Holiday special.) Other creative minds, from Larson to the Andersons, tried riding that wave in the late 1970s to televised success. None hit the plateau that Roddenberry had, and would again by the time TNG came along.

ST:TOS also showed everyone how important the fans were. I was one of the faithful who walked three miles in the snow, uphill both ways, to see the ST:TMP premiere in a suburban Ithaca single-screen movie house on the day of its release. I went to cons in the 80s and even 90s, just because of the cameraderie they brought about. (I'm still pondering going to one this coming weekend, which at least two friends, one old and one newer, will be at.) That kind of loyalty wouldn't have come about for just anything.

As for longevity, consider that in the almost 23 years since I got married, this is only the fourth that has not contained either an ongoing series or feature film, and the next in the prequel to TOS is in the works. I can't think of anything that has lasted that long or that well.

So until tomorrow, Live Long and Prosper:)

Comments

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, I thought that the last MASH was searing and brilliant.

Just my opinion, not an objective reality. But interesting.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

It was just too.... I don't know.... off-base for me.

The changes in length, point of view, making it so centrally Hawkeye-centric while throwing in a couple of B- and C-stories about Klinger's marriage and BJ's motorcycle,... all of it just left me cold.

Plus if I didn't know then, I learned soon after that it wasn't even the final ep to be filmed. That was the final regular 30 minute episode, the title of which escapes me but it was the time capsule story. "Just a broken fan belt" told the story of that series for me better than the ensuing famous 150 minutes of expensive commercials did. You could tell that the whole cast knew this was the wrap; even in those days before regular improv being part of episodic television, this show always gained an extra shine when the actors reacted to something unexpected, be it something that happened or, here, what they must have been feeling after eight to eleven years together on something so special.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I agree. The reason Star Wars failed and Star Trek succeeded is because the latter was character driven. We didn't watch to see aliens, we watched to see how Kirk and Spock and Bones would react. We cared about them, the technology and various B.E.M.s were just props. Compare to Lucas, where the people are props for a sweeping vista of special effects.