My Semi-Regular Fall Television Rant

(OK Maybe it’s just my second.)

As my depression slowly improves, I find myself watching a little more TV.  This is actually something of a good thing, since in the worst years, the depression sucked enjoyment even out of TV, so I found myself able to tolerate very little of it.  Now I’m getting better, and it’s fall, so I have some new and old favorites I want to talk about.

First and foremost is “Elementary.”  I’ve always been a lover of Sherlock Holmes, in almost all iterations, so even though my husband doesn’t tolerate Watson’s gender change, I love it.  It’s well cast and well adapted, and some of the writing has made me cry.  It shows a much more human and fallible side to Sherlock’s traditional ‘perfection’ — though his outstanding mental acumen is still there — and it’s my favorite show right now.

A close second is “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”  As usual with Joss Whedon productions, it’s funny, tense, exciting, touching and thought provoking all at once.  I find myself wondering who is going to get killed off (though the romantic tension bit is already rather delightfully obvious).  I suppose one day I may get tired of the Joss Whedon ‘formula’ — but that day is not today.

“Castle” is doing another year of funny-but-interesting crime drama.  It’s not at the top of my list anymore, but I will always have a soft spot for Nathan Fillion and this year seems to be doing better writing than last year, so I’m happy with it.

Still waiting for the predictable-but-quirky “Grimm”, and I can’t bring myself to delete episodes of “Person of Interest” off of my TiVo (though I can’t bring myself to watch it, either.  I still can’t handle THAT much television).  Blue Bloods, though predictable and often rather bland, is refreshing in the family drama category (I can’t bring myself to generally put it fully in the ‘crime drama’ genre), because it bolsters rather than belittles more traditional viewpoints and values.  I appreciate that a lot.

The enigma of the season is “Sleepy Hollow.”  It’s the Twilight of the television world, in that I can’t stand it’s egregious errors of history, law, and culture but I can’t stop watching it.  Hello, though many think it’s simple, you can’t ‘lock someone up’ just because the police THINK they are crazy, cops don’t generally pull their guns and arrest someone who happens to be dressed weird and walking by their car when they get a call, and the Roanoke colony wouldn’t have spoken Middle English (it died out a century before Roanoke) COME ON PEOPLE AT LEAST CHECK WIKIPEDIA BEFORE YOU MAKE YOURSELVES LOOK SO STUPID.  And I don’t exactly appreciate people taking scripture and twisting it into a ridiculous plotline for entertainment value.  So why do I watch it?  It’s probably because the star is tall, dark, British, and bitingly witty (though his impossible list of positive qualities would make even Sherlock roll his eyes.  Eidetic memory?  Really?).   Ugh.  I’m so weak.