Everyone watches television, but not everyone loves television. To love TV is to be so smitten with a show that you wait impatiently between episodes gnashing your teeth for six long days, possibly scouring the internet for spoilers, and can only hope to survive summer hiatus with your sanity intact. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.  Over the years there have been a handful of shows that I watched religiously, and others that looked promising, but  spiraled catastrophically downwards. This year’s countdown to season finales left me feeling a bit nostalgic about TV past, so I thought I would ramble on a bit about my favorite shows, past and present. To keep it interesting, I’ll start from the bottom of the list.

5. Lois & Clark

This one goes way, way, waaaay back–think middle school. It’s scary, and somewhat depressing, to think how long ago that was. Anyways, it’s impossible to remember exactly when I started watching, but I know that Lois & Clark was the first TV show that I truly committed to viewing weekly. Lois & Clark exemplifies a common theme in shows I enjoy: writers that spend years possibly building up to romance between the main characters, or at least teasing viewers with the idea that it might happen.  It also set the bar for my perception of actors and actresses in modern remakes of the Superman franchise. Certainly no other Lois Lane has outdone Teri Hatcher. None come even close, really, and Kate Bosworth’s Lois of the recent Superman Returns film was so awful it was a distraction from the rest of the movie. And of course, compared to Dean Cain, Smallville’s Tom Welling (below)  is a total wimp.

4. Smallville

I admit I only started watching Smallville because Grant wanted me to. It was, in fact, the first  show we regularly watched together and we still watch it now, years later.  Despite its longevity, Smallville is low on my list for being such a roller coaster: some weeks the show is absolutely great, and other weeks it’s so terrible I think I might start bleeding out of my eyes.  I boycotted Smallville  for a almost an entire season when the writing was especially bad, thinking it was a lost cause. Grant continued watching, and eventually I came back. Luckily the eighth season has been much improved, though I have also re-calibrated my expectations to a drastically lower level.

3. The X-Files

Like Smallville, The X-Files was bittersweet: at times great, but ultimately, an extreme disappointment. I started watching the show on a friend’s suggestion and was immediately hooked. This was partly because of the quality of the show, and partly because I thought David Duchovny was cute. Please keep in mind I was, what, thirteen years old? (Now apparently a sex addict, he is 100% off my attractive list.) The X-Files was a staple throughout high school and stayed with me until undergraduate. I have great memories of packing into the lounge in Cornell’s Clara Dickson Hall with numerous other students, ready to watch new episodes on a big-screen television. Unfortunately The X-Files jumped the shark somewhere around the sixth season and I was officially done with the show shortly thereafter. Years later I returned one last time to watch the series finale. The X-Files does have one unique, if largely unknown, distinction: this show invented the concept of  a “shipper“  fan, as in the teenage girls (and teenage-girls-at-heart) who long for a romantic relationship between platonic characters, analyze episodes to seek signs that such a relationship is imminent, and discuss the topic endlessly on internet forums. This is the same phenomenon that gave the world irritating acronyms like Bennifer, Brangelina, and TomKat, in case you were wondering where those came from. Nowadays you can find internet fans discussing couples such as Skate (Lost, Sawyer-Kate), Chameron (House MD, Chase and Cameron), and, believe it or not, Hilson (House MD, House and Wilson).

2. M*A*S*H

M*A*S*H likely seems anachronistic, but I really did watch it throughout high school. It is the only show that I watched purely in syndication, because its original run ended before I turned two years old!  M*A*S*H deserves its spot for several reasons. It wins the prize for hours watched, as this was the only show I could watch daily (two episodes per day in the afternoon), and holidays usually brought a M*A*S*H marathon of 12 hours or more. M*A*S*H also has the honor of inspiring the names of two pets, a dog named Wally, after Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, and a Siamese fighting fish named Potter, after Colonel Sherman Potter. Finally, the intriguing parallel between the 4077th MASH unit and my childhood phone number ending in 4077 was not lost on me.  The beauty of M*A*S*H is that it is a little bit of everything: comedy, medical drama, and a “best buddy” story with misfit doctors (Hawkeye and Hunnicut).  There is also the endless immature banter between the male characters and their superior, Margaret “Hotlips” Houlihan.  If this seems somewhat familiar, it’s intentional–I seriously wonder whether the writers of the next show on this list have taken quite a bit of inspiration from M*A*S*H. However, what especially keeps me thinking about M*A*S*H is a single episode in which an autoclave freakishly explodes, seriously injuring several characters. I know it’s totally stupid, but that blast still lingers in my subconscious when I use the autoclave at work.

1. House MD

I have watched House MD less than six months, so it feels a little disingenuous putting it as my number one show. However, in that short time  I have gone from zero to caught-up-with-season-five, and I can honestly say that unlike Smallville or The X-Files,  there was never a real dud among any of the episodes I saw. I think the reason why is that House’s formula appeals to me, and House adheres strictly to its formula. Grant finds this monotonous, but I apparently can’t get enough of the convulsions, pleural effusions, and bloody projectile vomit. The diagnosing never gets old, either–my inner scientist loves the technical jargon– though at this point it’s pretty clear that any guess made in the first forty minutes of an episode is wrong. I’m still amazed that they managed to use Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba I learned about in a medical parasitology course. The writers now seem to focus less on the patients and more on the relationships between the main characters, House and Cuddy ( “Huddy”),  which appeals to my inner hopeless romantic. It’s actually more of a six year old hopeless romantic, as I yelled and hid under the covers when they actually made physical contact. My favorite reaction video to the recent House-Cuddy romance can be seen here.

Honorable Mention

MST3K

South Park

Lost

Heroes

Firefly