I watched Community S1 over the past couple of days. This was a blind buy last year and I wasn't sure just what to expect. I rarely watch "broadcast" TV these days preferring to just purchase series I like and will regularly blind buy S1 of a series if it sounds promising and the price is "right". This one sounded interesting and had Chevy Chase as a cast member so I thought it'd be worth taking a chance. I found that it's a very funny mash up of standard ensemble style sit-com, documentary style show, and parody. I expected Chevy Chase to dominate the proceedings but was pleasantly surprised that he doesn't and takes mostly a back seat to the other cast members. He did one of his SNL type falls in an episode but it worked very well within the context. Almost a parody of himself. It's quite quirky and seems to push itself to be more and more "out there" as it progresses but never goes too far frequently riding a fine line between normal and absurd. I enjoyed it so much I went out today and picked up S2 (on sale this week at Target).

no i didnt have to my dd was already to pounce on me the next morning as he saw star trek in my recently watched section of netflix. I dont know how much ill get thru as i have alot on my plate but will def look at some of the ones mentioned in this thread.


just finished s1 of jusified and the finale bulletville couldn't be better named. the show def hit its stride around episode 8 or so and never let up. cant wait until i boot up s2.

gonna try and knock out breaking bad s3 and justified s2 this weekend then move onto game of thrones and tru blood.

Had an off day and watched various things I've been wanting to watch.

A friend and I have been watching Battlestar Galactica over the past month or so, but it's tough to get together. So I'll sporadically be watching eps of that (I've already seen it, but he hasn't).

My copy of Justified S2 has been shipped and I'll be watching it soon as well. Can't wait!

Thanks for the tip. I recorded four eps. yesterday, including one I remember that featured Howard Duff as traveling journalist Samuel Clemens.

I've jumped in to the challenge. I made an adjustment to my checklist because cable channels aren't really networks. They're specialty channels with no localized afiliates. I live in Canada, so I added our two major networks...although I doubt I'll watch any of those shows.

I have lots I'm attempting to get through and more time this month than usual since I'm off work until February. Fun challenge. Not numbering mine though. That system ain't pretty.

I was reading he finally realized he wasn't getting any work because he realized he was a complete and utter ass and burned tons of bridges, so now he's starting up slow again and trying not to do that again.

I have to look it up when I get home but I get some channel that's mostly shows related to cattle ranchers but they air The Roy Rogers Show on Thursdays.

True. I should reword that better. I was in an early morning rush to get some sort of checklist out.

Sounds like it might be RFD TV?

That's it.

Moving right along with Star Trek. "The Trouble with Tribbles" is such a hilarious episode. It took all of my willpower not to hop to the DS9 "sequel" to this episode. "Journal to Babel" is also a great episode and we get to see Mark Lenard again. I was also wondering why The Next Generation never did an episode in the mirror universe? "Mirror, Mirror" was an awesome episode and I'm glad DS9 ran with it and Enterprise jumped on that bandwagon too but it would have been very interesting to see Picard et. al. in that universe.

^TNG seemed to be too busy with the Borg, Holodeck, and "Q" to worry about other storylines...

I know I'm in the minority but the Borg just don't do anything for me. I absolutely *hated* when 6 of 9 joined Voyager. At least they didn't get as bogged down with Borg stories as did TNG. It seemed that every time I'd catch a TNG episode it would be about the Borg, a lame holodeck story that had nothing to do with Star Trek other than it happened on the holodeck, a Wesley Crusher saves the day episode, or "Q" messes with everyone for no good reason other than boredom and just goes away at the end. Granted, TOS has several episodes with "Q"-like beings, but I tend to dislike those stories as well for the same reason.

From the episodes of TNG I've seen I got the impression the writers frequently hit a wall and someone would say: "Hey! I have a story I wrote for (fill in the blank for almost any drama/adventure program) that would work on the holodeck! We just have to write the wrap-arounds and change character names!" or "We haven't used the Borg in 4-5 episodes. What can we do with them?" or "Wesley hasn't done anything lately - how about if he saves the day *again*?". I'll admit that may be a bit harsh and unfair as I did *not* watch this series regularly after Season 1 (you can primarily blame the Wesley Crusher character with Riker coming in a close second). It just felt that way when I'd catch the random episode while channel hopping.

Now... I really need to drill through these half-hour blind-buy comedy series I've somewhat committed to watching first and get to Enterprise S3 & S4! Your journey through TOS also has me itching to watch a few of those episodes too! I also need to finish watching The Greatest American Hero (about half way through S3) and move forward with Wanted: Dead or Alive S2 and Rawhide S1. I could do this challenge year 'round!

Last night I was in my local FYE and bought two box sets of TV westerns, one legit and one p.d.

TOP TV WESTERNS: The Virginian (3 eps.)/Wagon Train (4 eps.)/Laredo (5 eps.)/Laramie (5 eps.) Timeless Media Group/NBC Universal ($19.99)

ULTIMATE WESTERNS: Television Classics 150 Episodes/Mill Creek ($19.99)

When I got home, of course, I looked them up on Amazon and saw they were $8 cheaper there.

In any event, it’s quite a treasure trove of TV westerns, with 167 episodes total. The second set has 28 different series, some represented by 12 episodes, some by only 1, most somewhere in between. Some are series I saw on TV as a kid, some are series I’ve seen more recently, while 13 are series I’ve never seen before. Most are from the 1950s, the glory days of TV westerns. I’ve already watched seven episodes since last night (all are up on my list in thread #27 in the list thread). As you’d expect from a Mill Creek set, some are in excellent condition, some are in poor condition and most are in between. I was surprised how good the color prints in the Cisco Kid series are, as well as the one color Lone Ranger episode included. “The Cisco Kid” (1950) was the first TV western to be filmed in color and, for all I know, may have been the first TV series ever to have been filmed in color. “The Lone Ranger” started out in b&w, but switched to color after a few seasons, which makes it probably the second TV western series to be filmed in color. (I think “Bonanza” would be the third.)

What strikes me as I watch the older wave of western series is how much action they have in them, as opposed to the later, network/studio TV westerns such as “Wagon Train,” “Bonanza,” “Gunsmoke,” and “The Virginian,” which tended to focus more on drama than action. The reason for this is that the first western series for TV were produced by the same personnel who’d been churning out B-westerns for two-to-three decades before TV ended the reign of B-westerns. These people knew how to turn them out fast, cheap, and full of action, so they just switched gears and made them faster, cheaper and shorter for the new medium. They’re filled with fistfights, chases on horseback and the inevitable shootouts in the rocks.

When the later wave of TV westerns came along, they were made by younger people who learned their trade in television dramas and were less interested in action. So you get all kinds of social undercurrents in the western dramas of the late ‘50s and ‘60s. Plus, these new “prestige” westerns had higher production values and big name guest stars (Bette Davis, anyone?), so the earlier series, which were still popular in syndication, began to look cheaper and shoddier to the family audience of the era, when compared with “Bonanza” and such. At some point in the 1950s, there was also a backlash against TV violence, with the earlier action-packed TV westerns taking a particular hit.

Anyway, it’s fun to be able to plunge into the past like this.

Got a friend coming over who wants to see some Japanese sci fi, so tonight along with my Wild Kingdom sets that I am working on going through, I'm going to show him a few episodes of my Super Robot Red Baron set as well.

If this site (The Classic TV Archive) is accurate there were several TV programs apparently filmed in color before Bonanza became the first western broadcast in color. They are:

The Gene Autry Show (Melody Ranch) - 1950-55, 91 episodes x 30 min (78bw/13color)
The Cisco Kid - 1951-55, 156 episodes x 30 min color (The first tv series to be filmed in color)
The Lone Ranger - 1949-57, 221 episodes x 30 min (final 39 color)
Wild Bill Hickok - 1951-54, 113 episodes x 30 min (74 bw /39 color)
Judge Roy Bean - 1955, 39 episode x 30 min color
Northwest Passage - 1957-58, 26 episodes x 30 min color

The only ones of that list I've ever seen are The Lone Ranger (grew up on that one) and The Cisco Kid (picked up a MC set several years ago). I know I've seen some Gene Autry stuff but really don't know if it was TV shows or the serials he did. Until you mentioned it I'd not really noticed the reduction in action sequences as the genre matured. I think you're "spot on" with why. I just knew I tend to like the earlier stuff better and always thought it was simply due to the years in which I was mainly watching those programs. The Lone Ranger was a staple when I was young but I also remember watching and liking episodes of Wanted - Dead or Alive, Have Gun - Will Travel, The Rifleman, The Roy Rogers Show, and occasionally Rawhide.

There are others for which I have vague recollections of watching an episode here and there but nothing I, or my family, watched on a regular basis. Quite a few "classics" came on when we were at church or during times I would typically be outside playing. Even then, my parents and sister are not big western fans so I'd have to watch whatever they wanted most nights since we only had one TV until I turned 13 (when dad and I built our first color TV - a HeathKit model). Of course, I liked most of the same comedy shows my sister liked so that was some consolation.

Thanks for this info. There are six eps. of "Judge Roy Bean" in the box set I bought and they're listed as being in color. (Didn't catch that before I did my post.) I never knew that eps. of "The Gene Autry Show" and "Wild Bill Hickok" had been filmed in color. I'd love to see those. I'm glad there are more than I thought. There are some eps. of "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" in the set and those are in color, but the prints are so bad, they look like they were smeared with mud. That's a series I remember liking a lot as a kid, although, alas, I only saw these series in black-and-white even when they were broadcast in color. We never had a color set growing up. Only when I moved out on my own in the later '70s did I get a color set for myself. It was only then that I realized that some seasons of the original "Superman" were in color.

I've seen episodes of "Northwest Passage" and they were in color but I never thought of it as a western since it's about the French and Indian War. I remember one episode where the heroes take care of some orphans they find in a bombed-out building. Well, the street set used for the filming was from a WWII movie that had been set in Germany or something and looked nothing like any of the cities in 1760s America.

Might I also suggest 50 Episodes of Gun Justice featuring The Lone Ranger?
http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Justice-Fe...5990369&sr=8-1

New question, totally unrelated to westerns. I took a break from horses and gunplay today to watch a four-and-a-half-hour music special that ran on Japanese TV on New Year's Eve. It's on two discs. How do I count it?

1) four separate entries, one for each hour?

2) two separate entries, one for each disc?

3) one single entry, since it's one show?

If it was just one long four-and-a-half-hour music special, it'd count just as a long show. Follow the guide in the rules for figuring out how much something is worth.

You're looking at an hour with commercials as being 1 entry. If there's no commercials, 1 entry is about 45 minutes of show. So if it was 4.5 hours without commercials, you're looking at it being worth around 6 entries. If you wanted to break it down into more sections, that's fine too.

Mister Peepers, were you sitting on this season's Amazing Race just to save it for the challenge?

While making my way through Moral Orel for the challenge I was browsing online for information about the show as well as the new season of Mary Shelley's Frankenhole and stumbled upon this:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/edy0cF_hM2M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Not sure how I missed it, but that little teaser has me pretty excited for some new Moral Orel. It's such a great show, canceled way before its time.

i know nothing about anime but i have a few sets that iv been meaning on *re* watching. if a series is episodic do most of them air on tv? or dvd releases?

i have witchcraft, claymore, and high school of the dead

I may be wrong, and if someone knows the correct answer, feel free to correct me, but I believe most anime aired on Japanese tv, so I think they would be eligible.

You can always look these up on the Anime News Network. Claymore and High School of the Dead are indeed TV series. However, they have nothing listed under the title, "Witchcraft." Did you mean "Witchblade"? That one is a TV series also.

So I began Season 3 of the Original Series which I had never seen before (with the exception of Tholian Web and Let that Be Your Last Battlefield). I figured the episodes couldn't be nearly as bad as most people made them out to be. The first eight episodes were either dull or ridiculous. "The Enterprise Incident" was ok but the rest left me shaking my head.

The wife goes to Japan to visit her family in the Summer, which means I end up recording a bunch of stuff for her to watch when she gets back. I work days and she works dinner at a restaurant, which makes getting through shows take longer than normal. It's usually slow enough that by the time we finish Survivor or Amazing Race, the new season either starts in a couple weeks or has already started.

When it comes to stuff she wants to watch on DVD, she's years behind on things. 4 kids eat up a lot of free time.