LJG765

I must be in the minority in that I'm concentrating on the Holiday challenge this month, that being said, I am watching a lot of TV specials so if the challenge was this month, I'd be watching a lot of things for double credit.

I know I'm late chiming in on the checklist additions, but I've been gone for awhile visiting a friend. I usually at least attempt the checklists. I do tend to marathon a season of something at a time, but switch around which shows I'm watching as I don't tend to stick with the same show after a season. I'm just ready to watch something different. The checklist usually gets filled pretty easily with a handful of episodes that I search out to finish it off for individual items.

That being said, this year, I think I'm going to watch some of my unwatched Trek and I don't know how the checklist will prosper/suffer because of that. I also will be gone a week in January where TV time is not going to be a priority so I'm not certain if I'm going to work on it or make it much of a focus.

I do enjoy checklists and like them as a bit of guidance when I'm staring at my collection going, "I want to watch SOMETHING but I have no idea what."

LorenzoL

I watched 3 episodes of Arrow S2: Identity, Broken Dolls and Crucible. I plan to finish S2 just in time for the Challenge to finally catch up to all of the episodes of S3.

LorenzoL

I do that too. I'm in S9 now but I usually put the show on when I want something "light".

shadokitty

I got two things in the mail yesterday that will be great for the challenge, Wild Pacific, and Predator Dinosaurs. I've also ordered Ganges and for Amazon Instant, I bought Walking with Dinosaurs, as well as a couple episodes of Animals And Nature. I might also take this chance to finish my National Geographic Oceans set.

Ash Ketchum

More pix of recent viewings on my blog:

https://briandanacamp.wordpress.com/...ven/#more-2245

shadokitty

I plan to watch baseball during this challenge to, as my season pass to MLB.TV allows me to watch any game from last season since the entire season is archived, including spring training games.

shadokitty

Great pics and a very good article. Makes me want to watch some Japanese TV. Besides my copies of Ultraman and Super Robot Red Baron, Amazon Prime has a lot of Power Rangers, not to mention my anime collection.

shadokitty

I just finished revisiting Blue Planet, including for the first time, the bonus disc. I was surprised that the bonus disc was full length episodes.

Travis McClain

I actually made it out to a ball game this year! 29 July: Reds/Diamondbacks in Cincy. (I also made it to a Triple-A game in Louisville in May, where Aroldis Chapman was rehabbing.)

shadokitty

Cool, the closest major league team to me is either Toronto, or Cleveland. Both about 100 miles from me. Incidentally, I have zero motivation today. Thank I'm just going to veg either in bed or on the couch and watch TV.

Travis McClain

I've been to Cleveland (to see an Indians/Rays game), but not Toronto (for anything). This was my first MLB game in four years. I used to make it up to Cincinnati (about an hour away from me) half a dozen times a season, but that was before Crohn's.

shadokitty

I hope you're doing ok. After finishing Blue Planet, I started on Galapagos tonight.

Travis McClain

Eh, I have good days and I have bad days, same as anyone else, I suppose. It's amazing to me that we already have more than a hundred posts in this thread with two weeks to go before the challenge even begins.

A bit of brainstorming got me wondering if there'd be any interest in an alternate, informal reach goal for this challenge:

200 Broadcast Hours in 31 Days

This is based on the 1 movie = 2 broadcast hours conversion formula. To meet the goal, you could watch:

200 one-hour episodes
400 half-hour episodes
800 quarter-hour episodes (think: [adult swim])
Or any combination thereof.

I looked at my previous challenges. It looks like I average around 100 broadcast hours, but I also tend to fade and not watch anything at all for an entire week, and I miss days here and there.

Thoughts?

shadokitty

That's how I am, good days and bad days.

While I don't know if I'll reach the goal, I kind of like that idea.

BobO'Link

Works for me as that's pretty close to what I do on a monthly basis anyway. Plus I just got in complete series for Sgt. Bilko, Mister Ed, and Batman '66 that I feel a need to move to the top of the "to watch" list!

Ash Ketchum

I'm wondering if we shouldn't just make TV on DVD an entire year's challenge. Just to, y'know, get through some of the backlog.

Last night I was watching a movie I taped off the Family Channel some 20-odd years ago and following the movie on the tape was a "Patty Duke" episode from Nick at Nite, followed by the first half of a "My Three Sons" episode before the tape ran out. I didn't even know they were on the tape! The "Patty Duke" episode featured a then-popular singing act called Chad and Jeremy (playing Nigel and Patrick) and I definitely remember seeing this episode when it was first on! I don't remember watching "My Three Sons" much as a kid, so this episode was something of a revelation in that Fred MacMurray takes his youngest son, Chip, to his place of work--a US Air Force base, where he works as an Aeronautical Engineer doing structural design of planes and had formerly been a test pilot. Which begs the question: is that the kind of work they even do on bases? Isn't that what they do at airplane manufacturing sites? In any event, I had no idea that's what the character did for a living.

BobO'Link

I'm game! But then what do I do with the huge backlog of *movies*!?!? I'm frequently torn as to which I need to work through the most!
IIRC he's not employed by the USAF but works for a contractor who has offices on the base. Of course it *has* been decades since I saw the show - my sister and I watched it every week until about the time William Frawley got too sick to stay and left the show. We didn't much care for the character "Uncle Charlie" (William Demarest) who'd replaced "Bub" (the ailing William Frawley) mid-season right before "Mike" married and left the show. To a lesser degree we didn't care for the character of "Ernie" joining the show to fill in the gap left by the departing "Mike". Basically after "Bud" left the show we found our interest declining with each year. If it were in the press about Frawley's health we never saw (or heard) anything. Being kids we just didn't understand why they'd replace his character without much mention and didn't care for the cascading changes his leaving seemingly brought. By the time "Robbie" married (8th or 9th season?) we'd pretty much stopped watching.

shadokitty

Works for me, as I watch a lot of TV anyways.

Ash Ketchum

What struck me as I watched the bits with "Bub" yesterday is that he's essentially a maid, as if the character was designed as a woman but then the network felt having a single woman in a house full of unattached men was too much for the audience to handle, so they made the character a man. In the clip I saw, Bub makes a cake and then dinner and then washes the dishes and cleans the place, vacuuming under one of the lazy sons' legs in the living room. Quite a sea change for Fred Mertz. I wonder what Ethel thought. (Was Vivian Vance ever a guest on the show?) I don't remember Uncle Charlie much, but he was definitely much more brusque than Bub.

Travis McClain

Since TV content qualifies for all the other challenges except Oscars and Criterion, it's really just a matter of thematic organization on the part of the viewer to stretch it year-round. (Plus, there are technically a few TV things that even qualify for those challenges!)

Looking at the calendar, though, I do see that the Oscar Challenge will begin during the TV on DVD* Challenge; the Oscars air 22 February, so that challenge will cover the entire last week of this one. That'll put the squeeze on some of us. I suppose to compensate, we could start on Boxing Day (i.e., the day after Christmas) this year?

BobO'Link

Vance was never on My Three Sons. Reportedly she and Frawley hated each other and only tolerated each other on I Love Lucy because it paid very well.

shadokitty

I wouldn't mind starting right after Christmas.

BobO'Link

I normally don't bother with the Oscar Challenge and since I don't seem to be doing any Holiday viewing I might as well start early. That gives me another week to rack up numbers.

LorenzoL

I'm game!

shadokitty

I just finished Wildest Indochina on Netflix. It was a very interesting series. I like the Wildest shows on Netflix.