Geoff's top 15 TV Dramas, part 2: Almost made its...

Welcome back. This post series looks at my fave TV shows and why I like 'em. This particular post is the last one before i actually start the countdown, and focuses on the shows that just missed out on making the list. Many of the shows in this post are shows I followed regularly and liked/still like, but for one reason or another just didn't make the cut. These include:

1. "The West Wing" on NBC. West Wing was one of the most reliably entertaining and preachy shows on TV, and back in the late 90's-early 2000's when I started to watch TV more deliberately, TWW was on my regular rotation. I never watched the series from the beginning, but when I jumped in, I found it to be an interesting presentation of how the White House worked. I also found the characters to be pretty interesting, if a bit on the Mary-Sue side. I have to admit that I thought President Bartlett would have been a better president than the president at the time, but whatchagonnado :) The reason this didn't make the cut? I missed a few episodes during a key season, and by the time I started to get back into it, the focus was less on Bartlett and more on Santos and the dude played by Alan Alda. It was all sanctimonious, the perfect race for the presidency, with respect shown by each side to the other side, a situation where you felt that if either candidate won, it would be ok in your book whether or not you were a Republican or a Democrat. In other words, the show became more of a fairytale than Pushing Daisies did. A heart-warming fairytale yes, but even more depressing because of the reality which so vividly reminded us "ain't now way in HELL something like this is gonna happen". At any rate, the refocusing on the candidates and away from the Bartlett administration resulted in my attention refocusing elsewhere. One of these days I'll probably watch it all from beginning to end and see how it went.
2. The X Files. d on Fox. "The Truth Is Out There". This show is one of the all-time classics, and has gone down into TV History for many many reasons, least of all in showing that conspiracy theories, alien invasions and paranoia can in fact sustain a TV series for the long run. As long as you've got hot actors like David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, anyways. Again, this show ran its course before I was able to fully appreciate it, and watching it on Jamaican TV meant that I wasn't really able to follow the entire gist of the conspiracy. Nonetheless, it still had a major impact on me...I'll never forget that episode with the monstrous inbreeding family that had the quadruple-amputee mom under the bed. . When the X-Files was good, it was really good, but when it was bad, it was preposterous. As it was, the show was only good with Mulder and Scully. I liked Doggett, but Mulder/Scully WAS the X-Files. Without them, there was no show. Virtually every sci-fi show on my top list owes something to the X-Files, and I give it props for that. Plus, without the X-Files, we wouldn't have Vince Gilligan and "Breaking Bad", both of which we are eternally grateful.
3. "24" on Fox. Jack Bauer doesn't laugh in the face of death. Jack Bauer IS the face of death. The show had an interesting concept, where each hour of the series was one hour in real time as the fictional Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) spent 8 horrible-really-bad-totally-rotten days over 8 years dealing with various threats, deaths, moles and nukes. "24" was pretty much a cartoon in live action format, where people never had to use the bathroom for the entire 24 hours, where a 20 minute drive was always 20 minutes and traffic never interfered, and people seemed to always know when to pause the action for commercials to slip in (thanks to the multi-screen). Nonetheless, when the show was on, it was ON. It somehow managed to make Kiefer Sutherland look bad-ass, it showed the virtues of tortue, it was a clear supporter of "ends justify the means" and it was probably the first TV show that wasn't afraid to kill off its leads and popular characters. At the same time, Fox milked it too often for too long...with the number of moles that popped up, the number of tactical teams that ALWAYS got wasted when they partnered with Jack Bauer, and the number of times CTU dropped the ball or got the wrong guy or somehow needed Jack to bail 'em out, you would think the government would fire the CTU HR department. I know that you'd never get me to partner with Jack Bauer for love or money, because that's an automatic death sentence. You could be his best bud, but that dude will kill you dead if it means he completes the mission. Ask Curtis 'bout dat. "24" ran for 8 seasons. I never really watched season 1, but got more into season 2, and watched religiously up till about season 6 when it finally got too unreal for me, and it was patently clear that the writers were pulling stuff out of their ass (another problem for another show on this list) because they didn't know where they were going. I never watched seasons 7 or 8, except for the last two episodes ever...just so I could see what happened to Jack. I owed him that, at least. In my opinion, the lack of proper forward planning and vision for producing the show is what keeps 24 off my list. Still, props to the showrunners for President Palmer, hands down the best fictional president EVER. Yes, I'm biased :)
4. "Prison Break" on Fox. The more I think about it, the more I believe this show should have been on my guilty pleasures list and not on the honorable mentions list. The only reason why it can stay here is because of the characters, who somehow managed to transcend the blatant on-the-fly writing, twists and turns, the unrealistic situations and came to life. In particular, one character makes "Prison Break" one of the almost-rans instead of the "guilty pleasures." No, it's not Michael Scofield! Theodore Bagwell, a.k.a. 'T-Bag' is arguably the most enduring output of 'Prison Break'. He's unredeemable, totally scummy and remorseless, the ultimate survivor and guy you love to hate, and you REALLY love to hate him. Michael Scofield and his trademark Blue Steel glare, plans, counterplans, backup plans and crazy schemes are a close second, and as the titular hero, I think he's the closest I've ever seen to a "perfect" character on TV. By that, I mean a character with no flaws, no character defects, no weaknesses. That's not a good thing, mind you...not if you want true drama. Still, the team that he worked with had enough dumb muscle and flawed persons to make up for his perfection. I mainly watched the last part of season 2, all of season 3, and I remember watching Season 4 up until (SPOILER!) Michael Rappaport's character betrayed them and they wound up working for the bad guy they had spent the past two seasons trying to destroy, just to get back at that betrayer. I stopped watching the show for about 9 months, that's how pissed off I was. I eventually came back to finish it off, but I never forgot that so-called twist and how random the writers were doing stuff. So, only the characters keep it on the "missed" list, and if Robert Knepper wasn't so good as T-Bag, I'd have put it as a guilty pleasure and heck, as a show I'd have been ashamed to admit I watched.

Next post, the actual countdown begins! What show is at #15? You'll see...

Oh, I almost forgot about "Fringe" which also belongs on this list of almosts. I'm too tired to go into a full breakdown here, suffice to say that a final determination of its place depends on how it resolves the last season cliffhanger. It's gotten a lot better from it started, i'll give it that...

Also, special shout-outs to "Jericho" and "Firefly", gone but not forgotten...