Island Top 5 tv shows

[FelixSH]

I wanted to make this thread since I saw the one about books, but wanted to wait for the new forum, so that it wouldn't disappear too soon. Because I have some shows that I love too much to not considere them to be a part of who I have become. Bonus points if you can write a bit about why a certain show means something to you. But it's, of course, not obligatory, if you just want to post a list, feel free to do so.

In no particular order:

The Simpsons - It feels like the Simpsons existed for my whole live. Being born in 87, that is nearly true, and I always liked watching it. For years now, it has held a special place in my heart. Springfield feels a bit like home to me, and, because it was always there, just like a part of me.

Sailor Moon - I love the pretty colors during the transformations, I love the attack animations, I love how goofy and honest the show is. It probably showed me that girly shows could also be enjoyed by guys. When I was around 9 or 10, I watched TV in the morning before getting up, whatever show was shown during that time, and with only one channel, I had no choice. At first, I was annoyed that there was nothing cool on, but after two or three episode I was in love. The show heavily impressed an unshakable believe in me that people are, at their core, good, and that everyone can change for the better, if they only try. It is a believe that stuck with me till today, and is, as mentioned, unshakable. I don't have proof, and I don't need it, because I believe in it. And that is due to this show.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I love the combination of episodic TV and continual storytelling, that slowly developed during the run of this show. It's the perfect combination of both for me, having stuff develop over time, but also give the characters (and me) time to breath during filler episodes. It has great contrast between lighthearted scenes and disturbing, frightening stuff. The dialogue is clever, and the themes are really interesting. It has my favourite musical episode and, while season 6 and 7 are divisive, I love them both and just appreciate that they tried for the stuff they did in there. It has great characters who develop over the course of the show. And it is an optimistic show (even if the execution is lacking) - it argues that people can change for the better, if they only want to.

Babylon 5 - Similar to Buffy, this has the perfect combination of a continuing story and filler episodes, the pacing is perfect for me. It's story is planned out, and it shows. Everything has a purpose, nothing is just randomly thrown in without a plan what to do with it. It's just so rewarding to watch and rewatch. I find the themes pretty interesting, and had to think a lot about some of the stuff. It also is very 90s, in that it is a deeply optimistic show, despite the horrible things that happen. Like Sailor Moon and Buffy, it believes that everyone can change, no matter how much they have fallen. Plus, it argues that we can only overcome our difficulties if we actually work together and help each other, which is a message that can't be mentioned often enough.

The Good Place - Due to this show still being relatively new, I will just put this behind a spoiler. I don't think there are spoilers, but just in case. The only show on my list that isn't from before 2000. It is hilarious and clever, and I love how it incorporates so much about moral philosophy into it's story. There is no filler, and if it isn't planned out, at least roughly, it does a good job of not showing that. I love the characters and how the develop, and their dialogue is great. It moves fast and always changes directions in clever ways. And it's a show that I seem to never get sick of. I just finished watching the whole thing in a week or two, and I wouldn't mind to start all over, if I hadn't other things to watch.
But the most important thing to me is that, it feels like what a 90s sitcom would look like today. It is so deeply 90s in its optimism. Every problem can be solved, everyone can become a better person, if they just try to. It's not only clever, but also really nice. And I absolutely love the ending. For me, a perfect show, from beginning to end.

 

[JBear]

I honestly don't think I'd need five. Just give me The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I'm good. TNG is my favourite TV show of all time, and there's an essentially infinite number of episodes of The Simpsons. In fact, I'd probably appreciate the opportunity to catch up on the many seasons that I've missed since I stopped watching (which was a full decade or more later than most people).

 

[Adrenaline]

The Wire - Best show ever
The Sopranos - Other best show ever
Breaking Bad - Third best show ever
The Simpsons - Good combination of known quantity of really good stuff and stuff I haven't seen to waste time on
The X-Files - This is a show I've been meaning to watch through for years and being on an island seems like a good opportunity

 

[FelixSH]

I honestly don't think I'd need five. Just give me The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I'm good. TNG is my favourite TV show of all time, and there's an essentially infinite number of episodes of The Simpsons. In fact, I'd probably appreciate the opportunity to catch up on the many seasons that I've missed since I stopped watching (which was a full decade or more later than most people).

I completely forgot TNG. Not that I have a place where I could put it in, but my list doesn't seem complete withou this one. Maybe instead of The Good Place? But than I wouldn't have a sitcom. Complicated.

 

[ThornGhost]

Always that old nut of length versus quality. The "island" qualifier seems to imply that length should be weighted higher than a strictly "favorite" show list.

Is it fair to list "the news"?

 

[Falselogic]

The Simpsons, Supernatural, Parks & Rec, Futurama, Looney Tunes.

 

[FelixSH]

Always that old nut of length versus quality. The "island" qualifier seems to imply that length should be weighted higher than a strictly "favorite" show list.

Is it fair to list "the news"?

I guess not? I'd say whatever show you take, you can only take the episodes that have been produced up to now. So you could choose a news show, but only up to a certain date.

Length would probably be more relevant. At some point, you need to rewatch something, and the longer the stuff you have is, the longer you can draw that out. But at least with US shows, that shouldn't be a problem. For the most time, they are all super-long anyway.

 

[Droewyn]

Babylon 5. The plotting. The characters. The chemistry between the actors. Susan Fucking Ivanova. I would actually spend a genie wish to see Seasons 4 and 5 as they were originally intended, before cancellation threats blew everything to hell. Pity Jerry Doyle and the guy who played Marcus turned out to be such asshats. Even bigger shame that so many of the cast who weren't asshats died so young.

She-Ra: Princess of Power. Don't get me wrong; I adore the new series. It's absolutely fantastic. But OG She-Ra was formative for me. I lived in that universe for years of my childhood, much longer than it was actually on TV. I stole my brother's Horde figures. Upon realizing that She-Ra dolls fit on the backs of My Little Ponies pretty much perfectly, I moved the pony herd to take up residence in Etheria and staged epic cavalry battles. I got my mom to make me a show-accurate She-Ra costume for Halloween. I made up stories and headcanons that were so real to me, so integrated into the regular lore that I literally forgot it wasn't actually in the show -- years later, when the DVD release happened and I bought and rewatched it, I was so confused because where was the episode right after the pilot movie, where Adora had to struggle to earn everyone's trust and Kowl was secretly spying on her (which was how he wound up learning she was She-Ra)? I remembered that "episode" vividly. It doesn't exist, and never did. She-Ra wasn't the first thing I wrote elaborate mental fanfiction about as a kid -- pretty sure that was Rainbow Brite, or possibly My Little Pony, whichever came first -- but it's definitely the one that stuck with me the longest. She-Ra was also an objectively better show than He-Man, and I may die on that hill, but I will take you down with me.

Sailor Moon. Baby's first anime, since I never managed to get into Voltron or Robotech when they were on. I ran home from school every day to watch. Yeah, I was in high school; so? I taped all the episodes. I hosted Sailor Moon watch parties. I was heartbroken when it cut off at ep 65, and spent literal hours downloading any scrap of content I could find from BBSs and the baby internet. I kept that collection of low-res, pixellated gifs and jpegs for years. I still do have the entire archive of "Tuxedo" Will Wolfshohl's fanfic site zipped up in the depths of my documents folder. Again, not my first written fanfic (Every single vocabulary "use this word in a sentence" homework I did in sixth grade was a piece of Final Fantasy I microfiction because I hadn't graduated from being an overachieving nerd to an underachieving nerd yet), but it was the first that I posted online. Another absolutely formative series for me.

2005 Doctor Who. Yeah, I know. I do. But when it's good it's so, so good. A lighthearted romp with emotional consequences, where anything can happen. I will stan Donna Noble until the day I die. I fell off during the Capaldi run (Capaldi himself was great, but I was so fucking over Moffat and his bullshit by that point) but what I've seen of the cute blonde lady Doctor has me excited enough to start a rewatch of the whole series so I can get there properly without skipping/missing anything. No, I can't just watch the two new seasons. Except for the completely unnecessary Battle of Waterloo digression in Les Misérables, all stories must be started at the beginning and experienced through the end. To do otherwise is to invite FOMO-based anxiety and unhappiness. Yes, this is why I have a hard time with long-running comic series. I'm almost out of the '60s in Spider-Man, X-Men, and Thor, I swear.

Yuri!!! on Ice. All of a sudden at the end of 2016, my tumblr was full of this show. Gifsets, speculation, fan theories and headcanons. I started watching it out of self-defense, so that I'd know what the fuck everyone was freaking out about. I had no clue what an impact it would have on me. How could I have? At that time everyone was focused on the romance, on Victor and his motivations, on pretty animations and the music. I didn't know that so much of the main character's development was in overcoming crippling mental illness. Election night 2016 was the start of years of semi-weekly panic attacks for me. They only ended in June when I finally got my ADHD diagnosis and a prescription for adderall. Depression. Anxiety, both generalized and social. The urge to run away from my feelings, to hide in my bed to avoid dealing with emotional consequences. Guilt spirals. Imposter syndrome. Feeling like the people around me tolerate my presence to be nice. The panic attacks were new, but the rest of it has been something I've struggled with for my entire adult life. I identify with Yuuri Katsuki like I have never identified with a male character, ever. There are few female characters I resonate with so strongly. Add Victor to that, and his character development (I can and have written ten thousand words analyzing his transformation from a spoiled, petty diva to a slightly less-spoiled but still petty man in love who has found a renewed zest for life and is striving to be a better, kinder person, even if he still has a long ways to go). And Yurio, in all his teenage edgelord glory with anger issues, abandonment issues, and a crush on Japanese-Yuuri that's visible from space. He has a cat named Puma Tiger Scorpion; how badass is that when you're fifteen and doing your best to be metal? There is an attention to detail in the writing of this series that is only matched by shows like Steven Universe and Gravity Falls. Everything ties in; everything makes sense in the end. Every random-seeming comment, every micro-expression on a character's face... it all has meaning. The creators put their entire hearts into this project and it shows. And speaking of love, Love is what the series is about. Love, in all its forms, both healthy and not. And the obsessive love, the codependent love, it's explicitly called out as being unhealthy. There's friendship-love in the Nishigoris, and familial love in the Katsukis and Yurio's grandfather. Love, love, love, all over the place, with a Big Unambiguously Gay Romance smack dab in the middle, in a world where homophobia doesn't exist and queer / gender nonconforming characters don't need to struggle to accept their own identities. This show got me reading fanfic again. This show got me writing again. I had not written a word of fiction in ten years fan- or otherwise, and suddenly I have thousands of words on AO3 and such a never-ending flood of story ideas that I will never have time to make into reality that "DAMMIT DROE" is an official emoji on not one, but two different discord servers. I became a Patron of a YOI fan artist and found an online home in her discord, leading to friendships that I have no doubt will last a lifetime. (TMI WARNING) Hell, reading YOI smutfic is what lead to me finally experimenting with anal sex, and HOLY SHIT DID YOU GUYS KNOW THAT PENETRATIVE INTERCOURSE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL? THAT THE CLITORIS ISN'T THE ONLY THING BELOW THE WAIST CAPABLE OF FEELING PLEASURE? THAT PENETRATIVE ORGASMS ARE EVEN POSSIBLE? I WASTED SO MUCH TIME HAVING EMOTIONALLY FULFILLING BUT PHYSICALLY MEDIOCRE-TO-BAD SEX YOU GUYS WHY DIDN'T ANYONE SAY ANYTHING WHEN I WAS TWENTY ASLKFNAS;LDKFAS;DFA I just. Can't. Scream about this series enough. It's nearly perfect. It literally changed my life.

 

[Falselogic]

The Simpsons, Supernatural, Parks & Rec, Futurama, Looney Tunes.

At one point Arrested Development would have been on this list. But that show has aged very very poorly.

 

[Droewyn]

At one point Arrested Development would have been on this list. But that show has aged very very poorly.

Same with Buffy. Joss Whedon didn't so much burn his bridges with me as nuke them from orbit, and now everything he touched is poisoned. I can never rewatch Buffy because I want to retain positive memories of it.

 

[Falselogic]

I missed w/ Whedon did. Though he doesn't seem to be involved with anything anymore? At least I don't hear his name as much as I used to.

 

[Droewyn]

Here's a good breakdown.

Personally, I've been noticing in the last ten years (particularly with the Avengers movies) that his female characters are always, always sexualized and objectified. Violence toward them is also gendered and sexual. Again, always. He bragged on social media after Avengers I that he got away with calling a character a cunt because the ratings people didn't recognize the word (the infamous "mewling quim" line).

Also I was still recovering from my hysterectomy when I went to the theatre to see Natasha Romanov declare to Bruce Banner that she was more of a monster than he'd ever be because she agreed to have her reproductive organs removed, even though her only alternative was death, and neither Banner nor the narrative disagreed with her self-assessment. (I don't want to get started on this scene... again... but I have. Opinions.)

 

[Falselogic]

Yeesh. That's all pretty gross.

 

[FelixSH]

Thanks for the post, Droewyn. That was a very interesting read. Totally agree on wanting to see how season 4 and 5 would have actually looked like and that Susan Ivanova is The Best.

Regarding Buffy, the Buffy podcast I listen to goes into great detail about the problematic stuff in the show. You could probably write a thesis about Xander alone. The hosts also proposed the idea that Whedon didn't try to make a feminist show. Instead, he just wanted to subvert tropes (like in the very first scene, where the gross guy takes the blond girl to a dark, empty place, but instead of doing horrible things, he becomes the victim).

I still love the show, but it also has a ton of problems.

 

[Issun]

Lost, The Office, Mystery Science Theater 3000.

That's pretty much all I need right there.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Well, the easy thing is to go with shows I like that are also really long.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - It does bum me that Mike Nelson recently producing a Doug Tennapel podcast then cutting ties (good) with an "I'm sorry people were offended" apology (less good) does hurt enjoyment of his episodes a bit, the show is still largely very funny and fits in with my interest with incompetent filmmaking as a window into creators souls.
The Simpsons - The greatest comedy TV series in my mind. And I even am pretty forgiving of the second decade of shows, some unpleasant assault by pandas aside.
Doctor Who - Over 50 years of show and a lot of them are good.
Better Call Saul - Easily the shortest show on the list but it has some incredibly hypnotic scenes of characters slowly implementing a plan.
Adventure Time - It was that or Steven Universe and my choice might flip flop depending on when you catch me.

 

[Voncaster]

Star Trek TNG. My favorite Star Trek show.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. My favorite anime.
Batman 66. My favorite TV show on the bat channel.
Twin Peaks. My favorite David Lynch TV show.
The Simpsons. I can't have Halloween on the island without the Treehouse of Horror.

This is tough. I really want to bring along classics Small Wonder and Supermarket Sweep, but can't make room for them.

 

[Rascally Badger]

Bob's Burgers - Basically what everyone else says about The Simpsons is my Bob's Burgers take.
Fargo - I find something new every time I rewatch a season of this. (Really, Season 3 is a depressing masterpiece about how little the truth matters) It works as both a vicious morality play and as a crime drama and as light social commentary.
Psych - A plentiful personal favorite. I find it very rewatchable.
Columbo - Best mystery show ever made.
The Wire - So I will finally watch The Wire.