latest updates
4-16-24
current shows / favorite shows
latest updates 4-16-24
classic shows (1950s & 60s)
comedy (sitcoms)
informational shows
(documentaries, learning, etc.)
legal dramas
(police, lawyers, et al.)
too something
(too short-lived, too poorly remembered, etc.)
TV movies
animated /
DCOMs /
genre (sci-fi/fantasy) /
Halloween (horror/supernatural) /
holidays
variety shows
(game shows, music, sketch comedy)
miscellaneous
CBS Television Reading Program
commercials
programming blocks
Saturday mornings
sports
summer series
TV musicals
tek's nostalgia: television
shows I'd like to see (see also webseries I want to watch)
shows I've been missing
Introductory Notes
Item One: Ratings.
Item Two: Links
Other sites I sometimes link to may include The A.V. Club, Dread Central, Made for TV Movie Wiki, Retro Junk, Sitcoms Online (see 2b), The Templeton Gate, Thrilling Detective,
Item 2a.: Wikia (aka "Fandom")
Item 2b.: Sitcoms Online
Item 2c.: Streaming sites
Item 2d.: Additional links
Item Three: Apologies & explanations.
Item 3a.: I suck.
Item 3b.: Opinions.
Item 3c.: Content.
Item 3d.: Language
Item Four: Attraction.
I used to have a system of tiers for each category, different pages on which I'd group shows based on how much I liked them. I eventually decided to abandon that system, in favor of having basically one page for each category (with each page having a navframe with links to the reviews of each individual show). The show pages themselves will now have individual ratings (which are explained on the page linked to above). It took me years to move all my old reviews over to the new organizational and ranking system, but I'm finally done....
I try to provide a number of links in each of my reviews, to sites which may give a little or a lot more information than I do in my reviews themselves. In my estimation, the most important sites I commonly link to include network and/or production sites, as well as The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), TV.com (now defunct), TV Tango, TV Tropes, Wikia (see 2a), and Wikipedia. TVarchive.ca (now defunct), and Television Without Pity (TWoP). In some cases I may also include links to network sites in other countries, like Canada or the UK, even for American shows. And I may link to home video (DVD/Blu-ray) sites, and in rare cases to favored fansites (see 2c). Any or all of the sites I link to may be valuable resources, so please avail yourselves of them. Just take anything they say with a grain of salt, because many of them rely to a great extent upon input from random people on the internet who submit info. Even official sites are not infallible, and may occasionally unwittingly include misinformation (but my own reviews may do so, as well, as much as I try to avoid it). And network sites may disappear after a show is cancelled.
Fan-maintained wikis (other than TV Tropes or Wikipedia) will often provide a great deal of information about a show, quite possibly more than even network or production sites do. This is especially useful in cases where official sites disappear after a show ends; wikis are much more likely to be permanent. There are, of course, any number of wiki providers, but I find that more often than not, the wikis I like best tend to be on Wikia. I have sometimes in the past provided links in my reviews to fan wikis, and the names I gave these links were usually the names of the specific wikis. However, I eventually decided to rename most of these links "Wikia," to provide the same kind of uniformity that comes from naming links "IMDb", "Wikipedia", etc. (It also saves space to do so.) There will still be some wiki links that I label by the name of the individual wiki. This could be the case if the wiki is on a site other than Wikia, or if I'm actually linking to a subpage of a Wikia wiki, wherein the subpage is about a specific show, but the wiki itself is about a franchise or more general theme, of which the show in question is just one iteration. (There may be rare cases in which I label a link "Wikia" even if I'm linking to a franchise wiki.) Note: in 2016, the site's name changed to "Fandom powered by Wikia," and in 2019 it began migrating wikis to Fandom.com. So... it may no longer be appropriate for me to label my links as "Wikia"; I should probably rename them all "Fandom," but that would be a huge undertaking, and it's not something I'm in any hurry to do.
This website has some subsites for specific shows, but the majority of links I include are to galleries it has for shows, rather than actual subsites (since it doesn't always have subsites, for some shows). You should be aware that the website may have some things like wav or mpg files, message boards, and links to other websites for some of these shows, but none of that is available from the galleries (though it is on any of the shows that have actual subsites). If you're interested in such things, you'd have to search from the main page for lists of series.
When possible I'll link to sites such as Amazon Video, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, and/or YouTube. I should mention that for iTunes, I search Google rather than the site itself to find specific shows, and that I link to US pages. If you live outside the US you'll probably want to search for your own country's iTunes pages. And for YouTube, I'll sometimes link to a show's official YouTube page on the primary line of links rather than the streaming line of links. And Hulu has a higher subscription package, Hulu Live TV, which I don't get, so I can't link to any shows that are in that package. You should also note that any site, especially YouTube, may fail to include all seasons or episodes of a show, and may break up individual seasons into multiple lists of episodes. Oh, and many network sites will have episodes available to stream, but I still include such sites on the main line of links, just because. For streaming sites I don't list in my reviews, check JustWatch.
There are very few shows for which I link to a fansite directly from my review. However, it is a bit more common for me to include a link to a separate page (TV links, anime links, cartoon links, fantasy & science fiction shows links) which includes links to even more sites (wikis, fansites, fanlistings, reference sites, etc.) about that show. There are likely to be other sites I'm unaware of, which might prove useful, so... I've done plenty of work for you, but it would never hurt for you to poke around the internet yourself, see what you can find. It's also not uncommon for some fansites or fanlistings to disappear, or for websites to reorganize their subpages, so some of the sites or pages I do provide links to may disappear entirely, or may require some searching to find where the subpage has moved to. (I do my best to keep on top of this, but I can't be checking my links every day, so I may not be aware of links having died.)
Believe me, there are a great many things about this whole project for which I feel the need to apologize. Such as:
Yeah, I'm no good at writing reviews, though some are certainly better than others. Sometimes I do little more than describe the show, which isn't really the same as reviewing it. Other times I might forget to describe it, and just give a brief note of what I think of the show... or else just say that I watched it, but can't think of anything to say about it. Often this is because a show was on years before I started this site, and now I can't remember it very clearly.
Of course, my rating of these shows, and anything I have to say about them, is merely my opinion. You all are completely entitled to your own opinions, which in fact I actually hope will often differ from mine, so that they come closer to matching a show's objective quality than my opinions sometimes do. You may completely disagree with some of what I have to say here. I don't mind, and I hope you won't mind, either.
These pages will include all manners of TV shows, specials, miniseries, and TV movies. For theatrical and direct-to-video releases, please see my movie reference pages. (Though I may sometimes be unsure whether something is a TV movie or direct-to-video.) You should also check out my web reviews, as there are some shows on streaming media such as Hulu or Amazon that some people might consider TV, but I don't. (Netflix, however, I do consider TV.) I should also mention that while there are a ridiculous number of shows included here (like, how have I ever in my life found time to do anything but watch TV?), there will actually be any number of shows I've watched at some point which either I now don't remember at all, or I don't care enough to mention even in passing. Which is not to say such things weren't of any importance to me when I watched them. There'll always be a part of me that feels guilty about not mentioning every single thing I've ever seen a single episode of in my entire life, and I almost wish I had a time machine so I could go back and tell younger me to keep notes on anything I watched, even before the advent of the Internet.
Some of my reviews contain swearing. I'm not too worried about that, especially since it pretty much only happens in reviews of movies that are not for kids. But there are other issues, such as ableist language (words like "stupid", "dumb", "crazy", "lame", etc.) applied to either characters or plots, that I have sometimes used in the past when writing reviews, which I now regret. If I ever see such things upon re-reads of my old reviews, I'll usually edit the words out, but I'm sure I won't catch them all. On another topic, I have sometimes referred to Asperger's syndrome, or used the word "Aspergian." This is something I don't do anymore, because of the name's ties to WWII-era Nazis, which I didn't originally know about. So if you see any mention of Asperger's in my reviews, please mentally amend it to "high-functioning autism."
I have often, in my reviews, put parentheticals next to the names of female characters, saying "who we like," in order to indicate that I find those characters attractive. This is just as true (if not more so) in animation as in live-action. It's something I've always had mixed feelings about doing, because I don't want to give the impression that I'm judging female characters based either solely or primarily on looks. But on the other hand, finding characters attractive can add to my appreciation of shows/movies/comics/whatever, and I feel remiss if I don't mention all that I enjoy about any given work of entertainment. (In real life, I hate attraction, but in entertainment... it can be nice, as long as there's more to the story, and to the characters themselves, than just that.) Nevertheless, I have finally decided (for reasons) to delete such parentheticals from all (or most of) my reviews, which is likely going to take quite awhile, considering how many reviews I've done over the years. And I may miss a few, so if you see such things, please just pretend they're not there. (On the other hand, I may occasionally, in some of my reviews, choose to include a mention of one or more characters being attractive, for some specific reason, such as their attractiveness being an actual plot point, or as a commentary on animation style, or... various other reasons.) But whether or not I specifically mention it, chances are almost anything I review has characters I find attractive. And while I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with anyone (male or female) appreciating that aspect of entertainment, nor even with making innocuous, non-suggestive mention of such appreciation, the fact is we live in a world where such comments can quite reasonably be construed as objectifying, even when that is not the intent. And the objectification of anyone (male or female, but especially women and girls) is not a mindset I have any desire to perpetuate, even unintentionally. (It's kind of a fine line, because I also don't want to make it seem like attraction or attractiveness are things to be ashamed of or feared, but I expect it's best to err on the side of caution.)