Girlfriends, on UPN. My current obsession–not my favorite show, but my favorite show whose run I’ve mostly missed. When it premiered I was sure it would be relentlessly idiotic and pointlessly vulgar, given the network. But since discovering it in syndication, I’ve discovered that it’s witty, insightful, and inhabited by black characters I actually recognize. Plus the four leads are all cute.
2.Buffy the Vampire Slayer, WB/UPN. I found the name annoying; I had walked out of the movie. My then girlfriend always encouraged me to watch it, but since our TV tastes were so divergent (I generally hate everything she likes, and vice versa), I counted her endorsement as further proof. Then I saw “Graduation Day,” and “Earshot,” and I was hooked.
Lost, ABC. I believed the misleading hype about it being a Survivor clone, and hate all reality TV.
Powerpuff Girls. The fact that my little nieces love the show made me think that it could only possibly work on one level. I was utterly wrong, and made the same mistake later with Kim Possible.
Xena, Warrior Princess. I had already hated its parent show, Hercules: the Legendary Adventures, for the anachronisms (not thinking that they werent evidence of incompetence, but rather part of the joke). So I discounted X:WP–until I happened to see the first appearance of Callisto.
Gilmore Girls. I was led to believe that it was a sappy girly-girl show.
…ok, so it is. But it’s also one of the best-written shows on television, and is so over the top in its sappiest that it becomes a self-parody! Plus it takes place in Connecticut
Another show that is so over the top that it becomes a self-parody, this time in the soap opera genre, is The OC. I thought it was some crappy show about teenagers being bad that was supposed to appeal to the MTV-watching type. I had no idea that the parents were even badder, and were a main part of the plot!
I remember thinking that I would hate King of the Hill because it looked like a Texas-bashing, lets-make-funny-of-the-yokels satire.
Instead, it serves as one of the sweetest love letters ever written to Texas and to small town America.
I also remember thinking that That 70s Show would be a series of “We Live In the 70s!” jokes. Instead, it was a decent sitcom that played on themes that were true, and funny, in any decade.
What I feared the show would be later manifested itself in the short-lived spinoff “That 80s Show.” Look, She has a mohawk! (INSERT CANNED LAUGHTER).
Perhaps it’s not very current, but I remember seeing the ads for “Titus” and thinking how un-funny that show looked. I stubled across it one day and was hooked.
I avoided Buffy during its entire run because I thought it had a stupid name, it would be another turgid teen soap opera with a too-good-looking-for-their-own-good cast, and it was on the WB (so how good could it be)? Well, I’m late to this party, but the last several months of watching Buffy (and its spinoff, Angel) on DVD from their respective beginnings have been absolutely wonderful, and gotten me through some very rough patches in my own life. There is so much to love: wonderful writing, snappy dialogue, great humor, gut-wrenching drama, talented ensemble casts (most of whom ARE damn good looking), plenty of continuity to reward the most loyal viewers. I also consider them among the best long-form superhero stories ever, even though there aren’t any costumes or code-names. I am Joss Whedon’s bitch, and this after so many years of ignoring him and his shows, thinking I wasn’t even the target audience. I was so wrong, and so happy I finally discovered what the much-deserved hype was about.
(By the way, I just finished Buffy season 5 and I’m two episodes away from the end of Angel season 2, so I’m tearing through these.)
The initial print ads, with Tony in the middle, his family to the left, and his “family” to the right, all with one eyebrow raised, made it appear to be much “wackier” and far less observational and intelligent than it actually is.
I remember thinking it would be an embarrasing slapstick retread a la “The Freshman” or “Mickey Blue Eyes” and paid it no attention until most of my friends started recommending it.
Malcolm in the Middle. I remember the ads were hyping it as “a live-action Simpsons!” which, coming from Fox in the days of “Married With Children” just made me shudder. But it was really a good little show.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but when I first saw the ads for Northern Exposure I thought it would be a goofy sitcom. Har har har! New York doctor has to go live in Alaska! Boy, won’t HE be the fish out of water with the locals! :rolleyes:
I’m glad I was wrong … but I think I missed the entire first season because of it.
I was another one who refused to watch Lost when it first ran because I thought the premise was going to be too “Survivor meets science fiction.” My idea of the show was confirmed in my head when my mother-in-law kept telling me how good the pilot was and how I should watch it, as her favorite shows are usually CBS sitcoms and Lifetime stuff. (The other show she insists I should watch is 2 and a Half Men!) Oddly I don’t even think she watches Lost anymore.
Then I had a co-worker who swore it was the greatest thing ever all throughout the season and I happened to catch a show or 2 and was interested enough to watch, even though I didn’t know the backstory. I enjoyed the character development of the parts I saw. So when it re-ran this summer, having no other shows to follow, I started watching and got hooked.
One show I stopped watching and wish I hadn’t is 24. I saw the first few episodes and then missed about 3 in a row and was lost, so I gave up on it. The problem I have with some of the drama shows is they build on themselves so much that if you don’t watch from the beginning I feel like it is too late and don’t bother.
People here talk so much about Buffy that I am tempted to rent DVD’s and watch it, even though it doesn’t seem like my type of show at all.
I can sympathize with you there. I didn’t get into the show until I saw the last few episodes of season 4, so I had to go back and rent the DVD’s for the first three seasons. And now I keep wondering “How did I miss this?”
Nip/Tuck. I thought it was some stupid plastic surgery soap opera. Little did I know it would turn into one of my top three favorite shows on TV. (All of which are on F/X by the way). Monk. Neurotic guy acts like a clown and stumbles into solving crime ala Mr. Magoo. It’s actually extremely well-written and funny, and Monk is nobody’s fool. It’s also one of the few shows that doesn’t treat the police captain as another retread of the wrong-headed angry commanding officer. You know, the “Gimme your badge and gun - you’re suspended!” guy. Charmed. Hot chicks fight demons with cheesy special effects, poor writing and pathetic continuity. Oh wait - nevermind. (But I like it anyway).
I initially stayed away from Cold Case because of the ads. The whole tone of the show seemed overly angelic. It turned out to be a pleasant little cop show with a nifty visual gimmick and cool period music.
DH asked me to watch Battlestar Gallactica with him, so I agreed because I was bored. Not into Sci-Fi, I said. Now it is the only show I watch faithfully.
Judging from the promos, I thought Birds of Prey was gonna be about hot, sexy babes in skimpy outfits fighting crime. Instead it was about dull babes in frumpy outfits having boring life issues while fighting crime. Which is why I and millions of other guys stopped watching after the first two or three eps. Nice try, ABC.
Sports Night. I’m not a big sports fan, and with a name like Sports Night, I didn’t think it was going to be anything I was going to be into, even though the commercials themselves seemed fairly amusing. Just happened to catch the pilot as there was nothing else on, and was instantly hooked. At the end of the show, I knew it would be short lived - all the truly good television shows always are.
I also thought Lost was another reality show. But one day there was nothing else on and ABC was rerunning the premier, so I thought, what the heck. After that I scrambled to TWoP to catch up on the recaps.
My latest one is My Name is Earl. The promos did not do it justice. This is one funny funny show.
(whoops…hit the Submit button by accident. Continued below…)
Fortunately, after the show’s first season had run, there was a three-day holiday weekend during which FX ran a “24 hours of ‘24’” marathon, and my wife and I decided, at 9pm, to go ahead and catch the first episode to see what the hype was all about (I guess she’d been interested all along – it was just me who was overly resistant).
At 2:30am, bleary-eyed but hooked, we decided we’d better crank up the PVR and try to get some sleep. We spent a good part of that weekend watching the entire season, and we haven’t missed an episode since.
