The Extratextuals

Oh, blog, I’m sorry I’ve neglected you so. But I promise to get you back up and running this year.

Towards that end, since seeing TV By the Numbers‘ invitation to create an all-time-best primetime schedule (sorry, I’d add a link, but I’m struggling to find it now), and in honor of the NHL All-Star Weekend, I’ve been playing around with my own “team”. And now, I present version 1.0 to you, with caveats and comments to follow:

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Monday

8pm – The Amazing Race

9pm – Chuck

10pm – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

(a nice fun night, and a good way to start the week without too much doom and gloom, Buffy s.6 excepted. I like the flow, too, from international race to international man of mystery to tonally similar, fun, asses-must-be-kicked show)

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Tuesday

8pm – Battlestar Galactica

9pm – Mad Men

10pm – Deadwood

(getting more serious tonight, as you can see. BSG doesn’t quite fit the other two tonally, but I thought it necessary to have something with a little action and thrillerishness in it before slowing down for Mad Men. Plus I like that it’s “different time and place night”)

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Wednesday

8pm – The West Wing

9pm – Survivor

10pm – Lost

(too hard to resist putting Survivor and Lost next to each other. West Wing’s kind of stranded tonally, but so be it: CJ’s up to the task)

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Thursday

8pm – Bones

9pm – Dexter

10pm – The Wire

(crime and punishment night. I had to get at least one procedural in here, and Bones is worthy)

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Friday

8pm – I Love Lucy

8.30pm – The Cosby Show

9pm – Modern Family

9.30pm – The Office

10pm – All in the Family

10.30pm – South Park

(and you thought I’d forgotten comedy? It’s just on the weekend, by which point I’m ready for it. We’ve got family life night here, working up from the more quaint to the more screwed up)

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Saturday

8pm – Arrested Development

8.30pm – How I Met Your Mother

9pm – Freaks and Geeks

10pm – Friday Night Lights

(I like the progression from HIMYM to FNL, with Jason Segel and that style of comedy segueing very easily from HIMYM to F&G, and then the high school line taking us to FNL. Arrested can go anywhere, it’s that lovely)

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Sunday

8pm – The Muppet Show

8.30pm – The Simpsons

9pm – The Dick Van Dyke Show

9.30pm – Seinfeld

10pm – Pushing Daisies

(the block of half-hours is self-reflexive comedy, so I think there’s good tonal flow. Then why not end the weekend with wimsy?)

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General Comments

• I started with only network primetime shows allowed, since I was thinking of this as a network schedule. I opened up to allow cable scripted shows, but felt it would be too hard to consider cable nonscripted too, hence the absence of Man vs. Wild, River Monsters, Iron Chef America, etc.
• I also cut off at 11pm, hence the absence of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. For the record, though, they’re on every night at 11pm and 11.30pm on my schedule
• It’s a fairly contemporary-centered list, but when I got down to it, I realized that I’d much rather watch, say, an hour of Dexter than an hour of Quantum Leap, as much as the latter show was fun in its own way.
• Some decisions were also based around scheduling. Indeed, exercises like this require some savvy scheduling. DVR Era bla bla bla: still way more people watch off DVR.

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And now, let the abuse and recriminations begin. Or perhaps my long period of absence from my blog has lost all readers, in which case, let the crickets begin!

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lists best shows, scheduling