Are you shitting me? With the exception of MASH all those shows you listed are dog shit. We are living in the age of peak TV, there is so much quality programming on right now it isn’t funny.
Not at all. With the previously mentioned exception of "This Is Us" I really can't think of any shows on regular tv that I HAVE to see. HBO, Hulu and especially Netflix, those are a different story.
I swear if Modern Family doesn't end with Peggy, Kelly and Bud knocking on "Jay's" door decades after he ran out on them...
Maybe but they'll fuck it up. Peggy will be transgendered, Bud will be gay and who knows what "modern" twist they'd give Kelly.
Probably a cut throat whip smart lawyer battling the patriarchy while still breast feeding two in vitro babies after having a double mastectomy.
Yep, Net's joke went right over my head. Wasn't sure if you were referring to the movie, which was a compressed version of season two. But yeah, Whedon publically swore never to do anything with Fox again after they ruined Firefly, but it didn't take him long to change his mind and do Dollhouse for them. That on the other hand was a show that I'm glad went only two seasons. It seemed like they compressed what would have been season three into the final episode, and it was a fairly bizarre direction. The young girl playing Echo in that episode was a fucking phenomenal actress, but other than that... Yeah, I'm glad it ended there.
One thing that I have noticed that is a great difference between the BBC and North American TV, is the former's complete acceptance of doing just the number of episodes to tell the story. They have a large number of shows that went 3-6 episodes, and that was it... story told, wrap it up, on to the next thing. It seems like every show in Hollywood just keeps going and going and going in order to hit syndication, and they just don't know when to stop. A bit off topic, but I just watched what I was surprised to find out was the show-ending episode of, well, Episodes (the really funny Matt LeBlanc plays a version of himself show based on the BBC show), and it was awesome. They had a story, they told it in 5(?) seasons, and then they were done... no trying to wring out the last few drops of life... just... done. I think a lot of studios can learn from that.