Continuing my Plex End-of-Year Review, here’s some stats about the TV shows I watched. The logic for my adding TV shows to my Plex server is pretty similar to what my logic is for when I add movies to my Plex server: I either like/admire the show and want to keep it for future viewing (especially if I wanna stop paying for a streaming service) or I’m interested in seeing it and I want to eventually watch it one day. Like my movie list, this isn’t everything I watched this year, but the things I did watch on Plex are exceptional. Without further ado, let’s get to the stats.
My Sleepy-Time Show is Taskmaster
By a wide margin, the show I watched the most is Taskmaster. Now, my activity log doesn’t have dates and times on it, but generally speaking, if I’m not watching John Mulaney or Greg Davies stand-up specials, I’m falling asleep to Taskmaster. I may have watched it at other points during the day, but for the sake of this, let’s assume I watched these things as I was falling asleep or trying to.
- Season 1: 9 watches
- Season 2: 7 watches
- Season 3: 9 watches
- Season 4: 9 watches
- Season 5: 15 watches
- Season 6: 1 watch
- Season 7: 20 watches
- Season 8: 5 watches
- Season 9: 21 watches
- Season 10: 7 watches
- Season 11: 21 watches
- Season 12: 22 watches
- Season 13: 21 watches
- Season 14: 17 watches
- Season 15: 11 watches
- Season 16: 17 watches
- Season 17: 16 watches
- Season 18: 2 watches
- Specials, Australia, and New Zealand: 19 watches
There’s definite bias toward later series—part of that is shuffle, part of that is, I’ve seen the old episodes so many time, when I shuffle everything up for night-night time, I’ll skip until I find something I really like to get to sleep to.
The Full Enchiladas
There are a few shows that I decided to watch from start to finish. Here are them, along with my thoughts:
- Abbott Elementary is a documentary about the Philadelphia public education system. Many people think it’s a sitcom—they would be incorrect. The best line in the show is when Melissa, when asked why she was dressed up: “I got a court date, ‘cuz I threw a corn cob at Ben Simmons.” That’s the most Philadelphia line that has ever been written, and it goes unrecognized.
- I was late to the Game Changer train but I’m so glad I caught up. The closest thing that America has to a bona-fide successful panel show.
- I watched Girls5Eva again before the new season premiered this year. If you like 30Rock and/or early 2000s girl pop groups, you need to watch Girls5Eva immediately.
- Halt and Catch Fire is probably my Mad Men—a period-authentic character study set in front of a burgeoning industry. While I could never get into Mad Men (I thought it was too slow; maybe I’ll give it a second chance), Halt and Catch Fire, being about the 80s-90s computer industry, had me intrigued about the industry while the character study was warming up.
- Mrs. Fletcher was a suggestion from a friend, and if I didn’t love Kathryn Hahn enough from everything else she does, her role as a new empty nester rediscovering her sexuality while her hot-shot high schooler son finds out that college is a bigger pond than he can handle. The final scene is one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.
- Reboot was an OK comedy from Hulu with a very good cast and a very contrived, not-that-interesting plot. I do love seeing Rachel Bloom in things, and Johnny Knoxville was an excellent supporting actor, as was Judy Greer. But everything else was meh.
- Scrubs is one of my favorite sitcoms of all time. It’s fun to watch all 8 seasons of Scrubs, as it’s still a very quality show that surprisingly hasn’t aged that poorly—and is a way better drama than The Bear is a comedy. (There is no Season 9 in Ba Sing Se.)
- Severance is one of the greatest television shows of the decade, and undoubtedly one of the best TV shows on Apple TV that doesn’t star Jason Sudeikis. Adam Scott plays the lead perfectly, and every production decision adds to the unease, tension and mystery of the Lumon corporation and what’s actually happening on the Severed floor. Extra props to Patricia Arquette for being absolutely unhinged.
- Westworld was a show that I was wondering how it ended after bailing trying to watch the whole show as it premiered. Season 1? A masterpiece. Season 2? Way more questions than answers. Season 3? After a few episodes? I bailed, it was too confusing. I retried it, and it was still really confusing, and unnecessarily so, but I am a sucker for a good “society is going to shit” story. I’ll stick with Mr Robot though. Season 1 is still almost perfect as a stand-alone product.
A Variety of Shows I Think You Should Watch Even If I Didn’t Watch A Lot of It Myself
- Battle In The Box is the British version of a South Korean format—two teams of celebrities live in an unfurnished room in a box the size of a giant trailer for 24 straight hours. They compete in challenges, and the winning team gets to furnish their side of the room AND make the room bigger, thereby making their opponents’ room smaller. Jimmy Carr competently hosts as usual, and it’s a silly little show but it’s pretty fun.
- Sports Night is a guilty pleasure of mine and it deserved better, but I don’t think anyone knew what to do with Aaron Sorkin back then. Was it a comedy? Yes, so ABC insisted on a laugh track (that did nothing to help the show). Loosely based on the Patrick/Olbermann connection on SportsCenter, and inspired by things that happened to other anchors on ESPN, the show was clever and poignant for the time, but it just couldn’t find an audience. I wouldn’t mind if Sorkin gave it a second go, especially after how on-the-nose he was with The Newsroom (which is still one of my favorite shows)
- The White Lotus is a fantastic show that I wish was a supernatural mystery show. It has that vibe that something weird and spooky should be happening but there’s nothing but the selfishness of humanity. It’s still a great character study, but damn I need some aliens or some shit in this show.
- PopMaster TV is a new UK game show based on a long-running radio show and I think it’s really pleasant. It’s very pleasant, not too competitive but definitely challenging. It’s what I want after burning out on Name That Tune and Beat Shazam.
Every Episode of The Simpsons I Watched On Plex
I’ve got a lot of the Simpsons on Plex, but unlike other shows like Scrubs, Friends or Taskmaster, I don’t shuffle up The Simpsons normally, since when I do I get one of those later-season ones that no one likes, so here’s the things I’ve chosen to watch (or skipped through a shuffle queue enough to find something I liked):
- Season 2, Episode 9: Itchy & Scratchy & Marge
- Season 3, Episode 3: When Flanders Failed
- Season 3, Episode 14: Lisa the Greek
- Season 3, Episode 21: Black Widower
- Season 4, Episode 12: Marge vs. the Monorail
- Season 5, Episode 7: Bart’s Inner Child
- Season 7, Episode 2: Radioactive Man
- Season 7, Episode 6: Treehouse of Horror VI
- Season 7, Episode 15: Bart the Fink
- Season 7, Episode 17: Homer the Smithers
- Season 7, Episode 21: 22 Short Films About Springfield
- Season 8, Episode 6: A Milhouse Divided
- Season 8, Episode 14: The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show
- Season 8, Episode 22: In Marge We Trust
- Season 10, Episode 2: The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace
- Season 10, Episode 15: Marge Simpson in: ‘Screaming Yellow Honkers’
- Season 12, Episode 1: Treehouse of Horror XI
- Season 12, Episode 2: A Tale of Two Springfields
- Season 14, Episode 9: The Strong Arms of the Ma
And that’s it! Look for part 3, all about the music I decided to listen to on Plex, in the new year.
