The Fall TV Season is Upon Us and I’m Not Ready

Every fall there is a host of new TV shows premiering and even more returning. Usually my husband and I go over summaries and trailers for the new crop and choose three or four to sample.

This year the very idea makes me fatigued.

The problem is that we haven’t caught up on last year’s viewing yet. We still have two episodes of Supergirl, seven episodes of Shield and eight of Twin Peaks to plow through. We’ve all but given up on Outlander season two.

I blame the invention of the PVR (? Perhaps called DVRs in the States?) Once upon a time you had to watch a show on the day that it aired or miss it until summer repeats or possibly forever. Then came the VCR and taping shows that played at an inconvenient time. Which was great. But we never had more than one ‘scratch’ tape so we never fell that far behind. Our PVR has a LOT of memory and so there’s less urgency to finish. (The only one we watch in a timely fashion is Game of Thrones to prevent spoilers.)

We really don’t watch that many shows. However the ones we do watch tend to have an over-arching plotline so we’re fanatical about watching them in order and not missing an episode. It ought to be possible to keep up or at least catch up over the summer. But each year we fall behind.

It’s my fault, really. There are a lot of evenings where we could have watched TV, but I chose to read instead.

Shows We’re Still Watching

1/ Timeless. New last year, this show took a few episodes to really hit its stride and we almost dropped it. I’m so glad we stuck with it and even gladder that it’s been renewed. Cool time travel and good characters with an over-arching plot.

2/ Supergirl. I love that we can watch this as a family. We’re only two shows behind so I’m still hoping to be caught up by the time season three starts.

3/ Big Bang Theory. This is the only sitcom on our list. (I often find sitcom humour hard to take because I hate watching characters I like do stupid things.) However, it’s much easier to block off time to watch a half-hour show, so we are caught up on this one.

4/ Shield. This one is on the bubble. I’m still enjoying most of the episodes, but we’re hopelessly behind. Not only that but it’s spinning off a new show The Inhumans, which sounds cool, but I don’t know that we have time for.

5/ Twin Peaks. We loved the original series but this one mostly has us shaking our heads. We’re eight episodes in and Lynch keeps introducing new characters and plotlines--and ignoring earlier plotlines. We watched ‘Gotta Light’ last night and only the very first scene had anything to do with the plot. Sigh. I’m not quite ready to give up yet, but I may watch the next one with the fast forward button in hand.

New Shows to Try:

1/ Star Trek: Discovery

2/ The Orville

3/ The Inhumans

4/ The Dark Crystal

5/ Krypton

There are also dozens of older shows I would love to try: The Librarians, The Flash, Jessica Jones, Stranger Things, but there’s just no time. Not without cutting into my reading time and that, my friend, isn’t happening.