Best Of 2008: 5 Shows More People Should’ve Watched

By Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

There are only so many hours in the day, only so much space on the DVR, and there are scores of shows vying for your attention and loyalty. If you take the time to watch Cloris learn the cha-cha, you may not have time to watch Brooke navigate the Lipstick Jungle. That’s life. Everyone makes choices. Here’s five shows that we think more people would’ve watched in 2008.

1. Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

For those who can’t get beyond Schwarzenegger’s iconic and highly caricatured performance in the big screen Terminator franchise, its small-screen counterpart is a far more subtle and unique variation.

The intricate storylines of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles offer up so much more, including complex backstory about how that evil-mongering corporation Skynet came into being in the first place. Plus, our heroes aren’t just warding off killer robots from the future; they are attempting to unravel pivotal threads from a tightly-woven tapestry of fate. It’s heavy and mind-bending stuff, sometimes, and yet there is also a surprising amount of entertainment to be had in guessing at which peripheral characters along the way are friends or foes of all of humankind - which isn’t that different from what makes Gossip Girl so enticing on a basic level, if you think about it.

Watch a full episode of ‘Supernatural’ right here.

2. Supernatural

Guess what? Not every show on the CW is about gratuitous sex amongst shiny, good-looking young adults. Sometimes CW shows are about not-as-shiny but still good-looking young adults (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) who battle demons. And no, Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t headlining.

Supernatural follows the adventures of two brothers, Sam and Dean, whose mother was slain by a demon. Raised by their father to become warriors in the battle against the things that go bump in the night, the boys wander the country hunting down bad-ass bogeymen, with the ultimate goal of hunting down, bagging and tagging the demon who killed their mom. Stakes were raised in the last season in a big way, when Sam was killed, which forced Dean to make a deal with the devil (or at least one of his minions), and sign over his soul – and life expectancy – in exchange for Sam’s safe return. Of course, “safe” is relative when demons are plotting to rise from Hades and enslave mankind, anyway. Don’t hate on this show simply because it’s not Buffy. It’s awfully good in its own right.

3. Friday Night Lights

Based upon the 2004 motion picture of the same name starring Billy Bob Thorton, there’s no avoiding the fact that high school jocks are featured front and center in this serialized drama, which may sound unappetizing to those who’d rather watch paint dry than follow the lives of high school jocks. But Friday Night Lights the TV series also holds a broader appeal in examining the social pressures that teenagers – and their parents – face in navigating the rocky path toward adulthood. It even does so in a well-written, surprisingly nuanced way. Plenty of episode topics have nothing to do with football: there are elderly relatives stricken with Alzheimer’s, and dads stationed in the military, and the inherent drama of teenagers and parents colliding over expectations about what their futures can or should hold. But if all that complicated human interest stuff puts you off, don’t worry. There are attractive young people having sex here! Threeways with cheerleaders! Drinking! Cheating! Backstabbing social maneuvering! Combined with that whole “well-written, surprisingly nuanced” stuff, it’s kind of the total package.

Watch full episodes of Pushing Daisies on Fancast.

4. Pushing Daisies

A glance back at this gem is sadly a post-mortem, for all intents and purposes: ABC announced Daisies would be uprooted from its roster and not put back into production. Too bad.

Pushing Daisies follows the adventures of Ned (Lee Pace), who has a peculiar gift: he can resurrect dead people. Only there’s a catch, and boy, it’s a humdinger: he has sixty seconds to decide if that resurrected person will live on – at the expense of someone else. Oh, and if Ned does touch that person again later on, they die anyway. It might not sound like much of a “gift,” but it comes in handy when Ned finds himself blackmailed into working with a madcap detective (Chi McBride) to solve crimes. Widely touted as a “forensic fairy tale” – which should have garnered more viewers right there – Daisies broke a lot of molds. It was surreal without being considered sci fi; the writing was literate – lyrical and poetic even; Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) directed the pilot and served as co-exec producer. For pete’s sakes, it garnered no fewer than 12 Emmy nominations this past July!

As for the ignoble and undeserved end of Daisies, it’s like someone left a giant, glimmering and nearly-flawless diamond laying in the middle of the sidewalk, and no one stooped to pick it up, because in their jaded and glassy-eyed march through the monotoned tedium of their daily lives, they concluded that anything so effervescent was too good to be true. If you don’t stop and smell the roses (or daisies), at some point the gardener is going to stop planting them. At least let it be a lesson to you the next time you hear about a compelling and cool TV show, but you don’t make firm plans to “catch up” in a timely manner. You snooze, you lose. Hey, you should’ve watched!

5. Breaking Bad

Stop holding it against Bryan Cranston for having done such a good job playing the goofy dad on Malcolm in the Middle. That Emmy he earned last month for his role in Breaking Bad? Not a fluke. Stephen King touted it as “the best series on TV.” More highbrow sources, like the New York Times, have praised its ambition.

None of the actors in this series are flawlessly coiffed and styled, or really, really, really impossibly, supermodel-ish, Zoolander-y good-looking. With not a lot of tarted-up eye candy parading about, you’re kind of forced to pay attention to other stuff. Like the plot and the performances. All of which are pretty close to impeccable.