The Mofo Top 100 Television Shows

I find that hard to believe considering your stereotypical black man loves guns and money and power.

I thought I'd go ahead and post two more since someone mentioned reality shows.

I used to watch Survivor a lot but have gotten all I can out of it. Seems way too predictable now. You get so used to the strategies it's easy to see what is going to happen before it happens.

I think the last time I watched it was when Boston Rob won the last time. Wow, everyone stuck their heads up their behinds and let that man play the whole game for them. That was the lamest group of Survivors in history.

Everybody Loves Raymond is nice when it comes on. I don't seek it out, but I live with someone that likes it so I see it more than I used to. It's funny enough and I do like Heaton a lot, so I'm warming to it more and more.

Hey look, Carol's on my tv screen! I'm sure I wouldn't like it so much had she been cast. Blerg!

If you didn't watch it, don't claim it is not your alley. It's a well regarded masterpiece and a standard element in the canon of the medium. It's very different from how the package appears to look like. It's obligatory watch for anybody who claims to be a fan of animation in general, just like Pixar, EVA and Ghibli are.

Breaking Bad is just on another level compared to other American TV shows. Almost revolutionary in quality.

What?

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I had to. It came to mind. Blame Guaporense.

I'll save the Breaking Bad conversation for when/if it shows up, but as much as I like it and I voted for it as well, I'd hardly call it revolutionary in anything. Damn good show, but that's all. Just a damn good show.

SC at his full power here.

After seeing Survivor, I'm pretty confident in Full House

Well, you said an African tribe wouldn't feel anything for The Godfather. That means black men. And I'm sorry, but black men love gangsters. NOT EVERY BLACK MAN, mind you. I said "stereotypical." The stereotype. They like the gangstas.

What? Revealing information that Breaking Bad made it???

I see so you liked Breaking Bad and voted for it but loved Full Metal Alchemist and did not? (sorry, I had to say that)

Breaking Bad is on a whole another level in terms of cinematography and style if compared to other American TV series. It felt like a continuous thing and didn't suffer from the artistic limitations of other series. True, every single element of it considered innovative existed before but Breaking Bad incorporated everything into a single package. Babylon 5, for example, which sadly appears to not make the list, already more like a novel than Breaking Bad but lacks the acting and direction of Breaking Bad, The Wire also is not on the same level in visual terms as well as The Sopranos which is much more episodic, has lower visual quality and less consistent than Breaking Bad.

Overall, Breaking Bad is the pinnacle of American TV in overall artistic accomplishment, although not precisely my favorite because it doesn't incorporate as many genre elements as I would prefer.

It's not that great.

I also didn't vote for one of my favorite shows that I would award 1100 million points over either Breaking Bad or Fullmetal Alchemist. My lists are certainly not all inclusive of what I enjoy. I have too many holes in my brain to remember to include everything.

I actually like Fullmetal Alchemist better than Breaking Bad. My favorite shows are ones that I like to go back and revisit. While Breaking Bad was a fun ride to watch the first time it would have to be a really long time before I would want to go back and watch it again.

I voted for it on the strength of the first viewing and that I had recently watched it. If we were to do a list again in five years I doubt I would include it.

I see. I am not the greatest specialist in American TV however. But from the shows I have watched Breaking Bad was the most impressive in overall terms, among American shows only Rome and Breaking Bad made me jump out of the sofa while watching it and made my blood boil with tension.

Of course though, Breaking Bad doesn't have the same level of the emotional power and artistic richness of the artistic peaks of the TV anime canon such as Madoka Magica, Haibane Renmei, RahXephon and Evangelion. These shows are just on another level of anything ever produced for TV, in fact, the only English speaking works of screen media that I rate on the same level are film masterpieces such as Blade Runner, 2001 and Apocalypse Now.

I still wonder if that's you, Planet News.

Planet News was not that hardcore about anime as I am though.

Though I became hardcore about anime over the past 3 years...

PMMM is prerty good. one of the better amines i've seen. it's miles better than Full House at least.
haven't watched much of Survivor, but i don't care for reality shows.
the little bit i know about Alan Partridge seems funny and i love Steve Coogan so maybe i could give it a try sometime.
haven't seen a ton of Everybody Loves Raymond but what i have seen i suppose is above average for a sitcom. certainly better than Full House.

15 years ago you would be a 15 year old girl but PMMM was made for an adult audience, not teenager audience: it's a seinen series. It's much more sophisticated than teenager series like Fullmetal Alchemist and also than most other seinen series like Cowboy Bebop (which are more episodic and have significantly less layers than Madoka). It's very obvious it was made for an adult audience if you know modern anime.

I don't think I would have like Madoka if I had watched it 10 years ago as much as I liked it when I watched it when I was 24. The appreciation for the "moe" elements is something that comes with a certain age and I wouldn't have understood it well if I were 14.

What have you watched?

Though that's like comparing apples to oranges. A family sitcom like Full House can be compared to family anime sitcoms like Sazae-san:



It's the most popular anime of all time. In Japan watching Sazae-san on sunday is a religion, more important in that country's culture than the Simpsons is for US culture.

Sazae-san is not popular among western anime fans for obvious reasons: it lacks the aggression, but visually and in thematic, of anime popular in the west, since western shows like The Simpsons and King of the Hill are good substitutes for this type of animation, while no animation made in the west is remotely similar to shows such as Madoka or EVA.

Madoka genres are horror, tragedy and genre deconstruction, among English speaking TV I don't think anything I have watched is remotely similar.

I think the closest things to Madoka in terms of atmosphere are other dark seinen titles like Boggiebop Phantom, Kaiba and Serial Experiments Lain. Still Madoka is quite different, overall, I never found anything that I would regard as being in the same overall genre as Madoka. And I have tried to find it really hard. I watched 6 out of the 7 anime titles Urobuchi wrote, for instance, and each one is very different from the others, the most similar one to Madoka is Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, but it's a bit different from Madoka.

I don't find one more sophisticated than the other. Stylistically, it is something that would have appealed to me at a younger age.

Fullmetal Alchemist is very straightforward shounen action. Focused on character development and linear plots, it's not simplistic character development but also nothing really amazingly sophisticated in being multidimensional. Madoka has many layers, it's post modern work in the sense of being a genre deconstruction, as it is self aware of itself and the genre it is deconstructing and is supposed to be enjoyed both in terms of identifying with the characters as with deriving pleasure from their suffering, it's cruel and sadistic but also hopeful. I consider Madoka to be more intelligent from that "multidimensional" perspective than movies like 2001 and Stalker, which are often called "intellectual", but which are also more straightforward in being more obviously what they appear to be.

Both are masterpieces in their own ways but one is clearly teenager oriented mainstream anime while the other is adult oriented for the hardcore anime nerd who likes stuff that plays around with the tropes of genres and is self conscious of itself, though Madoka broke through the mainstream like Breaking Bad did in the US. Cowboy Bebop is adult but more straightforward as well.

I don't know if it might appeal to me less in the future I think I will still like it when I am 35. That's because my parents were expecting me to "grow out" of heavy metal for 10 years already and it isn't happening. Koike loved Madoka and he is 80, so I don't think there is anything to do with age.

I don't believe you, raul. Why must you turn our forum into a house of lies?

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."