A new meme, courtesy of Roberson’s Interminable Ramble (Roberson being the author of Paragaea, that wonderful fantasy adventure novel I mentioned recently ). The gimmick is to bold the titles of television series of which you’ve seen at least three episodes, and bold and italicize those for which I’ve seen every episode. This should be enlightening… or frightening…

24
7th Heaven
Adam-12
Aeon Flux
ALF
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
American Idol/Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol/etc.
America’s Next Top Model/Germany’s Next Top Model
Angel
Arrested Development
Babylon 5
Babylon 5: Crusade
Battlestar Galactica (the old one)
Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
Baywatch
Beavis & Butthead
Beverly Hills 90210
Bewitched
Bonanza
Bones
Bosom Buddies
Boston Legal
Boy Meets World
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Bug Juice
Chappelle’s Show
Charlie’s Angels
Charmed
Cheers
Columbo
Commander in Chief
Coupling (the UK version, of course)
Cowboy Bebop
Crossing Jordan
CSI
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dancing with the Stars
Danny Phantom
Dark Angel
Dark Skies
Davinci’s Inquest
Dawson’s Creek
Dead Like Me
Deadliest Catch
Deadwood
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Designing Women
Desperate Housewives
Dharma & Greg
Different Strokes
Doctor Who (old Who)
Doctor Who (new Who)
Dragnet
Due South
Earth 2
Emergency!
Entourage
ER
Everwood
Everybody Loves Raymond
Facts of Life
Family Guy
Family Ties
Farscape
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
Firefly
Frasier
Friends
Futurama
Get Smart
Gilligan’s Island
Gilmore Girls
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
Green Wing
Grey’s Anatomy
Growing Pains
Gunsmoke
Hannah
Montana
Happy Days
Hogan’s Heroes
Home Improvement
Homicide: Life on the Street
House
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Invader Zim
Invasion
Hell’s Kitchen
JAG
Jackass
Joey
John Doe
LA Law
Laverne and Shirley
Little House on the Prairie
Lizzie McGuire
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Lost
Lost in Space
Love, American Style
M*A*S*H
MacGyver
Malcolm in the Middle
Married… With Children
Melrose Place
Miami Vice
Mission: Impossible
Monk
Moonlighting
Mork & Mindy
Murphy Brown
My Life as a Dog
My Three Sons
My Two Dads
NCIS
Nip/Tuck
Northern Exposure
Numb3rs
One Tree Hill
Oz
Perry Mason
Picket Fences
Pokemon
Power Rangers
Prison Break
Profiler
Project Runway
Psyche
Quantum Leap
Queer As Folk (US)
Queer as Folk (British)
ReGenesis
Remington Steele
Rescue Me
Road Rules
ROME
Roseanne
Roswell
Saved by the Bell
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Scrubs
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
Six Feet Under
Slings and Arrows
Smallville
So Weird
South Park
Spaced
Spongebob Squarepants
Sports Night
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate SG-1
Superman (I’m assuming this is the George Reeves series)
Supernatural
Surface
Survivor
Taxi
Teen Titans
That 70’s Show
That’s So Raven
The 4400
The Addams Family
The Andy Griffith Show
The A-Team
The Avengers
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Brady Bunch
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show
The Dead Zone
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Flintstones
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Golden Girls
The Honeymooners
The Jeffersons
The Jetsons
The L Word
The Love Boat
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mighty Boosh
The Monkees
The Munsters
The Mythbusters
The O.C.
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
The Pretender
The Real World
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Sopranos
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
The Twilight Zone (the old one, presumably)
The Waltons
The West Wing
The Wonder Years
The X-Files
Third Watch
Three’s Company
Top Gear
Twin Peaks
Twitch City
Veronica Mars
Whose Line is it Anyway? (US)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK)
Will and Grace

Couple of observations: The first, and most obvious one, is “Holy crap, I watch a lot of TV!” Well, no kidding; I’ve known that ever since my fourth-grade teacher Mr. LeBaron had his students keep a log of how much TV they watched and then had a meltdown when he got a look at mine. The second is that I’m not sure of how accurate this exercise actually is in charting the number of shows of which I’ve seen every episode. For instance, I would be very surprised if I had not seen every Gilligan’s Island when I was a kid and it was in constant reruns, but I haven’t seen the show in so many years that I no longer remember for certain. Another wrinkle is that there are many shows that I watched faithfully for most of their run, but lost interest in them during their final seasons because of sudden declines in quality and/or the departure of lead actors (Northern Exposure and That 70s Show, I’m thinking of you two!) There’s also the issue of how closely this list mirrors my current tastes versus what I may have liked 20 years ago — I remember watching Alf and Family Ties faithfully back in my younger days, but I doubt I could make it through a complete single episode now.

I guess no one expects that sort of in-depth number-crunching from a silly little Internet meme, though. If nothing else, this thing lets you can see the sort of crap I tend to enjoy, or have enjoyed at some point in my life…

(Although even that is open for debate: I’ve seen more than three episodes of American Idol, for instance, but I really don’t like the show. I watch it with The Girlfriend, or occasionally my mom, both of whom do enjoy it. That ripping sound you hear is the last shred of this meme’s credibility…)