Ah, summer. It’s a glorious time for movies but not so much for TV. It’s not quite the wasteland it once was thanks to creative cable programmers, but it’s still hard to find much worth your time, and since Mad Men was pushed back from its usual start date of July to the end of August, even cable’s pretty spare this year.
There are diamonds in the rough, though. I’m really loving Michael and Michael Have Issues, the strange sitcom from Michaels Showalter and Ian Black of The State fame. Comedy pilots are rarely very funny, and it’s been routinely hilarious from the outset. Rescue Me is having an eventful season, even if I could use a lot more Lou and a lot less Janet and Sheila nonsense. And while Conan’s stint on The Tonight Show may not be pulling in viewers like the evil Jay Leno did, the quality of the show is through the roof, which comes as a welcome surprise to longtime fans like myself who worried his weirdness would turn into blandness in the earlier time slot. I’ve also caught up on older series on DVD I missed, like the absolutely incredible Deadwood and even The X-Files (I know, I’m ridiculously late to the party).
So in this first installment of Share, we ask you, loyal reader: What have you been watching this summer?