My friend Vicki recently said, "I don't know why people don't just watch what you tell them to watch. You have excellent taste in television." You guys, she isn't wrong. That's not to say that I don't watch bad shows because I do. But I only ever recommend that people watch things I believe they'll genuinely love based on their own sensibilities and I have a very high success rate with these recommendations. Have I ever recommended that someone watch One Tree Hill? Yes. But I recommended it to people who enjoy bad, soapy melodramas as much as I do and they did, in fact, like it. I don't go around telling everyone they should watch One Tree Hill though, that would be ridiculous.
I do go around telling everyone they should watch Friday Night Lights and to-date I've convinced 12 people all of whom have loved it unabashedly and have gone on to convince others to watch it as well. FNL's universal appeal is the exception, not the rule.
Recently, I've had a run of success convincing people to take my advice and learn to love shows they should have been loving all along. My friend Mike is one of my pet projects. After turning him on to FNL, Gossip Girl, and The Vampire Diaries, he agreed to catch up with some old shows that would help him develop a better appreciation for the great shows of the past and better understand half of the references I make. He's nearly finished with The O.C. and now it's time to pick his next adventure. There are too many good ones to choose from so I was having a hard time figuring out what should be next. That's how we came up with Pilot Palooza.
This Saturday we will spend the entire day viewing the pilot episodes of the shows I've determined he's most likely to love. I've put them in a specific order taking into account the duration of the series (the longer the series, the harder it'll be for him to get through it since he's kind of slow) and the likelihood of him choosing it to be his next adventure. Most of them were chosen by me, some of them were added to the list at his request.
The Schedule
Veronica Mars
Everwood
Greek
Life As We Know It
Joan Of Arcadia
Felicity
Gilmore Girls
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
He's a smoker so we end up taking frequent breaks which means that while I could watch these 8 pilots in just over 6 hours, it may take Mike all day. Like I said - slow. However, if he's unable to make a choice based on the pilots alone, and we have adequate time, we will narrow it down and watch an additional episode of his top choices.
Come back here on Saturday and find out how this project is going or follow us on Twitter (@PhantomRat and @miaz169) for the random thoughts as they occur to us. And if you'd like to suggest other shows that you feel I've overlooked, I'm already preparing for Pilot Palooza II, leave a recommendation in the comments.
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