Must Watch TV

As you may have noticed from the thread of my earlier posts, I am a couch potato. Seriously. Recently I shared with a couple of friends my list of must watch US TV shows, some are syndicated locally, some are on cable. I thought what the heck, might as well share it here, I could turn some non-believers into believers and help keep the shows alive.

Warning, there are spoilers below, if you do not wish to find out what will happen in advance, just read the show titles. Bummer.

Veronica Mars - VM, brilliantly portrayed by Kristen Bell, is a teen private investigator. It is not your run of the mill high school drama, despite its setting. The 1st season revolved on how VM's life has drastically changed due to the infamous murder of her best friend, losing her boyfriend (which happens to be her dead bestfriend's brother) and how her family became the pariahs of the town of Neptune. All these happening while she cracks and solves cases whew!

Sadly, this show is not doing very well in ratings in spite of being a critically acclaimed show. It was listed by the American Film Institute in its top 10 TV shows last year. Some of its vocal fans includes: Kevin Smith (Writer & Director of Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back), Joss Wheddon (Exec producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Stephen King (Sci-Fi, Suspense Thriller writer)

Incidentally Kevin Smith & Joss Wheddon guest starred in separate episodes in Season 2.

In the new season, another mystery is introduced, question is, is VM involved, who was the intended target and who did it? And of course, the answer to the cliffhanger in Season 1 finale, who was at Veronica's door, Logan, Duncan or Leo?

Season 1 of Veronica Mars airs locally on the ETC channel, Wednesday nights at 8.

24 - Jack Bauer is back from exile, rather his imaginary grave, on Season 5. The 4-hour season premiere absolutely rocked! I can't imagine any other TV show killing off two key characters in the first hour alone. Sniff Sniff... I will miss them. As per previous seasons, all episodes are frenetic, action packed, sucking you in and leaving you asking for more.

This season Jack has a new girl, Chloe has a boytoy, Edgar remains as Chloe's whipping boy, CTU has a new "hobbit" boss, Logan is still president, Mike is back, Audrey is back at CTU, the Almeida couple are, sort of, back too. This time Russian extremists has taken hold of a cache of weapons grade chemical which they threaten to detonate on US soil since they can no longer ship it to Russia without being caught by federal agents.

ABS-CBN broadcasted a tagalog dubbed version of Season 3 months ago. While Studio 23 and AXN broadcasted the English version. No local release dates are set for Season 5 yet.

Lost - probably the hottest TV show on earth today, period. You must be living under a rock if you haven't heard of it before now. What makes lost addicting? Let me count the reasons: aside from staging the most expensive pilot in TV history, there's the eye candy of course, the mysteries of the island, the survivors' backstories and how they are ALL connected to each other, the hatch, the out of this world theories thought of by its rabid fans, the Dharma Initiative, the easter eggs that the writers throw in to tickle your mind, who are the others? Are there more survivors of the crash? I could go on but space is limited.

In Season 2 the hatch is finally opened, some mysteries of the island is revealed but more questions are asked, we get to meet the other inhabitants of the island, more flashbacks and connections and someone will die.

Lost airs on AXN and Studio 23.

I will end here for the first installment of my own TV guide, stay tuned for the next one.