Top 10 Geek Shows You Should Watch

So you call yourselves geeks or fans of shows that are fantasy based?  You buy your tickets to SDCC every year and spend thousands to stand in line all day to see the new X-MEN trailer?  But when I ask you if you watched this show or that you look at me like I just kissed your sister (ignore this one if I just kissed your sister)!

First, let me define the difference between a GEEK and a NERD since this is bound to turn into "that's not a geek show" or "you don't know what you are talking about, nerd!"  Only my opinion matters in this regard since it is my list.  If you don't agree, then you have only yourself to blame.

THE NERD

Loves linear knowledge. Has a shrine to Star Trek and learned to speak Klingon because Shakespeare is better in the original mother tongue.  Spent five years trying to find the meaning behind the numbers on LOST and has 500 JPEGs of the images that are shown at each FRINGE commercial break, looking for patterns in what has to be code.  Consumed by the logic of things and uses terms like "derivative" and "pedantic" when their entertainment pays homage, because the nerd doesn't require anyone to validate their love for things.  As a scientist or engineer, is likely to be more on the development side of things because making things work is more interesting than the concept.  Give one a manual and watch them devour it.


THE GEEK

Loves collecting stuff!  Has watched Star Wars at least once a week since 1977 because of light sabers and droids and the Force and Han shooting first and Jawas and space battles and the JEDI!  Didn't learn to speak any particular fantasy language (except maybe a few choice words or terms) but can do a mean Yoda or Jabba impression and can twirl a lightsaber like one of those prequel Jedi.  Loves to quote lines from their favorite shows.  Consumed by the potential of things and "geeks out" when a show pays homage, because the geek is at the core a social bug.  As a scientist or engineer, enjoys the research side more because coming up with concepts for technology is far more interesting than making sure it works.  Give one a manual and watch the perplexed look on their face.


Here are the top 10 Geek shows... that you should watch:

10. SOUTH PARK (1997-Present) - It is animated, edgy, pop cultury, hilarious and even after over fourteen seasons, still relevant (unlike that show on FOX with the spiky haired brat).  The fact that they can make these episodes in less than a week and have them ready for airing also means it is the only show that can take an immediate current event and lampoon it before the ink is dry on your Sunday paper (people still read those, right?).

9. THE IT CROWD (2006-Present) - A show from the UK that is full of pop culture and geek centric themes.  Only a true geek would love it.  While it plays around with the world of information technology, it only does so on the surface, focusing more on the comedy of outcasts.

8. SPACED (1999-2001) - Another UK show.  Made by geeks, for geeks, about geeks.  Though made way back in the day (over 10 years ago), it still feels current as the generational themes haven't shifted all that much in geek world.  It also has the most amazing "gun fight" ever put to film.

7. ARCHER (2009-Present) - Geeks love toys.  Archer has tons of them.  Plus witty writing and crude humor make for win.  The show is wish fulfillment for geeks as Archer can do anyone and anything without suffering too many consequences.  It is also brutal, reference heavy and very quotable.

6. FIREFLY (2002) - Never even made it through a whole season but is worshipped by geeks everywhere for its great characters, fun stories, quick dialogue and geektastic casting.  Though this show aims more for realism than fantasy, it avoids nerdisms by not getting caught up in technicalities.

5. COMMUNITY (2009-Present) - One of those shows that could end up much higher on the list down the line.  It is an orgie of all things geek and more often than not executed masterfully.  It is like every show and yet no show can be compared to it.  Arguably the most geek show ever made.  It is important to note that if you watch just the first few episodes of season 1, then you won't experience what this show has become as the writers went along.  Watch them all or don't bother, the payoff is pretty incredible.

4. CHUCK (2007-2012) - Terrible name for an intoxicatingly lovable show.  This is the ultimate geek fantasy.  Brilliant guy in a dead-end job gets abilities through tech and is suddenly thrust into the spy world.  Assigned a beautiful CIA handler, he falls for her.  And the rest is history.  This show delivers more character progress in 78 episodes (91 will be its final tally) than most shows do in 178.  Plus, how can you not be watching a show where characters hum the Imperial March from Star Wars to gain confidence for a mission?  Or demonstrate proficiency with an Italian accent inspired by Nintendo's Mario?  All in the same episode!  Not to mention one of the most likable casts on television.  If you haven't checked it out yet, you should.  You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

3. QUANTUM LEAP (1989-1993) - Scott Bakula at his best (though, he is pretty great on CHUCK as well).  A never-ending possibility of story lines and shifting characters in every episode, this has to be one of the most challenging acting gigs ever.  Never given its proper respect due to being too sci-fi, it lasted just long enough to give us almost everything we ever wanted, with an ending that left us wanting more.

2. LOST (2004-2010) - Not just one of the best geek shows of all time (nerds dig this one too) but one of the best television shows of all time.  Full of sci-fi, fantasy, drama, and humor, along with brilliant writing, it will go down in geek-history as one of the most controversial series finales ever.  Whether you were satisfied at the end or not, that shouldn't change the greatness of the journey.

1. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (2004-2009) - When it was announced that this 70s series would be re-imagined and that it would change major characters and plot elements around, many raged against it and slammed the miniseries.  But the show went to season, thanks to the UK, and Americans started hearing positive things from their cousins across the pond and suddenly BSG became the most illegally downloaded thing on planet Earth!  And then we saw what those Brits were talking about and the lovefest began.  With its deep social, political, and religious themes, as well as some of the most amazing space battle sequences you will ever see, and major story shifts along the way, this is the best geek show of all time!  That... you should watch.

Your favorite show didn't make the list?  Well, I can be persuaded to add more or even change the list.  Argue for your choices in the comments section.  If I haven't watched your favorite show, I will consider it if you make it sound sexy.  But if your only argument is "YOU SHOULD HAVE INCLUDED FUTURAMA! YOU ARE NOT A GEEK!" then I will just add that show to the "dumbest fans of" list next week.

NOTE TO BABYLON 5 fans: Your show was 10th and SOUTH PARK was 11th on my list but I switched the spots because I haven't watched all of B5 and didn't get as involved in it. I may some day change the rankings once I catch up on shows (like FRINGE). But I didn't feel it was an honest list if I included a show I hadn't finished watching.

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Is Sci-Fi TV on Friday Good or Bad?

Geek TV fandom seems to have split opinions when it comes to their shows running on Fridays. On the one hand, the phrase “Friday death slot” gets thrown around. There are not-so-fond memories of shows such as Firefly, Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Dollhouse being put on Friday and not exactly thriving.

On the other hand, there’s the opinion demonstrated by Gateworld.net’s Darren Sumner. Darren wrote a piece in early May called “How wrestling is Killing Science Fiction”.

Original series such as Farscape, the first two Stargates, and Battlestar Galactica once dominated Syfy’s Friday schedule and did pretty well for themselves—by the network’s standards at the time, anyway. Then, Syfy acquired the rights to WWE Smackdown with its own large Friday night fanbase. Putting said wrestling on Friday cut into the network’s use of the night for original scripted shows.

Darren’s argument was that wrestling is so strong that it can survive on other nights, but science fiction shows need Friday. His request was for Syfy to move wrestling to another night and give the night back to science fiction shows.

So, is Friday a “death slot” or a safe haven?

There’s no doubt that one of the reasons that genre shows got put on Fridays over the years is the theory that geeks don’t go out on Friday. I don’t know if that is or isn’t true. I know I go out. Over the years, I’ve relied on my VCR and DVR to allow me to have a social life and see Friday shows later.

For the population at large, Adult 18-49 live TV usage is much lower on Friday. As I was contemplating the ratings impact of Chuck’s move to Friday this Fall, I found that Live TV viewing at 8PM is 17% lower on Friday than Mondays. It’s 15% lower at 9PM and 10% lower at 10PM.

So, right off the bat, you are dealing with fewer available viewers than on other nights. The counter-balancing element is that there is less competition on Friday. Networks do not put their strongest shows on Friday. When they do get a high-rated show on Friday, they move it pretty quickly. Many people don’t remember that juggernaut CSI began on Friday, was a hit, and got moved to Thursday pretty quickly.

My focus is on live viewing because the most important thing people need to know about ratings now is that the only rating that matters is the “C3” rating. “C3” is the rating that the average commercial minute gets in a program within three days of it airing. A few years ago, advertisers got their decades-old wish to pay for the ad time based on an estimate of who watches the commercials rather than who watches the show. They have a point. If you were an advertiser, you wouldn’t want to pay more than you have to either.

While genre fans love the DVR, I think part of the ratings problem genre shows have began when Nielsen started to include it in the ratings. It’s popular for the “commonfolk” to bitch about Nielsen, but it was Nielsen’s development of new technology to measure DVR viewing that added a new challenge for genre shows. Their technological advancement in developing the “C3” rating added more to the problem. When the VCR was the dominant time-shifting tool, the technology only existed to measure what people recorded, but not what they played back. So, the industry did something that was ultimately very good for science fiction shows. They counted anything that was recorded on a VCR as being played back. Science fiction shows and soap operas had what was called a high “VCR contribution” in their rating. So, in essence, they were probably over-counting the genre audience. Surely, not everyone played shows back and-- if they did-- they didn’t play them back in the timeframe advertisers want. They were also skipping commercials like crazy. But, no one was measuring it then.

So, I believe Friday nights were probably better for genre shows with that old Nielsen technology than what it is now that Nielsen is closer to giving advertisers what they want. C3’s aren’t normally published, but they are closest to the Live + Same Day rating these days. So, part of our memories of the “old days” when Scifi shows succeeded on Fridays are tinged by the fact that those rating were “pre-DVR” and “pre-C3”.

The other thing that nags me about Mr. Sumner’s argument is that he is essentially saying that science fiction shows need the cushiest timeslot possible in order to succeed. They can only get decent ratings if they have virtually no competition. I believe the impetus of his POV was how two shows—Stargate: Universe and Sanctuary—got moved from Friday and saw significant drops in their audiences.

Personally, I see that as a sign that people weren’t all that devoted to those shows in the first place. When CSI got moved from Friday, it didn’t lose audience, it gained it.

I think people are making excuses for shows that just aren’t working. Take SGU. It’s first ten episodes ON FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE FALL, averaged 1.5 million PURE LIVE viewers. It added another million time-shifters. The next Spring, in the same timeslot, it was down to 1.1 million Live viewers. But, time-shifters had dropped by about 200,000 too. The subsequent move to Tuesdays didn’t help. 300,000 live viewers dropped the show, but so did another 100,000 time-shifters.

How much does it say about a show when people will drop it so easily?

I don’t mean to pick on this particular show. I actually liked it more than quite a few old-school Stargate fans did. But, one thing lost in the issue of the loss of viewers when it moved was that it really didn’t have a sustainable number of viewers for its cost when it last aired on Friday. The last Friday Adult 18-49 Live + Same Day rating it got was a 0.5. There’s no way that is a profitable rating for a show that looks that expensive.

CW shuttled Smallville to Friday and it did fine and lasted a few more years. Supernatural has survived on Friday as well. We’ll see what happens to Chuck in the Fall. Its fans have been complaining about its heavy Monday competition for years.

Fringe defies the “Friday is great” theory when it moved to Friday and saw a Live + Same Day ratings drop of 24%*. The percentage of 18-49 LIVE viewing declined also. The Friday Fringe had the lowest percentage of live viewing for that demo of all Primetime Broadcast shows for last season.

I don’t think I’ve really answered the question of whether Fridays are good or bad for science fiction TV. If anything, I think the answer is that “it’s complicated.” It may be okay for shows with built-in fanbases to move there and last another season or more. But, Friday’s ability for launching an unproven series may be over. The only new show going into the Friday battle this Fall is Grimm. We’ll see how that does. All the other Friday genre shows are established.

I don’t see Syfy backtracking on its decision about wrestling on Friday. Unless a scripted science fiction show is really cheap, I can’t see one generating a high enough C3 audience on Fridays to be sustainable anymore. And, if it can’t pull an audience on another night, it probably won't work at all.

* Average of all episodes from start of season through week of 5/15.

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Summer TV Geek Schedule

TVByTheNumbers just posted a list of the summer releases for TV but I decided to break it down to only the shows important to GEEKS... or that I allow geeks in my house to watch!

Ice Road Truckers 6/5 History Channel
Covert Affairs 6/7 USA
White Collar 6/7 USA
Falling Skies 6/19 TNT
Futurama 6/23 Comedy Central
Louie 6/23 FX
Wilfred 6/23 FX
Burn Notice 6/23 USA
Torchwood: Miracle Day 7/8 Starz
Curb Your Enthusiasm 7/10 HBO
Alphas 7/11 Syfy
Eureka 7/11 Syfy
Warehouse 13 7/11 Syfy
Rescue Me 7/13 FX (final season)

Note to non-American readers: month first, date second.

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