I have never seen Supernatural. But man am I more in love than ever with Breaking Bad after last night's episode, so maybe I should check out Supernatural too.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Deadwood. Every time FANTASTIC TV comes up, I am compelled. The dialog and characters are so very rich. It takes a couple episodes to hook you, but I've found that many good shows are like that.

It's not, I realized, a total fit with what you've described above, but man, it's soooo good. Sadly, the third and final season sort of peters out, due to some offstage issues, but wow, along the way, it's very good.

I'm not familiar with Supernatural, though.

There's a 13-week series starting next month on NBC Monday Nights titled "Persons Unknown" (preview) that promises to be mix of "Lost" and "The Prisoner" (both versions) with seven 'core characters' and (reportedly) a definitive end. It's "from the Academy Award Winning Writer of the Usual Suspects" but there's no Keyser Soze in sight. Caveat: it finished production some time ago, originally for Fox who sold it to SyFy (a bad sign), then NBCU promoted it to its top network (maybe a good sign, but NBC loved "Heroes"). I'll be watching at least the first episode...

I'm not a big TV watcher, but I've been following Treme because someone a year ahead of me at Iowa has been writing episodes for it. His contribution hasn't appeared yet, but so far I've liked what I've seen.

Did you watch Carnivale? Are you looking for DVD or currently broadcast?

Have you tried Damages?

And I agree; Breaking Bad is tremendous. I'm often perplexed by the cinematic quality. A casual shot from within a frying. Or a microscopic shot of a fly. Etc.
And the characters and the acting are amazing too.
Some people I've recommended to found it too depressing though.

I second the nomination for "Damages." I have to actually be in a certain mood to watch the show because of how much guessing and second-guessing is going on. Light TV watching while unwinding at the end of a night, this ain't.

I've watched the first two seasons of Damages and found them both good, but then, hey, it's Glenn Close.

I'm stacking episodes of Treme up at the moment. Watched the first three episodes and I love the locations and the music but it seems to be a very slow burn, much like the first season of The Wire. So I think I'll wait til the season's done and marathon that.

I keep thinking "I have to try (cocksucking!) Deadwood" and also Carnivale so thanks for reminding me of those. Another HBO drama I never saw was Oz ... is that worth getting into?

Don't really care if it's on DVD or currently broadcast as long as there's about a half-season or so for me to judge whether or not I can get into it.

And on that note: I'm about 1/2 way through the first season of Supernatural. Very VERY "X-Files Lite" thus far, but the chemistry between the two lead actors is really good. And there have been some GENUINELY creepy moments, as well as some ROFLMAO-worthy ones. Only in the last couple of episodes, though, have there been any real hints of where the overall meta-plot might be going, but what very little has been shown has piqued my interest enough to keep going for the time being. Also the soundtrack is firmly rooted in 70s and 80s hard/metal rock, and is used to very good effect.

Similar discussion has popped up elsewhere and there's a lot of people recommending The Shield, if anyone's still reading this!