I enjoy Orphan Black because of Tatiana Maslany's performances. I don't think it's as incredible as many people do but it's worth giving a shot just to watch her.

John Oliver's new show is pretty good (and short; 30mins/week) if you have HBO (since you mention Veep...).

Hannibal is fun if you view it as sort of a murder-y magical fairy tale universe.

I'm not sold on Fargo yet.

That's about it for me, since I hold off even moreso than you; I tend to wait til a series is over before bothering.

I really like Scandal and am delighted the next season (3) is now up on Netflix. Danf got me going on Veronica Mars, which is great as well.

BTW, how was your half? Mine was slow . . . but good!

P.S. Veronica Mars is older than past couple of years but still seems great.

Also, have you checked out House of Cards? Most awesome awfulness.

I have seen Veronica Mars, yes. I finished rewatching it for the third time, recently. I enjoy it very much :)

I'll look into the others. I keep hearing about Scandal... not super sure it's my thing, but maybe.

Yay for your half being good, bearwife! My half was good too! Not my fastest, not my slowest, but I felt pretty good throughout. The small part of me is a little gleeful that I beat my upstairs neighbor for the first time ever in a race, and he's like, a *runner* runner (I think he was jet-lagged, but even so).

What's the draw for Veronica Mars? I never heard about it until the kickstarter movie. Is it just that there's a spunky female heroine™ a la Buffy tVS?

Not much. I gave up on Agent's of Shield halfway through the season out of boredom but have been binging through them just out of a need to keep up with the MCU continuity.

I've been enjoying The Blacklist. It's pretty silly but James Spader chews the scenery magnificently.

HoC season one was excellent. Ideally you should skip season two, but it'd be hard to watch season one and then not watch season two. So maybe just keep your expectations low.

Ha, mullacc, that's a wonderful summation of The Blacklist. :-) I totally agree.

Silicon Valley has just started. I think it's pretty funny. But maybe you need to know something about the startup scene and attendant tech to see the humour. I'm not sure.

There's a season of True Detective. It has got some notable acting. Personally I got surprisingly fast tired of the 'remarkable' acting. But that's just me. It's still interesting to watch some episodes.

Veronica Mars is a show about a truly hard boiled detective (albeit a teenaged girl) who is very savvy about technology and modern pop culture and happens to attend an elitist high school. It is a lot of fun. I watch it on the treadmill, and have thoroughly enjoyed the 2/3 of season 1 I've seen so far.

Scandal is surprisingly addictive, due to the Machiavellian plotting -- it is a fairly through-written show -- and the drop dead gorgeousness of the lead and her clothes.

I've been trying to give Black Box a fair shake, but I'm still undecided. There's some interesting things they could do with it, but a lot of the time it's pretty much a obscure-ailment-of-the-week procedural with a gifted-yet-damaged lead character ala House.

Fargo has been good, but you really have to be on-board with that sort of story-telling.

Have you ever watched Justified? If not, I highly recommend it.

Orange is the New Black is good.

I would also recommend The Neighbors. It only ran two seasons, but I liked it a lot. Funny, goofy, sci-fi. The second season was especially meta, with the characters dropping comments about the show's ratings, the network, etc.

The first half of the first season of orphan black is great and then the rest is watchable because you remember how it all started.

I'm hoping Louie is good this season.

Thanks, y'all!

I think I enjoyed Orphan Black because I knew nothing about it and got to watch them all, so for the first few it's this steady mutual discovery between viewer and main protagonist as to what is going on, and I think this was the optimal way to view it. Later, I remembered hearing about it and immediately discounting it on the premise synopsis. Maslany is very good but now I really watch it for Felix and Alison.

True Detective took me a few tries to get into at first because I just wasn't in the mood for what i thought it was, but because I'd never been a McCona-hey fan or seen his appeal, I was really stunned by how good he was at playing such an interesting character with these terrific pieces of monologue and Woody Harrelson's face in response to everything he did. That wore off midway through but the directing was very good and I liked the Inside the Episode pieces. By the end I was happy for it to be over. I was watching in real time, so the fan presence was occasionally amusing.

If you want sitcoms, there's lots of good ones that have been freshly canceled. There's a bunch of good shows that are over. There are also things that are ok to have on as opposed to shows that should have full attention. Then there is stuff that is not really "good" by most metrics but entertaining.

The haven't seen the last two eps of The Americans, but at first I thought it was interesting because it seemed to be an interesting commentary about marriage and obligation. The thing is I don't really want to watch these people having sex and I'm not sure why I keep watching it or intending to. I think the acting is good but i don't find it enjoyable. I'm in an avoiding bleak things mode so I've been glad that for some reason Mad Men and Game of Thrones have had light moments and some outright funny. Since last season, Mad Men has been outright comedic to me.

Silicon Valley has been steadily getting funnier to me, the last one being the funniest yet. Fargo I wasn't expecting much of and have been happily surprised, there's a lot of talent there. Depending on what you want to watch, there are lots of options. I thought Broadchurch was very good and I think it just won big in England. They are making a US version with David Tennant I think but it may be having a second UK series. I enjoyed, varyingly and in no order, Borgen (over), The Bridge, its Danish original, two seasons of The Bletchley Circle (recently canceled), two seasons of The Hour (canceled) the second more than the first, Please Like Me (possibly continuing, really hope so), Call the Midwife (but I got really sick of childbirth, the music and screaming babies), The Paradise (canceled but no great loss), Mr. Selfridge (not terrific but I love that the world at large has joined my thing for period eye candy), The Revenants--

I don't really know where to stop or start. There's a lot out there and i've been trying to check out anything that isn't reality tv from the last five years or more when i stopped watching much television. Still haven't seen things like Lost, BSG or any cop/legal shows for the longest while except The Good Wife a few years ago. I follow people's careers as well as watch some things from a perspective remove, but then there's my love of the ridiculous. The two shows I've look forward to the most before GoT and Mad Men started were The Mindy Project and Reign because I knew I'd be pretty reliably entertained with an unexpected "what the what" factor.

Orange is the New Black is back again soon. I don't think anyone who's seen it doesn't like it.
Bob's Burgers is a gem.
Mostly saw Justified while doing other things but it's entertaining.
Rectify's first short season was emotionally devastating with unspeakable beauty. It's coming back but who knows if they can keep that up. It seems like they might do a Breaking Bad and shift gears after a six run season but there's no knowing. There's a trend to burn through plot in a lot of shows like Reign, Scandal, American Horror Story, so you're dealing with being slapped in the face by something new in rapid succession. Rectify was very much the opposite, with a dramatic weight and stillness even though it is going at a steady clip by the way its set up.

Like any drug, set and setting are very key in one's experience and I find few things can overcome that. Only undeniable genius and your OTP can defeat a mismatched mood and expectation. I see a lot of things without context and foreknowledge, but it's almost better when something subverts those things: when you think something is grim and it turns out to be funny, when you think something is wacky comedy but has surprising depth, etc.

The big issue most people have is they don't know what they want, so they endlessly flick through options on Netflix or what to eat. This is where a great option jockey would reside, because many people don't have something that is just on anymore or a reliable culture guru.

Sometimes, we need a Billy Eichner for our Drew Barrymore. If you haven't seen that, go see that and Gay of Thrones.