Good TV has made me picky!

You know how back in the day, there'd be like one show you just loved each season, and how that show would sometimes be the same one you watched every year? And how all other TV was like "eh, I can take it or leave it"? And how if you have two or three shows that you just adored, you'd count yourself as stunningly lucky? And how the rest of the TV shows weren't that great and you knew it and so you didn't expect all that much from them, and were therefore forgiving when they weren't good?

Yeah, I don't think we're in that world anymore.

We're in a golden age for really well-made shows, not just well-written or well-acted, but also really beautifully produced and with amazing music and with fantastic wardrobes and amazing plots, and everything about them is just good. And even better than that, lots of them are geeky--they're about heroes or brilliant crimesolvers, about historical events or time travel, about life in a post apocalypse or about zombies or about hackers or about any number of wonderful, speculative-fiction-style things that never would have been made before the last few years.

And it's amazing.

And it's made me picky.

See, TV networks seem to think that Monday night is the only night you're allowed to put shows on, so every week we're forced to make that judgement call--which one is better? Which one needs the ratings more to survive? Which one is okay to wait on for the DVR, for Hulu, for Netflix in six months?

And then, after that, there's the actual pickiness of watching them. Is it fulfilling it's potential? Is it holding up to the promise of those first few episodes? Is it maintaining the same level of writing--and is it at least as good as all the other good shows we already watch?

I'm much less forgiving than I was before. I good show that stumbles feels like it's done a much worse thing than a middling show that stumbles the same amount. A smart show that does one dumb thing, or a progressive show that has one plot point that's disappointingly typical, feels like it's damaged itself more than a dumb show that does the same things. And when a show just goes right off the rails, there's less incentive to see if it can find itself again, because hey, there's all these other good shows around, isn't there?

That being said, I haven't given up on shows. I haven't given up on TV. I've just gotten more critical and more likely to talk about it as I've gotten more involved with it. Being picky about TV hasn't damaged my enjoyment--quite the opposite, because it's made it so that I don't have to watch stuff I don't like just because it's on, like back when there was only one or two really good shows on TV and dull boringness the rest of the week. No, it's made it so that basically all I watch are shows I love, and that's a much more engaged and active sort of viewing.

Good TV has raised the bar--for all the rest of TV, but also for itself.

What do you guys think?

What hooks me on a show

I'm predisposed to get hooked on shows, but some do it and some don't, and I was thinking about what all the shows I love the most (and obsess the most over) have in common, so I thought I'd see if I could make some lists about it:

The absolute basic things:

• Fun--I like a show that doesn't take itself to seriously that it crushes you with its self-esteem; note that "fun" can mean "lots of crushing of zombie-heads", not just "lighter tone"
• Smart--It doesn't have to be the cleverest thing ever, but it has to be smart enough that I'm not bored or insulted.
• Good story--My story-likes tend to fall in the categories of "totally-not-a-cop helps a cop by being unconventional" (Castle, The Mentalist, Bones, Sherlock, Elementary, Forever), or in "totally not the normal boring world" (Firefly, Farscape, The Walking Dead, any of the super hero shows out how, Sleepy Hollow, Community, 12 Monkeys), or "FBI Agents solve mysteries and also there's monsters" (X-Files, Fringe). I define good story as: 
• Interesting characters that aren't like everyone else, are clearly motivated but morally complex, and relateable no matter how weird they are
• Plots that involve some neat idea that's not everywhere
• Something not spoon-fed so that I can think about it after it's over

And, lets be real, almost every time:

• Someone to ship the heart out of

because really, if there's no one falling in love against all odds, maybe 9.5/10 times, I get bored. The other .5 are the ones that have really awesome other stuff going on so that it doesn't matter that there's no URST, and are super-rare.

And then these things are bonus:

• Genre settings and trappings--I'm a sucker for scifi and fantasy shows, so, like, Henry being immortal in Forever, all the demons and stuff in Sleepy Hollow, all the powers in SHIELD, they're basically guaranteed before they happen that I'd watch some of it and see if it's worth it.
• Especially good: dinosaurs, aliens, time travel, wormholes, humans not being the top of the heap, mutants, mysteries that are probably magic, something to do with books or literature.
• Something weird really early on--A lot of shows wait a while to bring the weird, but the more competition there is, the harder it is to sit on any of your story ideas, so I appreciate it when a show is strange right off the bat--like Sleepy Hollow, and 12 Monkeys, and Farscape.
• The contrast of the normal and the not-normal, handled well. Jane being raised in a circus and not knowing how normal people live. Crichton not having a clue at all about alien societies. Cole not knowing how to hold a fork or what Chinese food is. Love it.
• Better representation that most--because let's be serious, most TV is white guys doing stuff. So if there's women doing stuff, or not-white-guys don't stuff, or not-white women doing stuff, or any of the other variety of people out there, they're basically golden. 
• If they make no big deal at all--like the way Joe is just a cop, and it doesn't matter that he's black and raised a white kid in Flash--it's straight to my heart.

And these are a virtual guarantee that I'll love them:

• Strong shipping--If the show sets people up as a potential couple, and it's a good one with good writing and good chemistry, I'm there. 
• This one can backfire real bad if the chemistry is not there or if the character is introduced only as a love interest--because that's lazy and a combo of bad writing and bad casting, and is an insult to those of us who watch so much tv.
• Super-bonus if there's lots of good ships available, like Scorpion, or even better yet, SHIELD, where basically anyone could pair off with anyone and I'd be happy.
• Involvement by Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, Rockne S O'Bannon, or Steven Moffat. I've loved almost anything these guys have created, and I go into them expecting to love them whenever they have a new thing, so that definitely helps. 
• Of course, if I don't love them, it's that much harder to convince me otherwise.
• Above-and-beyond cleverness, and thick, juicy plots that don't spoonfeed but also don't needlessly complicate--which, apparently, is hard to do on TV. 
• Lost did good for a long time, and then totally fell apart. Fringe, though, did a lot better, and I think it's because they learned a lot of lessons from it. 12 Monkeys is doing very well, and I'm crossing my fingers until they break that they hold up*.

So basically, I like smart TV that's not about whatever the news is about, that involves delightfully weird stuff (not depressingly or confusingly weird stuff), and has really interesting characters that I can relate to and that are definitely falling in love with someone, even if it's unclear who.

What hooks you on a show?

NOTES:

*It's very hard to type with crossed fingers.