Biennial

It's been two years. Two years since I made a new years resolution to watch all of The West Wing. Roughly a year ago, I posted that my progress was slow. In the same way that evolution is slow. That is to say, glacial. The plot of Lost moved faster than I did. And so here we are, just past the anniversary of my promise. And I am no further on than I was a year ago. It's not like I didn't try. Well, when I say try...I bought the box set. If you count the act of mouse clicking and door opening as effort, then I'm onto a winner. I also dust the offending box set quite often. 

You would think, that given the just described events, that I may have learnt my lesson. Oh, how foolish you would be! I am the woman who watched eight (count them) seasons of Smallville in the hope that it might start getting better. I have no sense of when to quit. And, following in such tradition, I decided to make a promise to myself to watch all of The Sopranos this year. 

Frankly, I'm a little ashamed that I haven't watched it so far. I am repeatedly told that a large part of my televisual education is missing. So I thought, why not? Let's give it a go. And if I don't? Well, at least I have another box set to dust.

In Case You Were Wondering...

I never did watch another episode of The West Wing. 


I've had 10 months to watch them. *sigh* 

An Update

'Twas my NY resolution this year to watch the entire series of The West Wing from the beginning. I've never seen it (how?) and thought it was about time.


Anyway, about a week ago I started to despair (maybe) that it was May (MAY!) and I had managed to watch a grand total of 0% of the show. Poor showing. Really.


But no more! Episode 1 has been watched and filed and episode 2 is ready for action. Probably in August.

Once Removed

I am a little behind. I have two episodes of Big Love waiting for me. I can't really build up the enthusiasm to watch them. It's too much like hard work. So I started watching trash instead. I was thrown into a slump by the sub par episode of the last but one Fringe (you know, the one where we find out all of a sudden that Peter is some sort of fly-by-night-shape-shifter-assassin) and started watching The Vampire Diaries. 

I've been good lately. I stopped watching all the crap that I used to watch. All the soapy stuff with no real story line pay off. Private Practice gone. Smallville gone. ANTM gone. I have yet to get rid of Gossip Girl. It's like a UES limpet, hanging on for dear life as I try to appear erudite in my television choices, giving me away as the cheese-whore that I really am. I'm a sucker for the Dan/Blair frenemy thing that they have going on at the moment. So what I thought I was doing, adding some more cheese to the proceedings is anybody's guess. I've worked my way through season 1 in mere days, compelled to watch more and more until I have the whole story. I'm anticipating the sugar crash when I catch up to current time. The anti-climax of no more episodes to binge on. 

Maybe then I can start cultivating my high brow (ha!) persona again. After all, Fringe was back to its glorious self this week. And The Good Wife managed to restrain itself with the dun-dun-duns. Also, I have finished season 1 of Breaking Bad and hope to be up to speed enough to talk about it in the present tense at some point in the near future. Maybe soon I can start on that pesky new year's resolution to watch the tiny amount of a bazillion West Wing episodes. But who am I kidding? I love the low brow. I love all  kinds of brow.

Resolutions

As one might expect, at this time of year, there are resolutions to be made. I've not been much of a one for resolutions throughout my life, the important ones at least. You know, exercise more, eat less cheese, help a charity. Last year I experimented in resolution making and decided that in 2010 I would watch more films. My aim was to watch one hundred films. Now, given my commitments not involving a screen, this is quite a large total for me. Two films a week is almost unheard of for me. 

What actually happened is that I managed thirty films over the first three months (impressive) and then my interest waned (not surprising) and I watched about ten in the rest of the year. It was just much easier to soak up Mark Kermode's reviews and then pretend I had watched the films. Less time consuming. More conducive to sleep. 

And now we are here, that time again. January. A chance for me to predict how much of a failure I will be in the upcoming year. So I'm not setting my sights high this year. I've taken my resolution from my 2010 activities. I made my way through all four seasons of Felicity (how I had never seen this is beyond me). 2009 saw me watching (well, re-watching, I had seen all the episodes when they aired) all fifteen - yes, fifteen - seasons of ER AND watching and loving (obviously) all of The Wire. If I can do that, I can do this.

So this year I endeavour to watch The West Wing. I have this:

bought for the bargain price of some pounds so there is no going back. I have tried to watch it before but I've always been distracted by shiny things. I hope to finish it as soon as possible so that I can look back and heartily mock my doubt. 

Yeah.