shy ♡

Heh, I wouldn't have noticed that f you wouldn't have pointed it out. About the fez, I'm going to quote TV Tropes quoting the personnel:
“A fez? You’re kidding me, you’re going to put Matt in a fez? If we put Matt in a fez, Matt will never take the fez off. He will want to wear the fez for the whole of the next series. It will be glued to his head. He’ll be wearing it, you know, with his own clothes. It will be a nightmare.” And he said, “No no, I’ve got a cunning plan; as soon as he’s got the fez I’m going to kill the fez.

Indeed, his pouting face is almost as adorable as his happy face. Or maybe they're equally adorable. Not sure.

Oh, I kind of assumed it was a screencap edited to look it had a crease and stuff. Oops. ^.^; Is it me or the Eleventh Doctor always looks like he is really happy about something? Tho' if I were the Doctor, I'd look I'm always happy about something too.

Hi Pathos! I don't really exactly know you beyond agreeing with a lot of what you say most of the time, but I wanted to know: who did your signature picture? It is very nice looking, I like how much it looks like a photo. Not to mention its a wonderful shot of the Eleventh Doctor. ^.^

I always found the character of House fun (in an amusing-to-watch way, definitely not a I-wish-I-knew-this-person way - IRL I'd hate him so much), and it's funny when you look at what are the 'best episodes' (ie. most of the early ones), how he's pretty much the only character with any personality at all. Wilson doesn't really do much till series 2, and all Cuddy does is stop House from doing wacky experiments on the patient that would have them cured in the first fifteen minutes.

The arm thing's not too big a deal - I broke it when I was seven, and the hospital I went to wasn't very good, and it ended up being set at a wrong angle. I could have it rebroken and set again, but I can't be bothered with that. The wonkiness doesn't really stop me doing anything, and it's good for scaring small children :D It was pretty painful at the time, but I remember my leg-breaking hurting more. I was an accident-prone child.

When I was growing up, we only had four channels, so I had to keep a calendar of when animal documentaries were on (IIRC, David Attenboroghs stuff would be on BBC1 at 6pm on Wednesday, Big Cat Diary would be on Channel 4 at 5pm on a Sunday, The Really Wild Show would be on BBC1 most weekdays at 4:30pm and those were my favourites :p) - if I'd had access to round-the clock channels dedicated to documentaries, I'dve never left the house.

What I found way more cripplingly depressing than animal-related documentaries were historical documentaries, particularly war-related ones I'd watch with my dad. And, oh god, anything about genocides makes me depressed for days. I wrote an essay for my sociogoy of violence module last year about the Holocaust, and I kept having to take regular breaks so I didn't fall into a pit of despair over it.

Aaaah. I've sort of seen Flight Club. In my first year of uni, me and a couple of friends decided we'd print of IMDB's list of the top 150 films and try and watch them all. We watched nowhere near all of them, but we saw a lot of classics that I'd never seen before, including Fight Club. Unfortunately, I sort of fell asleep in the middle, and when I wope up, he was two people and it was all very confusing. I must watch it properly sometime. I fell asleep during The Godfather and The Dark Knight, too. But I stayed awake and guessed all the plot twits of The Shawshank Redemption :D

Yeah, it always surprises me how much they can pack into a two-hour movie, when I'm used to watching TV shows that go on for days, where hours pass with nothing happening. It always surprises me how fast films can make me care about their characters as well - it usually takes me at least five episodes to adjust to a new cast memeber :p

Well, apprently Torchwood S4 is being set more internationally, so I think there's an episode in America and one in Canada? I read somewhere that there was discussion about whether or not Eve Myles was attractive enough for American television. One of the things I really like about British TV is that you get more average-looking people playing not just parts, but lead roles. You wouldn't get Benedict or anyone who's played the Doctor getting a lead in a US show.

I do mean to finish Angel. I've seen a few episodes from the last series, and it's really funny, but my favourite bit was the series 3 finale, where they go to Lorne's homeworld. Brilliant stuff.

The League of Gentlemen is a sitcom-horror sketch show set in the fictional village of Royston Vasey. All of the characters are played by Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss. I've seen a few sketches and it's very funny; now I need to get around to watching the whole thing properly.

I've seen the first couple of episodes of Misfits... you're right, it is pretty odd. It's an amusing concept (I think someone discribed it as "'Heroes' with ASBOs"), but I never really got into it.

And no, sadly, you can't pre-order it yet. I will, though, the second they let me (which will probably not be until the final episode has aired, which will be in July or soemthing, but I can be patient).

Also, because this amused the hell outta me and you'll get it: http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lai6puQFMH1qah5i2o1_500.jpg

...I want to pre-order Sherlock series 2. I'm aware they haven't filmed the episodes yet, let alone aired them, but I'm impatient, dammit!

Ah. Then I shall say no more about Firefly, because I forget what happens in which and I don't want to ruin anything. :D

I miss House being about the medical mysteries. I really don't care for the personal drama at all (the subplot in S6 about Chase killing an African warlord and Cameron leaving him for it was so bad it was hilarious, and the only good thing about the Foreman/Thirteen pairing was that the 'ship name was 'Foreteen'), and taking House off drugs was a bad move. I didn't like the giant ball of angst the show fell into in S3 (the whole Tritter arc), but the whole "House being in love with Cuddy" thing is ridiculous. I enjoyed the 'everybody lies' thing as well. I'd make for a rubbish patient of the week - as far as I can possibly think, I don't have any secrets, and certianly no medical ones. I'd be a pretty boring dead person on Bones as well, since I've broken a bunch of bones throughout my life and one in particular set really weirdly (my right arm is 33 degrees wonky), so they'd be able to figure out it was me right away :D

Oh man, I used to watch animal documentaries all the time. I only discovered actual TV three or four years ago - until then, I'd only watch cartoons or documentaries, and the only things I'd actively look for on TV were series by David Attenborough. As far as I can remember, Attenborough's stuff doesn't focus so much on how rubbish humans are to animals/everything else, but he does highlight which animals are endangered, and for the longest time (up until I realized I hated biology) I wanted to be a zoologist.

What's your other top-favourite movie? I don't watch movies as much as TV (I like spending days watching stuff!), but I think my favourite would be maybe V for Vendetta? Rent is the one I've seen the most, almost certianly. I love Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. And lots of the Disney/Pixar films. And some others, but I'd have to think about it, whereas I can rattle of giant lists of TV shows I love.

Mulholland Dr. is a very, very strange film. If you do watch it, please let me know what you think is going on, because I haven't the faintest clue o.o And I remember being traumatised by Lost and Delirious - when I was a teenager, one of my favourite films was Imagine Me and You which was a lesbian romantic comedy, and Piper Perabo played one of the leads (it also has Giles, Sally Donovan and Gwen from Merlin in, lol), and she's also one of the leads in L&D, and seeing her kill herself freaked me the hell out.

I only have S1 of Torchwood on DVD (a Dutch copy, I think?), and I keep sort-of wanting to rewatch S2. I've seen S3 a lot; one of my housemates last year had it, and we seemed to watch it all the time. Have you heard anything about the fourth series they're making?

I haven't actually seen all that much of the series of Angel, but he seems (generally speaking) a lot cheerier in that than in Buffy. I know he has his moody, depressing bits fairly frequently in his own show, but we also get to see him be a bit lighthearted and cheery, which never happens in Buffy. Except for a bit in the last episode when he gets all pouty about "having a soul first!" which really confused me, since at the time I'd not seen any of Angel at all X3

I will watch more of Bones when my housemate gets the next set of DVDs (which he assures me will be soon). I've also talked one of my other housemates to get Ahses to Ashes series 3, beacue apparently it ties up a lot of questions about A2A and LoM, so I'm looking forward to that. In the meantime, I have my own stack of DVDs to work through, including Mad Men, The Leage of Gentlemen, Jeeves and Wooster and the entirety of the ITV series of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremey Brett :D

Yeah, TWoP can be a little harsh. Although they do tend to like the shows/episodes I like, which is gratifying. I follow them on Twitter and they said there they adored Sherlock, but unfortunately I've not seen a proper review/recap on the site.

I actually managed to get amazingly attached to the characters on Firefly, despite what a short amount of time we spent with them. I think part of it was the one-on-one conversations the characters had about little things (I always love stuff like that) and also spotting bits of Buffy characters - Kaylee has a ton of Willow lines, the Simon-River relationship reminds me of Buffy and Dawn, Mal is very Spike-ish at times and sometimes Jayne sort of reminds me of teenage!Giles XD
Have you seen the film Serenity? It ties up (some, nowhere near enough) the loose ends of Firefly.

I never cared for the new team as much as the old one - Taub doesn't do much, Thirteen doesn't really have a personality (although she is played by Olivia Wilde, which is a terribly shallow reason to continue watching the show, but I don't care), but I adored Kutner from the get-go. He played a character on 24 (a terrorist, because 99% of non-white people on 24 are terrorists >>), and he's also been on Buffy (he was one of the cavemen in the horrendous 'Beer Bad' episode), which automatically made him cool in my book. Although, thinking about it, the old team didn't have much of a personality between them, either. They worked well together, though. I guess I just miss House when it was all about the mystery. I'll probably keep watching till the end. I don't see it going on for much longer, and I've followed it so far, I might as well see it through. That was my mentality for 24 as well :p

For my Sociology of Work module last year, I actually wrote an essay about concepts of duty and how they are illustrated in The West Wing. That was the most fun essay to research :D I mentioned that the characters in TWW are sort of idealised - Sorkin himself has described the show as "a kind of valentine to public service", but there are many examples of people working to serve the public in the same way in real life - Kal Penn left the cast of House (and a massive salary) to join Obama in his White House, for example. People are cool :D

Nitpicking is part of the fun of watching TV, I think. I love talking about the bits I liked, but you can only get so much discussion out of that - there has to be room for lots of criticism too!

Consider Prayers for Bobby added to my list. I just looked for it on amazon and it's expensive, so it could be a while, and also christ it looks depressing. And it's based on a true story, that's terrible ):
(a short list of lesbian-themed films where one/both of the leads kills herself: Lost and Delirious, The Children's Hour, Mulholland Dr., High Art, Love & Suicide, and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.)

River Song would make such a good future Doctor ;; But aaaaah, I can't wait for series 6!

I love Torchwood. It's so great to watch, really objectively as a TV show, where it starts out finding its feet and trying to separate itself from Doctor Who by making it incredibly sexual and dark, and then it gets better as it goes along, as the actors find their characters, and the writers figure out where they want plots and relationships to go (in series 1, they paired Gwen with just about everyone), and episodes get less like Buffy episodes (giant space whale?), and then all of a sudden series 3 comes along and is one of the best bits of television I've ever seen.

Haha, I'd never noticed the Captain Jack/Angel similarities before! I can't decide which one broods over his curse of immortality more XD I'd lean more towards Jack because he has less relationship drama - which is amusing if you consider how he sleeps with anything XD

Yes, Bones and Angela, how could I forget? I love Bones. I've seen up to the end of S3. Which, by the way, was SO SAD ;; Zack, I loved youuuuu! I want to watch more - especially if the Gravedigger comes back, because he was freaking badass. Does Bones stay as cool a character in later series?

(holy word limits, Batman! I'm sorry all my replies are freakishly long - I'm alone in the house with only you to ramble at, I'm afraid :p)

I love that we both love this show and rip it to pieces anyway :D

I've decided that I want the job of working for a TV channel (ideally the BBC because it's my favourite, but I'm not overly picky) and telling the people who make the shows how to be more inclusive, and that having a cast of stright, white men just isn't cool. It's a shame that the Doctor is always a white man, because it's so brilliantly progressive in terms of all its other characters. I think it's so great that a 'family show' (that is, it's not for kids specifically, but made to be suitable for them - like Merlin, I think it's meant to be watched by people of all ages together) is so gay-friendly, with people like Captain Jack presented as positive. I rewatched the Agatha Christie episode today (I don't know why I love it so much, but it's one of my favourites), and Donna makes a comment about how sad it is that the boyfriend of the guy-who-gets-killed-by-a-giant-wasp isn't allowed to grieve, and it was really sweet. And bisexual Shakespeare ftw. And asexual Doctor himself, of course.

I utterly adore Jed and Leo's friendship. I think theirs might be the best relationship in the entire show. That bit after Jed gets shot and rushed to hospital and he sees his wife and daughter and then calls Leo over and it looks like he's going to tell him some important if-I-die state secret or something, but then he kisses him on the cheek... guh, it's wonderful. It's a shame that it's so rare on television to see two women have friendships as deep as that (or, indeed, deeper than talking about men). Buffy and Willow qualify... Inara and Kaylee, maybe? Rory and Loreli Gilmore... sort of Katara and Toph? That's all I can think of o.O

All I remember from R+J was the giant fishtank. And the girl (Keira Knightly, or someone entirely different?) wearing fake angel wings. It wasn't very memorable :p

I know Scrubs has a good, diverse mix of characters, but lots of them (well, mostly JD and to a lesser extent Elliot) really annoy me. The way every epsiode ends with some kind of "what we learned today" message drives me nuts, and the 'daydreams' annoy me a bit - an idea is funny, but when it it gets spelled out in front of me, it gets less so. I do quite like the musical episode, though! But it's not as good as Buffy's.
Haha, TV Without Pity did a 'Best musical episodes' list a while back (naturally, they loved Once More With Feeling best), but CJ's The Jackal made the list, even though it was like 30 seconds long and Allison Janney wasn't even singing and it wasn't a musical episode by any stretch of the imagination... it's just that good. XD

I knew when watching Buffy that Tara was going to die (I don't know if you're aware of the trope in TV where lesbian characters die and/or go evil, but Buffy S6 is the go-to example of both), and after being traumatised by Jenny Calender's death, I decided I'd do my best not to like her so it wouldn't hurt as much when she died. And then she somehow became my favourite and aaaaahhh it was horrible.

My favourite characters in Firefly were Kaylee, Shepherd Book and Wash. One out of three isn't so bad? D: I wish so, so much that Firefly could've gone on for longeer ;;

Kutner was geekily adorable. Actually, my favourite thing about him was that he was the only well-adjusted character in the whole show. Everyone else had so many issues, and Kutner was just there and happy and free of romantic entanglements, even though, with his background (parents getting murdered in front of him, being adopted into a white family), he had the most reason to be messed up.
Which is why it really bugged me that, when they killed him off, they decided to make it because of those reasons that they'd already established didn't bother him! There was an episode where he talked to a patient about being adopted into a white family, and said that he liked being different and I remember thinking it was awesome that a character on TV (American TV no less!) was allowed to be different and happy. I realize the writers had only one episode in which to write Kal Penn out, but surely they could have come up with something that didn't assasinate his entire character as well?

Yeah, it's pretty pointless to get attached to anyone in 24. They will die. In fact, just about the only characters left alive/sane at the end were Jack (who had been clinically dead twice over the series anyway), Kim (who was everyone's least favourite character) and Chloe (who had gotten progressively less awesome as the show went on).

It does annoy me in TWW that they will take some 'cases' really personally and do anything it takes to get it done (as beautifully shown in The Stackhouse Filibuster), but if it's a randomer with Problem X, they just get sent away with a "sorry, due process gets in the way, maybe next time". In a later series, the Bartlet's middle daughter, Ellie gets married, and one of the parents says something like "no we know our daughter is heterosexual". I've not rewatched the episode, but I remember it sounding oddly relieved, but more than that, it was a massive missed oppurtunity for the writers to address a very serious issue head-on: it's all very well for the West Wingers to talk abotu how awful it was for those parents' kid to be beaten to death because of homophobia, but I suspect they'd take a rather different view of gay issues if one of their children was gay.

Nah, I don't watch NCIS/L&O/CSI/other shows with abbreviated titles much either, it's just that they're on sometimes in the day when I'm at home (and thus have a TV) and it's that or Scrubs. I don't know why, but I really dislike Scrubs.

I've had my favourite character die a fair few times. Absolute worst was Tara in Buffy, oh god, that killed me. Two of my favourites in Firefly got killed off, too, and plenty of people I liked in 24 (my old laptop was named after Edgar ;;). An actress I really like played what looked to be a main character in Spooks, and she died horribly in the second episode. Oh, and Kutner was my favourite non-House-or-Wilson character at the time of his death. Harriet Jones was my favourite Doctor Who minor character... and I suppose pretty much everyone in Dead Like Me is dead to begin with. I just shouldn't get attached to TV characters, because they all seem to end up dying on me D:

24 and TWW couldn't be more different in terms of tone, but the subject matter is somewhat similar... there are some scenes with the President in!
In 24 series 7 there's a scene where a ton of terrorists from a fictional African country break into The White House (with startling ease) and start shooting people. I first watched it when it aired a few years back, and it was pretty intense, but mostly I was worried about the President (the S7 president is awesome. Although she gets rubbish in S8). Then I watched the entirety of TWW, and last year, saw S7 again, and OH GOD that scene is so much more distressing when you realize the NPCs the terrorists are shooting dead all over the place are people who work in The West Wing. I spent the whole scene going "You could have been Toby! ;;".

I'm quite glad I came in late to TWW. It doesn't have much of a fandom to speak of, so I didn't miss that, and also a) it would have been way too depressing to watch TWW with Bush as the actual POTUS, and b) I would HAAAAATE to have to wait from one series to another to resolve cliffhangers.

In addition to having all the men patiently nodding along when the women start discussing feminist issues, it's also slightly off that whenever there's a race issue going on, the white cast will find the nearest black person (usually Charlie or Fitzwallace, but Nancy in a pinch) and ask them about it. Seriously guys, think for yourselves
(though Fitzwallace's smackdown of the pro-DADT guys is one of my favourite scenes in anything, ever). Actually, speaking of that, it bugs me a bit that, while none of the characters in TWW display homophobia and they all seem generally pro-gay, none of them actually do anything about it. I was so sad when they sent the parents of that kid who got beaten to death home so they wouldn't speak out about the hypocrisy of LGBT-legislation. It wouldn't hurt them to have a gay character that hung around for more than one episode, either. We do get a pretty excellent episode in S...6, I think? Yeah, Faith-Based Initiative. Look out for it :D

Oh god, I get the "You're looking too far into it" thing all the time. Lots of my friends/family moan at me because I point this sort of stuff out in just about every show I watch, but that's because it's in every show I watch! And I don't even watch the really awful shows (I'm looking at you, Two and a Half Men).

Aww, I like Abbey. It took me some time to get used to her - I think it's because she, Jed and Leo are usually involved in the more serious plots, while CJ, Josh, Donna and everyone get to do silly things like invent secret plans to fight inflation and liken internet forums to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and accidentally become Canadian.

Hee. My background at the moment is Sherlock and the Eleventh Doctor (I got a 7-hour coach up to uni today, and when I'm going to be using my laptop in public, I always change it to something more neutral and less likely to attract attention). I'd link you, but I can't find it on DA anymore D:

Sorry about your back ):

Oooh! I've also seen Romeo + Juliet, which I believe had Leo in? I didn't like it too much; R&J is one of my lest favourite Shakespeare plays. I'm reasonably sure we have Catch Me If You Can recorded somewhere at home, I shall definitely make time to watch it when I'm there next. And I've heard good things about Shutter Island! I'm making a mental note of all of these. I'll let you know what I think when I've seen them :D

(oh bloody hell that message spilled over the 5000-character limit DX)

I dunno. I think sharing the connection with three other people makes the internet run a little slower? And my room's furthest from the connection point, so it's a bit weak. But it doesn't usually bother me because I don't download a lot of stuff - as long as it's reliable (ie. won't crash the night before an essay deadline) I don't mind too much.

I shall keep an eye out for Total Eclipse! I've only ever seen Leo in Titanic, which I saw when I was eleven and it freaked me the hell out, and Inception, which I adored.

Aww! I'm sorry you're so upset! D: I was really sad at the end of S3 as well (Halleluiah is so overdone, but it still works), I could never take Simon entirely seriously because he was always 'Gibbs from NCIS' to me, but I completely loved him for bringing all the funny, especially with so many CJ scenes - "That's Special Agent Sunshine", the whole exchange with CJ firing the gun and falling over (Allison Janney should always fall over because she does it so well and I am way too easily amused) and the bit where he steals just about every part of CJ's car. Simon, you will be missed ;;

It's funny - I started watching TWW shortly after watching a crapload of 24, which is sort of similar, particularly with the scenes set in the White House, and for a while I kept expecting everyone to get blown up and betray each other and terrorists to take everyone hostage (and everything to happen in real-time - for the first few episodes, I kept thinking "But how are they at the house already? They only left the White House a second ago!), and it eventually clicked that TWW was a much more peaceful, less dramatic show. But that just means that when someone does die, it feels like an actual punch in the gut because it's so less expected D:

But the next couple of episodes (if you've got S4) should cheer you up! The 20 Hours in America 2-parter is one of my favourites. "I'm Toby Zeigler. I work at the White House." <3

I agree with you that the treatment of environmentalists is a bit annoying in the show, yeah. There are a couple of episodes where ideas about global warming are given a bit of credence, but on the whole it's a bit rubbish.

I'm a bit ambivalent about how they treat feminism on the show, too. One of the scenes I like least is when a randomer tells Sam off for sexualising Ainsley, and then Ainsley makes a big strawman "I don't mind, so it's okay for all men to speak to their female co-workers that way!" argument out of it, which is a bit WTFy. And in The Women of Qumar, they raise some very valid issues about the treatment of women in unnamed African countries, but just make CJ really passive-aggressive the whole time. It's also a bit annoying that it's only the female characters who care about women's issues. CJ, Abbey and Amy do an excellent job of it, but it would have been great if they'd have had just one man identify as a feminist ):

The polarisation of Republican and Democrat really surprised me when I first watched the show - I'm used to UK politics, where there are three main parties, and they're all relatively centralised, and the polarisation of the views on pretty much everything disturbed me. I guess it's because Bartlet's a really liberal preseident (by American terms), that they have to give a similarly extreme opposing view? It is a bit silly, though. But they do have some cool characters who bridge the gap a little. Like Donna's boyfriend in a few episodes, he was cool.
And one of my absolute favourite episodes (in S6, I think?) called The Supremes, they argue why having extreme views can be a good thing because it brings more debate to the table. I won't ruin it for you, though :)

I hate the ALL (usually white and almost certainly straight) MALE casts with one or two token women whose job it is to get with one or more of the men. I can't tell you how much I love that the women in TWW are more than just love interests. Or not love interests at all, really - while Abbey and Donna are obviously attached to Jed and Josh, they're very much characters in their own right, with as much screentime as their 'dominant' partners. And CJ is beholden to nobody :D

Sports games on consoles are what confuses me the most. Either physically play the game, or don't bother! D:
And people constantly ranting about something you just don't care about it beyond annoying. This is why I love finding people who share my obsessions and squeeing endlessly with them, and then having more netural conversations with people who don't care about [TV Show X] as much.

I hate other people's computers, too. I can never use the keyboard properly. And things are in the wrong place! But it's nowhere near as bad as someone using my computer. Because then I have to answer questions like "Why is your desktop background a picture of Sherlock and John as dinosaurs?" and "Why do you have an entire folder dedicated to genderbent Sherlock pictures?" and so on.

I envy you with a desk and chair that doesn't hurt your back. I don't have a desk at home (I only live there over uni holidays, so I have a teeny room that doesn't have space for one), and at uni, my desk's so covered in crap and my chair is horrible, so I just use it on my bed. Which is probably slowly destroying my back and will leave me crippled and Quasimodo-esque by the time I'm 30. Good times :D

GOGOGO FASTER DOWNLOAD D<

I think the moral of the episode was that it's so easy to become tangled up in the politics of getting a bill passed (and maing sure it does pass), that it's easy to forget how people's lives are touched and changed by its effects. Lots of the legislation that gets passed or not passed in TWW is discussed in terms of pros and cons, but very rarely do we get to see the actual personal impact it has, and who it would help. Which is why, I think, it's such an excellent episode <3 My best friend's brother is severely autistic, and her family would do anything for him.

I do love the diversity on TWW. Sure, most of the characters are straight white men, but the women get to be just as cool, and most of the minority characters are utterly fantastic - Joey is definitely one of my favourite secondary characters, and one of my favourite things that they do is, when she's signing and Kenny's speaking for her, she will be the only one in the frame. It's a little thing, but it stresses that those are her words that are being said, and in a world where people with any kind of disability get treated like children, it's very important.

Nah, I have no interest in sports, either. And I'm pretty grateful nobody in my family is really into it, either (my parents both have a weird love of F1 racing, but that's it); one of my housemates is utterly obsessed with football and it just seems like a bit of a waste of time (which I feel completely hypocritical saying, given the amount of time I spend watching TV/doing nothing, but still).

I do plan on watching The Social Network at some point - as always, when the DVD is cheap :p I don't know if it's even on DVD yet... I haven't seen it around, but I think it was in cinemas around the same time as Inception, and that's definitely out. Ah. Amazon is telling me it comes out mid-February. Sometime after that, then :D

Haha, for all my carelessness, I think I take pretty good care of my DVDs. It's a pain to have to take them to and from uni all the time, especially if I get an urge to watch Show X, only to discover I've left the DVD at the house I'm not presently living in. But on the plus side, I can watch them on anyone's computer, not just my own, which is nice. My laptop screen's tiny.

I think I would take you up on your stealing stuff advice, but both my laptop and internet are rather rubbish, so I'd probably better not. It took me so, so long to download the three episodes of Sherlock, that the idea of waiting to download anything more than that makes me want to cry. But thank you :D

This is a pretty good outline of the Life and Times of Marx and Engels. With slightly more academic phrasing than my version :p
I absolutely love looking at the relationships historical people had with one another; my sister's favourite topic is the Romantic Poets, and how Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats and the others all used to hang out and have orgies and things and William Blake used to sit at home and write emo poetry about how he wasn't invited to their sleepovers.
My personal favourite historical person in terms of personal life and relationships is Virginia Woolf, because that woman was all over the place - she married her husband, had an affair with her female best friend, wrote said friend a book (Orlando) about a character who keeps swapping sex, and eventually killed herself.
Although, that said, nothing filled me with greater joy than learning that Arthur Conan-Doyle and J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) were BFFs and Barrie wrote Sherlock Holmes self-insert fic.

True, Holmes and Watson are the original slightly dysfunctional and co-dependent BFFs, but in my mind, Marx is more like House, just because I can imagine him going out of his way to annoy people, including (especially) Engels :p

Series 3 is gooooood. Abbey Bartlet becomes a bit more of a main character, which is great because she's fantastic, the run-up to re-election is really well done, and the finale is, as always, rather epic.

Yup, the Stackhouse Filibuster is the one with the autistic grandkid. The subject matter is handled so well, and having CJ and the others tell the story via emails to their parents and the ending is just so, so good <3 Apparently loads of people with autistic family members utterly loved the episode because it highlighted the importance of caring and treating those with autism. And various societies whose work focuses on MS have wholeheartedly praised the MS storyline because it helped clear up so many of the misconceptions about the disease (the stat Joey mentions in either S2 or 3 about one third of people believing that MS is fatal was actually true). I love it so much that it helps educate people and brings debates to light that lots of people might not have considered before <333

Studio 60 looks great, and I think Sorkin also wrote Sports Night, which I know pretty much nothing about. And he wrote the script for the Facebook movie they made last year... The Social Network or something, I think it was called? I've not seen it, but I'd like to, but only for the writing; the film's premise looks fairly uninteresting.

I'm impressed by your organizational stealing skills! :D I just wait for the DVDs to come and out and become cheap. I tend to watch things about a decade after they originally aired (I've only watched things like TWW and Buffy over the past three years when they started airing in the 90's), so it's exciting watching things like Sherlock when they're properly on TV and being able to participate in fandom when it's actually still alive XD

Because I'm a nerd: Karl Marx basically invented the study of sociology (as well as communism - he wrote The Communist Manifesto), and he looked at society in terms of power structures and class differences. Engels was his BFF and though he co-wrote most of Marx's books, he gets very little credit. I like to think of them as House and Wilson - Marx was the genius who went around upsetting people and getting exiled from various countries for his wacky ideas and telling everyone to overthrow their government, and poor Engels had to work to fund Marx's work, and go into the countries Marx got banned from, and even took the blame for a woman Marx got pregnant. One day I shall write a kid's book called The Adventures of Marx and Engels and it will be fantastic XD

I think the S2 finale is the absolute peak of TWW (and also possibly the peak of television in general), but it stays very good all through to the end of S4, where it dips a bit because of a writer change (or "firing Aaron Sorking from his own show"), but they find their feet a bit after that.

I love Josh, too. Some of his episodes and plotlines are my favourites. Celestial Navigation, the episode with his "secret plan to fight inflation", is the one I always show to people who've never seen an episode in an attempt to reel them in. And either of the Big Block of Cheese days (I actually have an upside-down world map on my wall because I love the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality scene so much). And The Stackhouse Filibuster because I always have to try really hard not to cry at the end. And I've actually made a list of a bunch of my favourite West Wing moments because I'm that cool :p

And I really want to see the SNL show Aaron Sorkin wrote - Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (not a programme for people with lisps, that). And it has Danny's actor in, and Matthew Perry and Kristin Chenoweth and Dawn from the UK Office and lots of other cool people!

I don't actually *have* at TV at uni, which makes watching stuff when it airs even more difficult. But iPlayer and other catchup sites are really great, and give me a week or more to remember there was soemthing on I wanted to watch. I just need to be more organized, I think.

It's so much fun, trying to spot all the actors on DW :D There are a few glaring ommissions (Stephen Fry, obviously, and Martin Freeman is usually in everything but not DW (amusing story - I was watching Shaun of the Dead with a friend, and we were just saying how, since Bill Nighy is in the film, Martin should be, too, when he appeared onscreen. For about three seconds, but still), but clearly they're saving him for a Sherlock/DW Xover ep).

Cool people to keep an eye out for:

*Mark Gatiss as young Lazarus-who-evolves-into-a-scorpion in The Lazarus Experiment. It's hilarious.
*Peter Capaldi (Frobisher in Torchwood, Malcolm in The Thick of It) in The Fires of Pompeii
*Anthony Head in School Reunion, as a character I like to think of as Giles' evil twin
*Olivia Colman (anything with Mitchell and Webb, Harriet from Green Wing) as the mother in The Eleventh Hour
*Richard Wilson (Gaius in Merlin, Victor in One Foot in the Grave) as Dr. Constantine in The Empty Child 2-parter
*Zoe Wanamaker (Susan in My Family, Madam Hooch in HP) as Cassandra in The End of the World and New Earth
*Penelope Winton (Shaun's mum in Shaun of the Dead, among other things) as Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North (best minor character)
*James Corden (Smithy in Gavin and Stacey) in The Lodger
*Angel Coulby (Gwen in Merlin) in The Girl in the Fireplace
*Tamsin Grieg (from Black Books, Green Wing and Going Postal) as a nurse in The Long Game
*Simon Pegg is also in The Long Game
*Vinette Robinson (Sally Donovan!) as Abi (who dies after like ten seconds of screentime) in 42
*Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) as the girlfriend in Love & Monsters who gets turned into a paving slab (that was a pretty poor episode, wasn't it?)
*Paterson Joseph (Benjamin in Jekyll, Lyndon in Green Wing) as Roderick in Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways
*Roger Lloyd Pack (Trigger in Only Fools and Horses, Owen in The Vicar of Dibley and Barty Crouch Sr. in HP) as Lumic in Rise of the Cybermen
*Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy in HP) as Rosanna in Vampires of Venice
*Russell Tovey (George in Being Human) as Alonso in Voyage of the Damned
*Fenella Woolgar (Min, the pregnant PI in Jekyll) as Agatha Christie in The Unicorn and the Wasp
*Meera Syal (Miranda, the not-pregnant PI in Jekyll) as Nasreen Chaudhry in The Hungry Earth 2-parter
*Nina Sosanya (the PM's assistant in Love Actually) as the mother in Fear Her
*Bill Nighy as Dr Black in Vincent and the Doctor
*Ardal O'Hanlon (Father McDougal in Father Ted) as Thomas (the cat-person) in Gridlock
*Sarah Parish (from Mistresses and a ton of other things) as the giant spider-lady in The Runaway Bride
*Steve Pemberton (The League of Gentlemen) as Strackman in the Silence in the Library 2-parter
*Adrian Rawlins (James Potter in HP) as Dr. Ryder in Planet of the Ood
*Michelle Ryan (Katherine the psychiatric nurse in Jekyll, Nimueh in Merlin) as Christina de Souza in Planet of the Dead
*Thomas Sangster (Sam, the adorable kid in Love Actually) as Latimer in the Family of Blood 2-parter

...I so did not mean for the list to be that long o.O Well, that's an hour or so of my life that I'll never see again, thank you, IMDB.

As I said, SFU is on my To Watch list, and I'm keeping a lookout for cheap DVDs. When I do watch it, I'll definitely let you know what I think!

Sociology nerds are the coolest people <3 Clearly we need to throw sociology-themed parties. We could dress up, even. We could be Marx and Engels :D

OMG YAY YAY YAAAAAAAAY <33333

I was really surprised when you said you didn't like it when you'd seen it before, because you seem to like the same TV as I do, and YAAAY I'm so happy you gave it another chance and like it so much! :DDDD I think it's probably the best-written show I've ever seen (certianly the first four seasons - it gets a little less good later on), and all of the characters are amazing. There's not a single person I dislike, and the whole thing is just a joy to watch. I totally agree with you that the real west wing should be like that, and whenever I watch it, I feel really bad for all the Americans who watched the show when it originally aired, because they had George W in office and were pretty much taunted with images of these amazing, hardworking people every week on TV XD

But I can't pick a favourite character at all. CJ is one of the most awesome women on TV ever (god help me, I can't decide if I want to marry her or be her), Jed is the leader you wish all leaders could be, Donna is the most adorable thing in the world, I spend every second Sam is onscreen wanting to smother him with hugs, I want Leo to be my dad... and even the minor characters are so cool you want them to get their own spinoff shows (especially Joey, Admiral Fitzwallace and Margaret, oh god, I don't think Margaret has a single line in the entire show that doesn't make me die laughing).

And you've just finished series 2? Wasn't the finale just the BEST THING EVER? and not 'best' as in feelgood, but just so, so well-written and with perfect acting and tone and aaaahhh, that final episode, with Jed shouting at God in Latin, it kills me every time.

I'm really bad at watching things when they're airing because I can never remember when something's on from one week to the next, and I hate having to wait for the next episode if there's a cliffhanger or anything, so I'd catch Who if it was on, but I was usually too disorganized to watch it when it was actually airing. But I'll do my best with series 6 this year. And with Sherlock, of course. Like anything could keep me from Sherlock S2. Which is, rather pathetically, probably the thing I'm looking forward to most in 2011 :p

My knowledge of history is pretty poor, too (I watched The King's Speech at the cinema the other day and even though it was about the monarch before the current Queen, I had no idea who anyone was), but I'm a bit of a literary geek, so the Christie, Dickens and Shakespeare episodes were a delight. I'm fairly sure there were some things in other episodes that went way over my head, especially in the Fires of Pompeii episode. Though I spent most of that trying to work out who the Priest-man was (turns out he was the cabbie in A Study in Pink :p).

Ooooh, thank you for the Youtube link <3 I shall definitely watch that sometime. Oh! And I'm keeping an eye out for Six Feet Under DVDs, too, since you mentioned it, uh, somewhere on the forums, and it sounds really good. I'm going to be watching TV shows from now till the end of time, aren't I? :p

Glee should have specials where the cast perform a full-length musical. Like Rent or Wicked or Les Mis or something. It would be fantastic!

Oh, I can't play anything. I'm not a very musically-inclined person; just looking at sheet music makes me feel confused. Ranting about sociology-related things is my biggest talent, but it's not much of a party trick.

I shall definitely watch Coupling properly at some point, but I've got a crapload of things to watch before then (Mad Men, Kingdom, The League of Gentlemen (yay Gatiss!) and the giant boxset of Basil Rathbone SH films I bought on a whim :p), so it's been added to The List.

Hebrew should appear on more TV because it sounds fantastic :D

FLYING SHARKS MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER! I'm on such a Doctor Who kick at the moment. I recently finished my big watching of everything (well, New Who) in order and it was glorious. The series 4 finale was so good - I'm a complete sucker for endings involving all the good guys teaming up and working together to save the day (because, clearly, I am secretly twelve years old) and it was perfect. Except for poor Donna ;; She was my favourite companion and everything!
The Agatha Christie episode was amazing as well. While not as big a fan as I am of Conan Doyle, I love Christie's stuff, and all the in-jokes were fantastic and having Christie herself being played by the pregnant PI from Jekyll was hi-freaking-larious.

Daniel Radcliffe is absolutely adorable. I can't even see screencaps from the early HP films without cooing over him because he's so tiny! True, so's everyone else, but the glasses make his eyes so big and d'www. I don't think I've seen him in anything non-HP-related, though. Has he done any stuff? Aside from that weird play in London with the horses and nakedness?

I really want to watch Fortysomething, it sounds great, and the cast is utterly perfect, but, in the biggest load of WTFery I've seen in a long while, the DVDs are only available with Region 1 coding. Which means that the British show with British actors is only available in America. I don't get it, either. I think I'll see if I can talk one of my friends with a bittorrent or similar into downloading it for me.

Yeah, Stephen Fry getting beaten up was the stuff of nightmares. I'm so glad he didn't die onscreen or there would have been public outcry. In my head I pretend that he didn't really die which is why he's there at the end (yes, so are all the other people who died (including the girl with the glasses who was adorable) and it's all symbolic, but I don't care. There shall be no dead Stephens.).

I'm so jealous of you and your voice training. My two best friends have had voice training and are fantastic singers and it makes me feel so rubbish next to them :p Chris' solo version of Defying Gravity is pretty amazing - I only wish they'd had him sing the proper version from Wicked, because the Glee version (ie. the song with the bits mentioning Oz and other Wickedy things cut out) is a bit repetitive and not as cool. Chris should play Glinda in a stage version of Wicked. Mostly because I want to hear him sing Popular because that would be the best thing ever.

What about fezcarves?

FEZES

what about scarves.