Oh, man. A lot of stuff! Not in any particular order.
- TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN. It is so ridiculous and yet I adore it because the characters have a surprising amount of depth, the concept makes a surprising amount of sense in its own completely nonsensical way, and it just cheerfully sits there doing all these ridiculously silly but also utterly epic things, in between INSPIRATIONAL SPEECHES ABOUT DRILLS and how they are a perfect analogy for how humanity inches ever onward and will never give up no matter how far you push them underground. It is impossible to adequately describe it in a way that makes it sound anywhere near as great as it actually is, but seriously.
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? I love this movie like you wouldn't believe. The characters are delightful, the dialogue is hilarious, the story takes itself just the right kind of not at all seriously, and the music and visual design is awesome.
- Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody duo. Originally they just wrote songs, which are both frequently priceless and actually quite catchy and fun to listen to while spanning a mind-boggling range of musical genres. Later they got a TV show with plots written around making up excuses to include their songs, which is brilliant; it's this awesomely low-key bizarre character humour broken up with ridiculously over-the-top videos of the aforementioned hilarious songs. Then even later they made a second season where the songs were mostly written into the plots, and though most would agree it's not quite as good as the first, it's still pretty great.
- Boston Legal, extremely unserious, lampshade-hanging, fourth-wall-breaking legal drama that contains a lot of shameless soapboxing and sexual harassment and completely makes up for it by featuring one of my favorite (by which I mean complex, self-loathing and damaged) fictional characters of all time, Alan Shore, and in him and Denny Crane the most bizarre, touching, powerful, utterly adorable platonic relationship in anything I've ever watched or read. Also, Alan's closing arguments are one of those things I could happily watch for the rest of my life and never get bored, no matter how shamelessly soapboxy they are.
- ReGenesis, Canadian television series nobody has ever heard of except me. It's basically House except with mass outbreaks of superviruses and bioterrorism instead of individual patients with weird diseases. It features a truly delicious main character (by which I still mean complex, self-loathing and damaged), some very interesting plots, actually mostly accurate science (fancy that!), an openly gay character who is well-adjusted and competent and non-stereotypical and doesn't die and whose sexuality is not his only defining characteristic (fancy that), and just great character writing in general and aaaa I need to watch this again already because I love it! @_@ The fourth (final) season is a bit... odd, but other than that it's just absolutely marvelous. Somebody else needs to watch this because I have never been able to fangirl over it with anyone but Shadey and that's just sad.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Don't let the embarrassing title and campy monsters fool you, because this show is good, primarily thanks to the amazing characters and character development and the priceless humour.
- Firefly. You can marathon the whole series in a day! :D And it's just got awesome worldbuilding and the characters and their interactions and the humour and oh god.
- The Ace Attorney games. Characters! Humour! I am really repeating myself a lot here, aren't I?
- Don Rosa's Disney comics. Hilarious and with actual character depth and some awesome heartwarming moments and crazy research! Also, it's really fun how he thinks exactly like a fanfic writer, with an almost reverent regard for the canon (Carl Barks' work) and (almost) always justifying rather than ignoring the things that don't quite seem to fit together in canon, while being unafraid to fill in the blanks with new ideas of his own. And he has some really, really clever and creative ideas. I've recently finished reading his entire body of work and I'm honestly heartbroken he's retired (apparently his eyesight is getting too bad to draw comics, which is just tragic).
- Jesus Christ Superstar! Takes the Biblical story of the crucifixion and manages to make it compelling and emotional by expanding upon the character of Judas and why he did what he did and showing Jesus as seriously conflicted about the whole thing. In song. Note that the 1973 movie, though the best known version, is not my favorite and I'm not sure I would love it anywhere near as much as I do if that were the only take on it I'd seen. (I fell in love with my school's production originally; the 1973 movie feels a bit weird and disjointed to me in addition to being... a bit campy and seventies-ish and difficult to take seriously. Various other productions I've seen (bits of) then frequently appear to completely miss the point by playing Judas as simply evil and greedy instead of desperate and honestly concerned and explicitly refusing the blood money until they convince him it would be a waste to refuse to take it when he can use it to do some good for the poor argh who let you direct this seriously.)
- Lackadaisy! Liquor-smuggling and the associated shootings and shady activity in Prohibition-era St. Louis, except the characters are all adorable kitties who are adorable. Also really funny and gorgeously drawn.
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Everything about this is loveable, especially Neil Patrick Harris and the beautiful songs and the comedy gold. If you haven't seen it already, watch it. Commentary! The Musical is pretty hilarious too, if you have the DVD.
- Mythbusters. So it's a show where myths are busted (or, occasionally, confirmed) and there are lots of explosions. Okay. But what really makes it is that it is hosted by really funny, charismatic people and just watching the banter and all the things that go wrong and the inventive solutions they think of to test the myths is glorious, and it can tell you some pretty fascinating stuff (oh god elephants actually are afraid of mice).
- District 9. I can't even begin to sum it up in a way that doesn't make it sound cheesy, but I promise that it's not. It feels very real, especially so the main character's development, and it's just extremely intense and interesting and I love this movie.
- Næturvaktin, Dagvaktin, Fangavaktin and Bjarnfreðarson, three Icelandic comedy TV series and a wrap-up movie that incidentally contain some of the most realistic and compelling psychological character depth I have ever seen. None of you have ever seen this or are ever going to, but this is a Stuff You Love thread and I love them, so.
- The Neverending Story and Momo by Michael Ende. Note that by The Neverending Story, I mean the book, not the movie that I have admittedly never seen but according to what I've gathered of the plot was clearly made by people who hadn't the faintest idea what the book was actually about. These are very possibly the best children's books ever written, and note that I don't consider children's books an inferior class of fiction.
...aand I should probably stop so I don't spend all day here and diminish the chances anyone will bother to read my post further.
