Time to start my Top 250 TV shows! That's up from 180 shows I watched and counted down last year, when I actually thought I was cutting back this year
Once again as you can tell, I watch way too much television. Almost all of the shows on the list aired in the year 2016, with some being leftovers from years past that I finally got around to watching. So let’s begin with the list! Here we start off with 6 dramas and 4 comedies:
The Top 250 TV Shows: 250-241
250) "Shadowhunters" Freeform
Leading off my Best of 2016 is Shadowhunters. It truly is one of the worst television programs to air this year, and appropriately landing at the lowest position on my list. The acting was some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The story is completely unoriginal, especially being based off of a book series (which I’ve heard is just as rough). I think I saw the movie, but I honestly don’t remember it being any good. But this was somehow worse. Vampires and Werewolves and magic with a bit of incest and I don’t even know what else to say. The fact that a craigslist casting ad was how this show was announced should have been a sign. Surprisingly, I watched the entire season of this trainwreck because it somehow became enjoyably bad. Not to the degree that I enjoyed any of it, but I enjoyed laughing at how terrible it was and enjoyed mocking it. If this is the direction Freeform (formerly ABC Family) wants to go in, it’s going to be a terrible ride.
249) "Hunters" Syfy
Syfy has recently been on a roll with their new offerings so I was excited to see what this one was all about. In this show, aliens are living among us and have some nefarious plan with different rogue groups of the aliens seemingly having different plans. Then there was a secret government agency that knew of these aliens, and has one working for them, yet they didn’t know what their plan was, only that they were bad. Yeah, it was a bit confusing, no clear direction and the story wasn’t all too compelling. Acting was okay. I don’t think I ever really learned any of the characters names, though I think there could have been potential for this one. Unfortunately, it didn’t come together and I won’t miss this one. It was cancelled after the one season.
248) "Baskets" FX
Zach Galifianakis is the lead in this show. Just that alone was enough for me to check this one out. He’s been in a lot of movies I enjoy and figured this would be an easy home run. Instead I fell asleep watching the pilot. And then again on attempt two. I finally finished it on the third attempt, then fell asleep watching episode 2. I gave up. It was slow, depressing and not worth my time. Zach Galifianakis plays a failed clown who has no friends and his mom is played by Louie Anderson, who won the Emmy this year. I guess Louie got the strongest role, but I wasn’t blown away with the little I saw. It was renewed for a second season, but I’m likely not going back to this one.
247) "Dead of Summer" Freeform
Dead of Summer was another disaster from Freeform. The show takes place at a summer camp in the 1980s, which they did a terrible job convincing the audience of the time period. Somehow the camp was linked to satanists and death and bad fortune. The camp was closed for years, until a new owner re opened it because she loved the camp when she used to attend. Other former campers return as counselors. They all get pulled into the mystery and pretty much everyone dies. The acting was iffy and the story was pretty terrible. The twist was a bit surprising, but the 180 the character took seemed like it wasn’t planned to be that way from the start. I think the show could have had potential, but the direction they took focusing on one of the kids backstories each week didn’t work. With the attention on mainly one or two each week, you never were given a reason why to care about them or want them to survive the summer. The intention for a second season was to bring in a whole different cast from an earlier point in the camp’s history that tied into the mythology but it got rightfully cancelled after one season.
246) "Second Chance" FOX
This show had so many name changes I almost forgot which one they settled on. During the pilot stage it was Frankenstein, then it was The Frankenstein Code once it was ordered to series, then Lookinglass when it finally aired. The show follows a cop who is murdered after getting caught up on the wrong side of the law. He’s then given a “second chance” when his consciousness is then transferred to that of a younger man. He now has the chance to fix his past, and help someone who is dying with the science behind how he’s still “alive”. His past comes back to haunt him and tries to be better, even when the past is right on his heels. It wasn’t very good. The main guy’s American accent was rough. The plot didn’t seem like it could go on for that long and probably would have been better as a movie. The show premiered out of American Idol, bombing in the timeslot that created Empire. It was quickly moved to Fridays where it was burned off and I gave up on it. Never finished this one.
245) "Game of Silence" NBC
I had this on my list of the top 15 shows I was looking forward to in 2016 last year and placed at number 14. The show was a remake of a Turkish series with the same story. A group of kids are involved in a crime, go jail and it then follows the present day when their past catches up to them. The show flashes back and forth to show how it’s all connected and involved. I tried to enjoy the first few episodes, but I was bored, couldn’t connect with any of the characters, and didn’t feel any connection to the story. I put it aside for a while, and never got back to attempting to finish it up. I did The show was canceled by NBC after one season, and probably for the best. It needed some excitement which it really lacked.
244) "Animals" HBO
This was one weird show. When I read a review for it before it premiered, it pretty much said you’re going to either love it or not get it at all. I fell into the “what the hell did I just watch” category. The show follows different animals in different episodes (Rats, Pigeons etc) in a minimalist animation style doing human things and having human crises and thoughts. My intentions were to try and watch the whole first season, but that never happened. It was so strange and off putting that I let it go after only a few episodes. This also seems to follow my previous extreme love/hate of the Duplass brothers projects.
243) "Heartbeat" NBC
This was NBC’s attempt at getting their own Grey’s Anatomy, even using an actress that was once a recurring character on Grey’s Anatomy. Though she was playing a different role, she was essentially playing a character that could have eventually found its way to Grey’s Anatomy. The show had too many characters, couldn’t find a good balance between the humor and serious drama and was pretty forgettable. It was also the third medical show on NBC that season. They had The Night Shift which does a decent job in the summer, and the new relative success of Chicago Med (which actually took Heartbeat’s timeslot when the lead actress got pregnant, pushing production). It had its love triangle, soapy stories and heartbreak (heh) but didn’t really come together. In the end, I fell behind and never got back to it. Then NBC cancelled it after one season.
242) "The Great Indoors" CBS
How Joel McHale went from Community to this complete dud baffles me. This is the first of man new CBS shows on my list of older white men who don’t understand how we are now living in the world we do with GASP millennials! and confident women! and strange new ideas! I feel sad for everyone involved in this show. It’s not very funny, the stories are pretty generic, predictable and not creative. This entire case deserves much better than what they are given. Joel McHale’s character returns to his magazine after living on the land and wilderness to try and point the magazine back into the direction and vision he has. McLovin is one of the characters and he could easily be reprising that character. I don’t know why CBS picked this one to go to series. The pilot was a dud with little hint of the show becoming stronger down the line. The ratings keep declining and there no way I see this one making it to a second season, even though they did give it a 6 episode back order.
241) "Teachers" TV Land
This TV Land show started off as a web series and brought those characters to TV in this new incarnation. The show follows a group of female teachers all at the same school and the scenarios they get themselves caught up in. They can get raunchy and were called out by different groups for their wild take on the American teacher. It had its moments, but more often than not, I found myself bored with each episode and wanted each character to tone it down a bit. They were bold and extreme in the way they portray their character. The show featured a good amount of recognizable actors, at least to me, popping up here and there which was a fun surprise. The show was renewed for a second season and will premiere in January.
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I always forget how much time this stuff takes to put together! The write ups should get better from here on out since I will be enjoying them more as I go on haha. The Top 250 TV Shows: 240-231 will be up next!
) and the second one had bad reviews... 
it has a good premise.
it was really good.
Don't care about the others... Can't wait for the rest as always.