NYT rates the 20 best shows since "The Sopranos" -- and my response

A while ago, the New York Times ran an interactive article identifying the 20 best shows (in the author's view) to have aired since "The Sopranos" debuted 20 years earlier.

Several of the shows on NYT list are also on my post-"Sopranos" list -- indeed, some of these would even make my all-time favorite TV show list, including:

• "The Shield": Simply brilliant in terms of how it made you root for who would ordinarily be the antagonists of a show. I felt dirty hoping that corrupt cop Vic Mackey would get away with his schemes, which is a testament to the writing and the acting. Yeah, it wasn't as realistic as "The Wire," but it was far more interesting.
• "Battlestar Galactica": The ending didn't make much sense, and it tended to sag in the middle of each season. But it was so dark, gritty, and intense in its peak episodes, with a more or less continuous story lasting 4+ years (counting the mini-series and "Razor" movie). I'm reading the unauthorized oral history of BSG (both incarnations), So Say We All, and I just got to the section about the mini-series.
• "Lost": Another show whose ending (indeed, the entire last season) didn't make sense, but was still captivating throughout its entire run. The framework of mixing present day scenes with flashbacks (and then that mindblowing flashforward!) was subsequently adopted by one of my all-time favorites, "Once Upon a Time." [Strangely, "Once Upon a Time" did not make the NYT list, perhaps because it was too mainstream?]
• "Veronica Mars": A teen noirish mystery that launched Kristen Bell's career. I didn't watch the third/last season, and haven't gotten around to the movie either, but that first season was twisty.

On the "just missed the cut list" of the NYT:

• "Justified": This would also make my all-time list. I used to think Captain Kirk was the coolest character on TV, and Jack Bauer was the most interesting. Kirk has been supplanted by Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, whose misadventures in Harlan County, Kentucky, were laconically intriguing. I loved how Givens' character could be summed up in an eight word sentence he once told a bad guy: "You make me pull, I'll put you down." And of course he would make sure that he was justified in shooting.

But there are also a number of shows on the list that I, while possibly acknowledging their greatness, never watched or tried to watch but never really got hooked on:

• "The Wire": I know that it is a common opinion that this is the best show ever in the history of television. I just found it dull and populated with boring characters. It's not that I don't appreciate characters with shades of gray -- notice that I loved "The Shield," and the main character in that is a bad guy! Pretty much every actor in "The Wire" that I've seen elsewhere has been better elsewhere, from Lance Reddick in anything, to Wendell Pierce in Amazon's "Jack Ryan," to Michael B. Jordan in "Black Panther."
• "Grey's Anatomy": I've never watched this, so it isn't entirely fair for me to question its placement, but another procedural/soap opera didn't sound interesting to me. (It's also weird to me that this made the list but "Scandal" did not. See below for more on that.)
• "The West Wing": This has seemed to me like the left-wing version of "24." Each presents a fantasy world where its proponent's fears are being realized, and stopped only through the proponent's heroism.
• "Breaking Bad": I need to watch this. A major reason I haven't yet is that I'm not ready for my image of the goofy dad from "Malcolm in the Middle" to be overwritten by Walter White/Heisenberg.

And then there are the post-Sopranos shows that are on my list but absent from the NYT:

• "24": Yes, it's more fantasy than "Battlestar Galactica" in a lot of ways, but for sheer adrenaline rush, there's nothing like it. I watched every season as it aired starting halfway through season 2, then watched them all on DVD, and then over the course of several months streamed them all while running on the treadmill. My wife has asked me how I can watch it over and over, and the answer is, I can never get enough of Kiefer Sutherland's intensity as Jack Bauer, yelling, "Tell me where the bomb is!! There's no time!!"
• "Once Upon a Time": I didn't think this would be good, but I TiVo'd the pilot episode to give it a try. Within 10 minutes, I was hooked by the magical look of the Enchanted Forest in the flashbacks, and the puzzle of matching the present day residents of Storybrooke to their fantasy counterparts. And this is a show that featured multiple strong female characters (Emma Swan. Regina/Wicked Witch, Mary-Margaret/Snow White) who easily satisfied the Bechdel test every episode. (I didn't watch the last season, though, which was a soft reboot; the season 6 finale seemed to me to be a very good series finale.)
• "The Last Ship": Military valor, end of the world pandemic, conspiracies -- yeah, I'm a sucker for all of that.
• "Scandal": Another show that was basically fantasy, but it was as addictive as "24" was. I loved it whenever Olivia Pope was in "I'm in control" mode, which was most of the time. I liked it a lot less when she in "I'm moping over President Grant" mode.
• "Star Trek: Discovery": I get that it's controversial. It's a lot darker than the usual Trek series (even "Deep Space Nine"). But I like that. Based on season 1 (I watched the DVDs, so can't watch season 2 yet), it's my second favorite Trek series. It could move up to #1 with more excellent seasons. It would have to get a lot worse to drop to #3.
• "Hawaii 5-0": I don't claim that "Hawaii 5-0" is good in the ways that critics view shows. I find it hilariously entertaining, less so in the mystery of the week than in the character interaction (no show is complete with McGarrett and Dann-o bickering, and without the shrimp truck guy), and it's the only show on TV I can think of that features multiple regular actors who are of Asian descent, which is worth supporting alone for the Asian diversity factor (even if the show ended up making Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park leave because they weren't paid the same as Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan).

Am I a TV savant?

My faculty assistant and I were chatting about TV shows earlier, and she remarked that I was a TV savant. (We're both fans of "Justified," but it impressed her that I was able to explain the easter egg about Carla Gugino's guest turn as a subtle nod to her too-short-lived series "Karen Sisco.")

However, in looking at the 2015 Emmy nominations, I feel like anything but a TV savant. Despite my prodigious TV watching, I've seen very few of the shows that were nominated, and some of them I know nothing about. It was nice to see Tatiana Maslany get noticed (FINALLY) for her fantastic work as multiple clones in "Orphan Black," but I stopped watching that early in season 2 after I got rid of cable.

The end of "Justified," and the disappointing Elmore Leonard novel "Raylan"

FX's underrated crime drama "Justified" ended earlier this year after six consistently good seasons. I streamed the first five seasons via Amazon Prime, and it was such a good show that I couldn't wait until next year for the last season to stream; I ended up buying the digital rights to season 6.

The showrunners and producers decided before the season that it would be the last one, which meant they were able to plan the end without having it forced on them, and without having to stretch to pad the episode count (ahem, "Lost"). The series finale was quite good, with a touch of melancholy and fitting ends for the major characters. I don't think it was quite as good as the finale for "The Shield," but that may be the best ever series finale.

Anyway, I found myself missing Raylan Givens, so when I saw that the Elmore Leonard novel "Raylan" was available at the library, I checked it out. Leonard was the author who created Givens as a secondary character in two novels, "Pronto" and "Riding the Rap," and then made him the star of the short story "Fire in the Hole," which became the pilot episode of the TV series.

Leonard had a string of gritty crime novels, many set in his hometown of Detroit, which was lean, dialogue-driven novels in which tough guys on both sides careened into one another with violent results. Before "Justified," he was probably best known for writing "Get Shorty" (on which the movie was based), but a whole bunch of his works have been filmed, including "Out of Sight" and "Jackie Brown," and the short-lived TV shows "Maximum Bob" and "Karen Sisco" (which starred Carla Gugino in the role that Jennifer Lopez played in "Out of Sight"; Gugino later appeared in "Justified" as a high ranking U.S. Marshal named Karen ------, last named never mentioned but clearly different from the name that Givens knew her by).

I knew from reviews that "Raylan" had not been well-received, but I was missing Givens so I went ahead and read it.

Boy, was I disappointed. It's basically three storylines told sequentially that draw from storylines in the TV series, though with some characters reworked. It's flat, fairly lifeless, and missing the crackling smart dialogue from the show. There is seriously only about one line in the entire book that jumps off the page as the kind of smart alecky thing Raylan Givens would say in his laidback drawl.

Most of the time I prefer books to the screen versions, but this was one of the rare exceptions.

First world problems . . . so much TV, so little running time

This is obviously a "first world problem" of the most insignificant kind, unless, of course, you are TV obsessed like I am. But here it is: I'm slightly more than halfway through (re)watching season 5 of "24," but now that FX's "Justified" has started its sixth - and last - season, last year's episodes are now available for streaming via Amazon Prime.

"24," season 5 cast

Promo for "Justified," season 5

What am I to do? "24" is my favorite TV show of all-time, and season 5 is the best season of "24," which makes it the best of the best. On the other hand, "Justified" is really, really good. I think it's not quite as good of a show to watch while running, because it has a more laidback tone punctuated by occasional bits of violence, whereas "24" is nonstop suspense with lots more violence. Still, "Justified" is all new to me, which is obviously worth something extra.

For now, anyway, I've decided to power through "24." That meant I ran my long run today on the treadmill even though it was sunny and relatively mild outside. I know a lot of runners can't stand the treadmill. But I may be using it for the foreseeable future for at least a few more weeks . . . .

Long run motivation

Napping was at the top of the list of what I wanted to do this morning. Going for a long run was much farther down the list. I mean, I love being a runner, and I love the feeling of satisfaction that comes with a good running workout, but sometimes I have to motivate myself to go for a run.

This is apparently common for runners.

One way to get myself up for a long run is to go to the gym, get on the treadmill, start streaming my latest binge-watching obsession, and press "Start." However, while "The Wire" is good, it just hasn't been as compulsively addictive for me as, say, "The Shield" or "Justified." Plus, the weather outside looked divine for running: temperature in the low 60s, lots of cloud cover with isolated patches of blue sky, just a gentle breeze for circulation.

So I followed the suggestion of putting on running clothes: light blue Patagonia wool/polyester blend tech shirt, black tech shorts, and merino wool socks, SPF 50 sunblock.*

* I dislike putting on sunblock, because I've read that oxybenzone - the primary ingredient in many sunblocks - is pretty nasty stuff. I go out of my way to buy sunblocks that rely on physical barriers, as opposed to chemical ones, meaning either titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. Physical barrier sunblocks are apt to leave white streaks and they're not that easy to clean off, even in the shower; often I have to scrape a bunch of it off.

It did get me closer to the door, which got me close to my running shoes, which I put on. All that was left was headphones and firing up the Audible app on my smartphone (I'm about halfway through Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star right now) and then my trusty companion RunKeeper.

A good audiobook makes a big difference for me. When I run races, I don't listen to anything except RunKeeper's periodic audio cues about time, distance, and average pace. When I do speed workouts, I sometimes don't listen to anything. But when I go on long runs, I like to listen to audiobooks (or music, but I prefer audiobooks). I've discovered that some books I liked in print make not so good audiobooks, and other books I liked in print make really good audiobooks. I'm not sure why, exactly. It's tempting to blame (or credit) the narrator, but I don't think that's it. I like David Baldacci's thrillers, but when I listened to The Whole Truth, I found that a lot of the writing seemed corny in a way that didn't appear that way on the printed page. Pandora's Star, on the other hand, has been crackling good, even though I've already read it before and hence shouldn't be surprised about anything.

Anyway, 11.25 miles later, I was done running. It had been a mild day, mostly cloudy with isolated patches of blue skies, and temperatures in the low 60s. Really a perfect day for running. Long run of the week in the books. Glad I got out there, even if napping is so awesome.

This site will tell you how much time you've spent (wasted?) watching TV

This might be scary, but if you go to this website and start typing in TV shows, it'll calculate the total amount of time you've spent watching. You can keep adding shows to get an updated total of the number of days/hours/minutes.

As I started entering "Star Trek," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," etc., the number at the top got staggeringly large, so I decided to start over and input only shows that I watched over the past year. That got the number down to a more comprehensible 18 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes, which is still kind of stunning.

Of course, the website counts each episode of an hour-long show as 60 minutes (not sure where that 16 minutes came from), whereas I rarely watch anything live, tending to run most things through TiVo so I can skip commercials, or streaming shows on my Kindle Fire or RoKu where again there aren't any commercials.

Plus, 5 days and 20 hours of my total were spent on "The Shield" and "Justified," both of which I watched exclusively via Amazon Prime and mostly while running on the treadmill in the winter, so I don't think that time was "wasted" in any sense of the word.

Series-wide thoughts on FX's "Justified" (through season 4)

For some reason, I didn't notice FX's "Justified" when it premiered back in 2010, which is strange because it's based on a short story and novels by Elmore Leonard, and for a while, I read pretty much every Leonard novel as soon as it was published.

But anyway, it wasn't until I got my Kindle Fire and started checking out various serialized action/dramas for treadmill entertainment that I discovered it. I watched the pilot and was immediately hooked (although I did end up making a detour for another FX series, "The Shield"). Suffice to say that "Justified" has provided plenty of treadmill entertainment/distraction the past few months.

The premise of "Justified" is that Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, played perfectly by Timothy Olyphant, grew up in the coal-mining environs of Harlan, Kentucky but left and at the beginning of the series is based in Miami. He tracks down a mobster and gives the mobster 24 hours to get out of town, and when 23 hours and 50 or so minutes have elapsed, Givens shows up on the penthouse balcony to confront the man. Naturally, the mobster tries to shoot Givens secretly, but we learn that Givens is a very fast draw. When Givens' boss criticizes him about the shooting ("You know we haven't shot anyone on sight in about a hundred years, right?"), Givens' drawls in response, "He drew first, so I was justified."

Making the most of opportunities

There were plenty of running races in town this weekend, including a big half marathon. I'd strongly considered running the 10K race that was part of the half marathon, but Mr. Mom duties kept me from doing so. In the early afternoon, it alternately poured rain or streamed sunshine through the clouds. Then it was time to go to the airport to pick my wife up, and when we got home, I had a small window of time to go running before dinner. Yea!

The gym that I belong to has a lot of good things, but the hours of operation are not one of those. Sunday hours are noon to 6 p.m. Still, I knew I could get in a 3-4 mile run before closing. Five miles would've been ideal, since I could watch an entire episode of "Justified" in that distance, but my window wasn't that long.

On the other hand, the skies looked like they were clearing. Sort of. Running outside would also save me about 10 minutes of round-trip transit time (driving up the hill to the gym, parking, walking in, and the reverse).

Outside it was. Because of the clouds or maybe because my smartphone is getting old, it took a while to get a GPS lock for RunKeeper. (Yes, sometimes I feel like a dork standing outside, dressed in running clothes, holding my smartphone up to the sky in a vain attempt to speed up the GPS satellitel acquisition....)

For entertainment, I was listening to the audiobook of Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star, which is the first giant book in a space opera series. (I've read the entire series but that was a while ago, and listening is a different experience.)

I started with a comfortable but fast pace, basically between 7:30 to 8:00 depending on the slope of the hills. (I live in a hilly part of town, so unless I run on the track, it's impossible to have a flat run; hence, even pacing is also near impossible, and instead, it's more of even effort.) The early part of the out-and-back route was what I'd call rolling hills. At the 1.15 mile mark, I began the sharpest downslope, a drop of almost 200 feet in altitude over about 2/3 of a mile.

You want to know what running downhill does for your speed? That 2/3 of a mile was entirely sub-7:00, with parts registering (per RunKeeper) as fast as sub-6:20, which is faster than my current 5K pace, but it wasn't more than a 3 on a 1-5 effort scale.

Of course, just before 2 miles, the bill came due for that downhill section, as I had to head back up the same hill. Apart from one tough segment where I slowed to a near 9:00 pace, I managed to keep my pace under 8:00 even while ascending.

The mile splits ended looking like this:

mile 1: 7:38 with -33 feet climb

mile 2: 7:01 with -133 feet climb

mile 3: 7:43 with 157 feet climb

I got home and figured I had maybe 10 more minutes of workout time (factoring in showering time, etc.) before dinner, and I considered tacking on an easy mile or so. But laziness won out, and I headed inside.

I had just enough time to take off my running shoes and get a big glass of ice water before it started to pour outside. Not the usual kind of misty drizzle we get in the Pacific Northwest eight months of the year, but really hard stuff that's usually accompanied by crashing thunder and dazzling lightning. Whew!

Note to self: next time, no how matter how short of a planned run, if it looks at all like there might be rain, bring a ziplock bag to protect smartphone, just in case.

Variety is the spice of running

Today was supposed to be a speed session but I didn't feel like running repetitions, so I changed things up and did a threshold run instead. A true threshold run should last about 20 minutes, according to running coach Jack Daniels, but I ended up splitting mine into two ~10 minute segments, separated by an easy mile at an 8:35 pace.

Per the Daniels/Run SMART pace calculator, my threshold pace based on my most recent 5K race is 7:11. Now, I didn't actually look this up before running; I just went to the gym and picked what seemed like the right pace. (Yes, it was a gorgeous day today, but I haven't watched "Justified" in a while....) And that was 7:13 for the first threshold, and 7:08 for the second one - and those average to 7:11!

What I've noticed is that I feel like I've accomplished more in a speed session when I jog the recovery intervals instead of walking them. 8:35 is somewhere around my long run pace (sometimes I'm slower if it's especially hilly), so it's an easy pace, but I wouldn't have thought of it as a pace that I could manage while recovering from 10 minutes of a threshold pace, yet it was. Cool deal!

Anyway, this ended up being not that different from repetitions, only it was two 1.5 mile reps, but it didn't seem that way when I was running it because I was thinking to myself "threshold run," not "repetitions." So perhaps it's true that variety is the spice of running.

Popular Mechanic's top 10 best TV cop shows

I'm not sure how Popular Mechanics' journalistic jurisdiction reaches TV cop shows, but that magazine has its list of the 10 best ever such shows:

10. Hawaii 5-0 (original)

9. Wiseguy

8. Dragnet

7. Miami Vice

6. CSI: Miami

5. Law & Order

4. NYPD Blue

3. The Wire

2. The Shield

1. Hill Street Blues

Of these, I've watched many episodes of "Hawaii 5-0," "Miami Vice," "CSI: Miami," and every episode of "The Shield." ("The Wire" will join "The Shield" on my list this summer.) "Wiseguy" was on during a time, believe it or not, when I watched very little TV; otherwise, I think I would've liked it. I'll have to see if it streams or if it's on DVD to borrow from the library.

I've seen a few episodes of "Law & Order," and it's okay but not particularly interesting to me. The same is true for "Hill Street Blues."

As for the ones that I've seen a fair number of, I liked "Hawaii 5-0" but prefer the new version for its intentional comedy.

"Miami Vice" was groundbreaking at the time but the few times I've come across reruns now, it seems pretty dated.

"CSI: Miami" is one of my biggest guilty pleasures. It's so over-the-top ridiculous, with every one sauntering around, and David Caruso's penchant for taking his sunglasses off at the oddest times, not to mention the cheesy one-liners that end the teaser segment. I wait for it, grade it, and then see if I can come up with an even cheesier line.

"The Shield" is just fantastic.

How can Popular Mechanics have forgotten "Justified"? Hey, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens counts as a cop, right? I mean, he chases down fugitives and brings them to justice.... "Justified" has season-long (and more) arcs, whipsmart dialogue, and a terrifically understated performance by Timothy Olyphant as Givens.