My mom, the critic.

"It's all a matter of opinion."-Ben Gonzalez

I like watching television. I have lots of favorite shows but latley, I've watched the re-runs on DVD with my mom every night. She's very picky and there's some shows she likes out of my list of favorites but she generally doesn't like alot of them.

So, the way I see it, if such a picky person could find only a few shows to like out of twenty of the ones show to them, the shows that they liked must've been pretty impressive at some level. In this case, I'm going to showcase my mom's critique of my top 20 favorite television shows.

*Blue= The Shows she loved, Red= The shows she hated, Green= The shows she likes a little bit*

My Top 20 TV Shows:

1. Supernatural: I don't know what it is but other than my mom's obsession for Jensen Ackles, the story and plot of the show really got to her. On quite a few occassions, the episodes struck such a strong chord with her that she came to tears! Most notably, season two's season finale "All Hell Breaks Loose, part 2" had a effect on her when John Winchester escaped from Hell and saw his sons for the last time. Also, the season three season finale (No Rest For the Wicked) made her tear a bit when Dean was shown being tortured in hell. Overall, she likes the show's bouts of humor and she understands the show at a level where she can trully be called a fan.

 2. Smallville: She hates it. I don't know what happened but ironically, "Smallville" was once a favorite of hers. The reasons she gave for not enjoying the series anymore is because of her dislike for the soap opera aspect of the show, Tom Welling's age and the humor of the show (which she disaffectionatley calls "corny.")

3. Heroes: I can see why my mom doesn't like this show. Unlike "Smallville," my mom guinuenley never liked "Heroes" one bit. Her complaints about the show range from everything from what she calls "sugar coated dialogue" to the way that the characters' powers and how they work are left unexplained and the way that the characters constanly loose and re-gain their powers every five seconds. Among others, once I alerted her about the rip-offs from comic books and comic movies, she added that to her list of things to hate about "Heroes".

4. The X-Files: My mom likes the X-Files but she has a problem sticking through a whole episode. The one thing that she doesn't like about this show is the frequent cliff-hanger endings while the one thing that she loves the most is the length of the story arcs and the continuity. She likes it a lot but not enough to consider it a love for the show.

5. Rome: My mom liked what she saw of the show but couldn't get her head around some of the inaccuracies of the show's interpretation of a few of the historic aspects; mainly, her only complaint was that Cleopatra was a black woman in reality but in the show, she wasn't. Other than that, she enjoyed the show very much. In particular, she liked the second season a whole lot more than the first season. I guess, the speed of the second season fit her expectations alot more than the first season did.

6. Rescue Me: For some reason, a woman with my mom's sense of humor would be expected to like this dramedy but ironically it was quite the opposite for her. She didn't find it funny, dramatic or even interesting. I was very surprised how much she despised this show unfortunatley.

7. Journeyman: My mom surprisingly loved all thirteen episodes of Journeyman and she was very upset when she made it through the entire series. She was able to get deep into the characters' heads and she loved the aspect of changing the past in order to tweak the present. She shared my enthusiasm for more episodes after each one was over and gladly, she sat through all thirteen episodes in a row.

8. In Treatment: My mom liked the episodes she got to see off of "On Demand". She had a good time relating to all of Dr. Paul Weston's patients. Her only complaint about the series was that the episodes were only thirty minutes long. She had a blast watching the final episodes the most though. Still, she hadn't seen all of the episodes, so she could only mark this show off as one that she "liked".

9. Jack & Bobby: My mom loved this show even when it was airing in 2004. There was absolutley nothing that she disliked about it. The parts that she favored the most were the futuristic documentary scenes which spoke about the presidency of the youngest brother, Bobby.

10. Burn Notice: This show was immediatley favorited by my mother. She dug the creative ways that ex-spy, Michael Westen got out of situations and the humor was a big plus to the show's likability. Something that she moderatley enjoyed was the voice over work done by Jefferey Donovan.

11. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Unfortunatley, my mom doesn't understand the Terminator mythology. Ironically, seeing as how I view my mom as a real-life Sarah Connor, the biggest thing she didn't like was Sarah Connor herself because of her stoic personality.

12. Life: My mom loved this show as soon as the commercial break after the first ten minutes of the pilot came up. The sarcastic wit that Damian Lewis bring to his character and the entire show was the main reason why she loved the show so much and another reason why she happened to like the series so much was because of the "keep it short but reveal just enough" writing style that the show was written in from the very beginning. This series hit it high on my mom's list of favorite shows.

* 13. Reaper: Reaper is without a question, my mother's absolute favorite show from my top 20 list. She loves Sock so much that it became too much for her not to laugh out loud at his every line. The entire light-hearted aura of the show gave her the sense of speed and fun that she loves so much. The story that the writers chose to tell were all equally loved by her and her most loved of the show was how it didn't take itself too seiously as the other shows on my list do, in her opinion.

14. Birds of Prey: She couldn't get her head wrapped around Batman having a daughter in the future with Catwoman. To put it simply, she couldn't get into the show because of the way it didn't follow any direct continuity. It insisted upon itself, in her eyes.

15. True Blood: My mom isn't one to judge a series by it's genre but she honestly didn't like this show because of it's interpretation of the vampire myths. She told me once that she's consider watching it again when it came back on next summer but to be honest, I wouldn't bet on it.
16. Chuck: My mom is alright with this series but she doesn't hate it to the point where she'd never watch it again. She understood all of the plot lines as the episodes progressed and she took a liking to all of the characters but not as much as she has with the characters of Supernatural and Reaper, respectivley.

17. Pushing Daisies: This has become my mother's most hated television series ever. She hates the fairy tale aura that the show gives off and she has no feeling for the narration or the characters, especially. She was very relieved when I told her that the show had been cencelled unfortunatley.

18. My Own Worst Enemy: Out of all the cancelled series on my list, this show has become my mom's most missed show. She loved every episode that she saw and enjoyed Henry Spivey's frantic and innocent behavior opposed to his other personality, Edward Albright's trigger-happy and reckless behavior. The show proved to be very thought-provoking to her and she liked the idea of secret government agencies pulling strings of ordinary citezens as well as global leaders and criminals.

19. Bionic Woman (2007): One of the biggest things that my mother liked about this show was that it was able to put it's own spin on the stories that she grew up with from the original Bionic Woman series. To my surprise, she knew even more about the mythology of the original series than I did and it was that knowledge that lead to her to point out the changes the latter series made. Still, she prefered the original to the remake even though she liked the second one a lot.

20. Night Stalker: This was one of the shows that grew off of my mom's "hated" list and onto her "liked" list. One of the things she liked the most was how the remake stayed true to the original series without differing much in order to fit it in our modern times. Her only two complaints were of the way the show ended (got cancelled) and how some of Kolchack's traits in this series differed from the original.

So, kiddies! Which ones out of my list do you like/love the most and which ones do you hate? Don't be shy, just tell me! (I had way too much caffine today!!!)