Peep Show

My bad for submitting this twice. Messed up Android.

Peep Show is a dark cringe comedy frim Britain following the sexual misadventures of two bachelors in their twenties and thirties who suck at holding down jobs.

Hopefully that synopsis didn’t sound horribly generic, as this is easily one of the funniest, most well-written shows on the air right now.

Episodes skipped: 13 out of 48

Series One

Honestly none of the debut season is truly skippable, despite the fact that there is no overarching plot as of yet. If you must, On The Pull is skippable but it features important character development for Mark, Jez and Sophie.

Series Two

Jeremy Makes It - Mark befriends a Neo-Nazi and Jez continues to fail at his music career. VERY funny episode but nothing of importance for future events happens.

University Challenge - Mark attempts to woo a shoe clerk by pretending to be a student at her university. Skippable.

Series Three

Sectioning - Jeremy and Super Hans are promised an old pub but can’t agree on how to refurbish the place. Mark’s relationship with Sophie is strained by her move to Bristol. Some character development but very meh episode.

Shrooming - Jeremy poisons Mark so he can go shrooming with Big Suze. Big Suze is later scared off by Mark’s giant shit. Some romantic development between Suze and Jez but not vital.

Jurying - Jeremy is called for Jury Duty and falls in love with the defendant. Mark realizes he hates Sophie and her friends. Some development in the latter relationship but skippable.

Series Four

In my opinion the funniest season, I wouldn’t skip any of it but if you must…

Handyman - Jez meets his musical idol, The Orgazoid, and is hired as his handyman, with Jez not realizing the title is somewhat literal. Mark tries to have an affair with a High School flame but is stopped by her husband and his mundane taste in cheese.

Holiday - Jeremy holds Mark’s bachelor party, and ends up eating a dog. Very unique episode, not terribly important.

Series Five

The series begins to slowly fall in quality here but it’s not too great a drop, still very watchable.

Burgling - In a very noticeable continuity error, Jez finds out he has chlamydia but tries to hide it from Suze. Mark creeps out another disposable woman. The two get robbed by a bunch of kids. Very painful episode (not necessarily in a bad way) and disposable.

Jeremy’s Mummy - Jez’s aunt dies and leaves him £20,000 and a gun amongst other belongings. He loses it all because Mark won’t shut up about his rape.

Jeremy’s Manager - Jeremy gets a band manager, who turns out to be another quirky disposable woman for Mark and Jeremy to fight over. Lame.

Series Six: This season focuses heavily on Sophie’s pregnancy, Mark’s attempts to woo Dobby and Jeremy’s relationship with Russian émigré Elena. None of the episodes are skippable here.

Series Seven: Nether Zone - Mark and Jez get locked in a house and Mark misses the christening of his son. Unless you seriously care about the babies’ name it’s not vital.

Seasonal Beatings - The Christmas episode! One of the highest quality late-period episodes but inconsequential to continuity. Some nice character development though.

Series Eight: This season features Jeremy moving out while becoming a life coach, and Jeremy and Mark fighting over Dobby. Not the highest-quality season but for continuity’s sake nothing is skippable.

Mad Men

Mad Men is about a rich dude going through the longest midlife crisis ever depicted on TV. But thanks to this skippable list, you can focus on other, better characters.

Warning! Do not watch if you are trying to quit smoking. This is not a joke.

Episodes skipped: 24 of 92

Season 1 is arguably the best season, so if you don’t love the show by the end of episode 13, I suggest you stop there. The other seasons are good, too, but if you don’t enjoy the 1st season, I can’t imagine why you would enjoy the rest.

Season 1

skip: I recommend you do not skip a single episode of season 1, but if you absolutely have to, skip episode 7 - “Red in the Face”.

Season 2

skip: 3. “The Benefactor” 4. “Three Sundays” 6. “Maidenform”

Season 3

skip: 2. “Love Among the Ruins” 3. “My Old Kentucky Home” 8. “Souvenir”

Season 4

skip: 2. “Christmas Comes But Once a Year” 3. “The Good News” 5. “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword” 8. “The Summer Man” 11. “Chinese Wall”

Season 5

skip: 5. “Signal 30” 6. “Far Away Places” 8. “Lady Lazarus”

Season 6

skip: 4. “To Have and to Hold” 7. “Man with a Plan” 8. “The Crash” 10. “A Tale of Two Cities”

Season 7A

skip: 4. “The Monolith” 5. “The Runaways” 6. “The Strategy”

Season 7B

skip: 9. “New Business” 10. “The Forecast” 11. “Time & Life”

Premiering a little over ten years after the Vietnam war ended, China Beach was about the Doctors and Nurses stationed in Vietnam who struggled to stay sane amid the war. ABC thought they had a good MASH-type show on their hands. While the show was a critical hit, it never got the audience ABC thought it should have had.

The first two seasons of China Beach were near-brilliant. The third season was less brilliant. The fourth season, which got cancelled early on and burned off the remaining in June and July of that year, made the unfortunate attempt to jump back and forth in time.Only the last few  episodes of that season 4 made any attempt to bring the characters’ lives into context.

The X-Files

The X-Files is a science fiction show that ran on Fox from 1993-2002. It chronicles the investigations of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who explore unexplained cases of paranormal and extraterrestrial activity. Mulder is a fervent believer in the paranormal, and is obsessed with finding his sister who had vanished when Mulder was a teenager. Convinced his sister was abducted by aliens and that there is a massive government conspiracy to hide the existence of said aliens, Mulder will stop at nothing to blow the lid off of the government coverup and bring back his sister. Scully is assigned to Mulder as his partner, originally to report back to their superiors about Mulder’s activities, and to debunk his work. She is level-headed and skeptical, and believes that many of these “paranormal” phenomena have scientific explanations.

Overall, X-Files episodes can be divided into two categories: mythology episodes, which are part of the overall arc about aliens and government conspiracies, and “monsters-of-the-week” episodes which are stand-alone episodes. In theory, one could only watch the mythology episodes and still get a killer story, but there are some really great stand-alone episodes that shouldn’t be missed. For categorization purposes, I’ve broken each season down into which episodes to skip, which episodes are part of the mythology, and which episodes are particularly notable. It bears worth mentioning that The X-Files ran 9 season, which was about 2 more than it needed to. Show creator Chris Carter believed the show’s 7th season would be the last, and most fans and critics agree that it could have stopped there. Seasons 2-6 are arguably the strongest.

The Odyssey is one of the oldest, most canonical, and most influential works of literature in history.  It’s also effing long and by most accounts a slog.

When I teach this book, I recommend the below skips to my students.  (Of course, as we all know, most students’ respond by skipping the book entirely.  This was even mentioned in one of Anthony Burch’s pre-HAWP videos.  The lightsaber duel one.)  But if your high school experiences with the book haven’t soured you on it entirely, I’d recommend the same skips to you.

For all of this book’s wonders, and it is one of my favorites, it does have a ton of extraneous rambling, as even most of its fans and scholars admit.

Note: the line numbers are for the Fitzgerald translation, in my opinion the best.

Farscape

Farscape is my favorite sci-fi series of all time. It’s creative and weird, it does interesting, progressive things with gender and sci-fi tropes, it’s colorful and funny and sometimes incredibly dark. Star Trek, it is not (though, John, the central human character, LOVES Star Trek). But! The show really fumbled around to find its footing early on. So here are my recommendations for Watching the 1st season. Skip everything not listed here.

The Venture Bros

One of [adult swim]’s most critically acclaimed series is soon to enter its 6th season. “Soon” perhaps being a misleading term, as the show has had around 70 half-hours worth of content released over a period of 12 years thus far. So you could probably watch the entire series before a Season 6 release date is announced, but whatever, for those who don’t wanna deal with unimportant stuff.