Each television show will inevitably teach you something, but together they've all taught me one thing—that is, a television show will always teach you how to watch it. The education starts early: "Barney" or "Sesame Street," where learning to count is the same thing as learning how to learn to count. You might not realize it when you're eight and miming the clean-up dance on "Big Comfy Couch," but then the education continues. "Mad Men," that excellent serial drama, directs us to observe details, little gestures, big paintings—all meaningful subtext. Even shows fairly awful at teaching you how to watch them, like "Homeland" or "Smash," manage to convey something (don't [...]

Fall is the prettiest, most life-affirming season in New England, a time when the weather is clear and crisp, the trees are changing color, the sky is that bottomless blue, and Mr. Autumn Man has his sweater on. Now that I don't live in New England, kicked out like a Salem witch forced to swim in the pond, I spend my fall hours on the lookout for the greatest Fake New England things on offer, things that remind me of the platonic ideal of what is New England in my head: activities like watching "Gilmore Girls" repeats, going apple picking, eating cider donuts, and frolicking on hayrides. I look [...]

TV shows are rarely underrated anymore. The days of a pretty good show having one season and getting canceled ("Freaks and Geeks" being a prime example) are, for the most part, over. Now there are fan blogs and "f yeah" Tumblrs that allow fan bases to be very vocal and create a buzz that sometimes might even be louder than the show deserves. To find a truly under-appreciated show, you have to take a hard look at that little pocket of time that exists pre-microsharing and high speed internet, and post-when things are accepted as classics just by virtue of nostalgia and what we're told they meant at [...]