For years, January was the Best.Month.Ever., television wise. After months of being deprived of my favorite shows, the inevitable post-holiday dreariness, and another two months or more of winter to endure, January brought me back to that mysterious island on Lost, and the high-intensity crack of 24. What is a TV obsessed gal to do this year, now that both of those shows have finished their runs? Instead of being sad and grumpy, I have found some joy in the mid-season television schedule.

Parks and Recreation – I am still at a loss as to why NBC put this show on the shelf for the first half of the season and insisted on cramming the unfunny Outsourced down our throats instead (I actually do know why, but it’s still annoying). P&R got all kinds of awesome last year, and the end of the season brought us some great twists with the addition of Rob Lowe and Adam Scott to the ensemble. Amy Poehler is reliably great, and Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson is possibly the best reason to keep tuning in. I hate singling out people on ensemble shows like this, because every one of  them adds another fantastic layer, making it my easy replacement for the now limping The Office.

V – It’s not like I was waiting with bated lizard breath for this show to return. The first effort was a pale shadow of the original V series and mini-series, but I am a sucker for sci-fi, so I went into the first episode of this new season hopeful, but not expecting a thing. They did amp up the reveals (finally, a glimpse at the lizard face!), had some more action and evil-ness from the queen lizard Anna, and put their special effects budget to good use. But, the writing is still terrible (I feel sorry for some of the clunkers the actors have to deliver), and it looks like we will have to endure even more of Erica’s dolt of a son, Tyler. If I had an inkling to bail on this show, it was squashed by the addition of Sam from Reaper (Bret Harrison), who I think is wonderful, and I hope they don’t kill him off too soon.

Southland - I don’t watch this show (so I’m not gonna bother finding a pic), but it is regularly hailed as one of the best cop shows out there, and the people I know who do watch it, love the crap out of it. I only mention it because it was dead as a doornail after it’s first season on NBC, and was resurrected by TNT in what I think is a true TV miracle. This is the beginning of season three, and if you’re a fan, enjoy the sweet taste of victory!

Fringe - I know, I know, not a mid-seasoner, but every second this show is not around, I miss it. Fox had been unusually kind to us with this show, until now. Even with the steady ratings slide, they blessed us with a third season, and then they pulled the rug out from under us and moved it to Friday’s. I fear that this may be the last season, and it’s a shame, as this season has been freakin’ outstanding!!

The Amazing Race & Survivor - I am no longer in the reality show closet. I like what I like, and I am not ashamed. Competitive reality shows are one of my weaknesses (along with sci-fi and post-apocalyptic shows), and these two are tops as far as I’m concerned. They will both be back in February for new seasons, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

There are a few others that have me vaguely interested like Game of Thrones on HBO, and The Cape on NBC. The return of Big Love should be more exciting, but I’m not interested enough to write about it. You can bet my DVR will be storing these shows up to try out when it’s too snowy and cold to do anything else.

PS! OMG!! Have you seen this?? June is a very, very long time from now.

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Once in a while, there’s a show I watch where I can’t be online when it’s on. I don’t want to miss anything; I want to concentrate.

Lost, unsurprisingly, is chief among those shows. Battlestar Galactica was another. Fringe almost is like that. I get very absorbed and forget I’m online for most of the show. 24 would be like that, except I live-blog it over at Blogs4Bauer, so that’s an entirely different animal. But don’t do other stuff online while I’m watching 24, at least.

V has filled the void left by Battlestar in that sense (though I suspect Caprica will also be an online-free zone for me).

It doesn’t hurt that two of the main characters are refugees of two of my favorite shows: Elizabeth Mitchell, Juliet from Lost, and Joel Gretsch, Tom Baldwin from The 4400. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve seen the original V miniseries from the ’80s more times than I can even count. Possibly as many times as Star Wars. True story. Oh, and I mean the original miniseries, not the sequel miniseries, in which one of the half-alien babies looked like a puppet I could have made. And I suck at art projects.

This is V for a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world. The original V was very much informed by World War II, the Holocaust and a totalitarian Soviet Union. This V has in mind the divisions so prevalent in our world today. In the U.S., between left and right (and make no mistake, the Vs represent neither side, specifically), and worldwide, between the U.S. and Everyone Else. And c’mon, anyway, this show is produced in the U.S. for a U.S. audience, so the action’s going to take place here. Just like Doctor Who takes place in England and Wales.

I like how the spaceships give a nod to the miniseries, too. They bear more than a passing resemblance to the originals, while looking way cooler.

Diana is a more interesting character, than her predecessor, though. She is much cooler. She doesn’t yell to get her point across to her minions. If anything, her voice gets softer, so they must strain to hear her. She’s extremely politically astute.

I wonder, however, if their goal is the same as the original. Do they plan to harvest the humans for food, or do they merely want to enslave the human race? Or something else, entirely?

We caught sight of the fleet amassing, in another solar system (galaxy?), but what is their goal? To strip the planet of all its resources, including humans? How will the altered flu shots (nice nod to the whole flu paranoia that grips the U.S. every year, and the swine flu hysteria of this year in particular) affect people?

I’m a bit frustrated that ABC decided to give us this taste now, only to hold off on the rest until after the Winter Olympics. However, I appreciate that they are telling us now exactly when it’s coming back. Perhaps if CBS had done that with Jericho, things would have happened differently for that show.

This promises to be a very television-heavy winter, with 24 and Big Love returning along with the start of Caprica in January, Lost‘s return in February and then V in March.

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Totally cool: The original creator, Kenneth Johnson, gets credit, which he did not on the craptacular series.

Might this mean something good?

If this look at the first eight minutes of the new V series is any indication, I’m guessing, “Yes.”

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I can’t even begin to guess how many times I watched the original V miniseries.

A big part of it was that it was science fiction, and I’d been a sci-fi geek for as long as I could remember.

And a smaller, though not insignificant, part was this massive crush I developed on Marc Singer. Oh, how I was jealous of Faye Grant every time Singer rushed to her rescue.

Seeing him shirtless in Beastmaster? Made up for the craptacularness of the movie. I even watched If You Could See What I Hear multiple times just to see him.

But nothing held a candle to V.

The story of an alien race coming to earth, seeming to seek friendship but in reality seeking to strip the Earth of all its natural resources was compelling.

The parallels to the Holocaust – the Visitors’ symbol, the Holocaust survivor (grandfather of a collaborator) – took it up a notch. (As all the best sci-fi touches on importantissues, topics and historical events.)

Even though the follow-up miniseries V: The Final Battle had more bad special effects than the original Star Trek series (but came nearly 20 years later, so it didn’t have the same excuse), I also recorded that on VCR tape and watched it time and again. I did wish every time, however, that the actress playing the hybrid girl could, well, act.

It all made sense a few years ago when I realized the second miniseries (and the craptacular regular series that followed) had no input from the series creator, Kenneth Johnson.

And though he’s not directly working on the new series, set to premiere this fall, he is being credited as a creator and has only positive things to say about it, so that’s good, anyway.

The new show originally was planned as a midseason replacement, but ABC decided not to bury it and to premiere it instead at 8 p.m. Nov. 3, taking over from the venture capital summer hit, Shark Tank.

Add to that Elizabeth Mitchell – Juliet from Lost – as the female lead? Puh-lease. Like you could keep me away.

If I could program my DVR that far ahead, I would.

Image courtesy of Kenneth Johnson.

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