brand names continued

Josh came up with many, many more producer/creator/directors who function as brand names in the comments to my last entry, so I'm just going to cut and paste his comment here in case you missed it:

Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Blind Justice, Over There)

David E. Kelley (LA Law, Doogie Howser, Chicago Hope, Picket Fences, The Practice, Boston Public, Boston Legal)

Aaron Spelling (90210, Melrose Place, 7th Heaven, Summerland, Love Boat, Starsky & Hutch, etc etc)

Bunim-Murray (Real World, Road Rules)

David Simon (Homicide: Life in the Street, The Corner, The Wire)

Spielberg is starting to have quite a TV franchise: (Band of Brothers, Taken, Into the West

Dick Wolf kinda counts for the Law & Order franchise, as does Anthony Zuiker for the various CSI's.

Does Matt Groening count? James L. Brooks does (Mary Tyler Moore show, Taxi, The Simpsons)

Peter Engel? (*lol*)

Scanning this list I have to wonder once again why Picket Fences hasn't made it to DVD yet.

I haven't been watching too much TV this past week. My roommate was out of town and so I tried to barrel through as many of my DVDs on our joint Netflix queue as possible. No Netflix TV rentals this week, though my next disc will be the start of Sopranos season 3 (I'm watching all Sopranos ever right now.)

One thing I have been thinking about is the age of the target audiences for my favorite shows vs. how old I am. At a family gathering of my boyfriend's this weekend I was outed as a TV fanatic and asked what shows I watch. When I named Veronica Mars and the O.C., someone said "oh, so you watch all the teen shows." It's interesting, because I don't think those two shows are necessarily aimed at teens, even though they feature teenage characters. I wonder if part of the reason I relate to these shows is that I know the actors themselves are my age. Or if it's that the shows I watch present a very fictionalized view of what high school is like. Then again, I watched Life As We Know It, and I felt that was a pretty accurate depiction of high school.

What I'm really asking is this: Am I ever going to feel too old to watch these shows? I certainly hope not.

(I have more thoughts on this topic. Maybe a longer piece will come later.)