Most people's TV binges aren't my shows

I had no idea just how out of touch I am with modern popular culture until I had to wait for some prescriptions to be filled.

I picked up a special edition of Entertainment Weekly, The Binge Guide.

Star Trek

The magazine listed 32 different series, and I was a little surprised to realize that more than half of them were either shows I never watched or ones that I had seen no more than one or two episodes.

I've never seen Arrested Development, Battlestar Galactica, Community, Daria, Deadwood, Dexter, Doctor Who, Felicity, Firefly, Freaks and Geeks, Futurama, Gilmore Girls, My So-Called Life, Parks and Recreation, Party Down, Sherlock and The Wire.

I have seen fewer than three episodes of 30 Rock, fewer than 10 of Friends and The X-Files (two separate shows, not New York Jews and UFOs together) and only a dozen episodes of Twin Peaks.

I saw only the first episode of Breaking Bad and never watched any others.

Twilight Zone

Most of those left are shows I either have seen or intend to see every episode. I have finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Sopranos, Star Trek, Veronica Mars and The West Wing. Eventually I will see all of the Twilight Zone, True Blood, Walking Dead and the Wonder Years.

The one remaining show is sort of an anomaly -- 40-something years of Saturday Night Live.

There are shows that didn't make the list that have mattered a lot to me. I've seen all 217 episodes of "Smallville," all five seasons of "Angel," all nine seasons of "24," all of "Moonlighting" and "Quantum Leap."

That's our Bush

I've seen all of "Mad Men" except the last season and I'm working my way through "LA Law." And I saw all eight episodes of Comedy Central's wonderful, cancelled-too-soon spoof, "That's My Bush."

It's pretty rare that the shows I really like are the big popular hits. The ones I really like get cancelled. Steven Bochco's "Bay City Blues," just about the only show ever about minor-league baseball, was cancelled after eight episodes were made and only four of them were broadcast.

I really liked Tru Calling, where Eliza Dushku not only saw dead people but heard them begging to be saved, but it only survived one full season and six episodes of a second.

I've always been something of an outsider when it comes to extremely popular stuff. I never read any of Tolkien's books or saw any of the six movies made about them. I didn't watch Mission: Impossible or The Man from UNCLE, two of the most popular shows while I was in high school.

Some shows I eventually came to on my own, but in general, the best way to keep me away from a show is to tell me how wonderful it is. That's probably the main reason I'll never watch Breaking Bad.

Hell, it's only a TV show.