My TV Watching Schedule: Summer 2010

The 2009-2010 television season is officially over, and once Glee has its season finale, it'll be off to summer TV watching for me. While broadcast TV options are pretty slim during the summer, cable networks take over as they roll out their best series. Here's a brief summary of which shows I'll be watching this summer.

Sundays
Leverage (TNT)
Last summer, Leverage debuted its second season, and while it started off OK, the show didn't start getting good until its winter premiere. During the second half of the season, Leverage officially became my favorite show on TV due to its perfect combination of interesting characters, action, and humor. Season 2 ended with a pretty decent cliffhanger, and Season 3 looks like it is going to be better than the sophomore outing.

Mad Men (AMC)
I still haven't caught up on Season 1-3 of Mad Men, but if I'm able to get through them by the July 25 premiere, then I'll give this show a shot.

Tuesdays
White Collar (USA)
The Matt Bomer, con-artist vehicle had a pretty successful winter/spring run for its freshman season, and now USA is showcasing it this summer. White Collar started out a little slow out of the gate, but things got interesting when Neal Caffery had foils to take on, and we got more information to fuel the Where's Kate storyarc. Season 2 looks like it will address more on the Kate mystery which will liven things up and make the show less of a procedural.

Warehouse 13 (SyFy)
Last summer, SyFy used Warehouse 13 as its first new series under the new banner, and it became one of the networks most popular shows. The show is pretty much a mash-up of The X-Files and Bones, but the sci-fi and steampunk twists make the show pretty entertaining. I'm also looking forward to the Warehouse 13/Eureka crossovers coming this summer.

Covert Affairs (USA)
This show is essentially USA's version of Alias and/or Chuck. It's not secret that I'm a big fan of the spy sub-genre, but for some reason this shows seems more like a miss than a hit. I think my initial hesitance towards this show has to do with the fact that I cannot buy Piper Perabo as an action star. She's still Jersey from Coyote Ugly in my mind. Hopefully she can surprise me, and this show will be a hit...but I thought the same thing when I saw USA's To Love and Die starring Shiri Appleby and that one was a bust.

Wednesdays
Psych (USA)
Season 4 of Psych wasn't very entertaining. It was so boring in fact that I stopped watching the show with three episodes left to go. I still haven't caught up on those episodes, so I'm doubtful that I'll be giving Psych another shot this summer. I just got tired of Shawn's schtick, the formulaic nature of the cases, and I stopped caring about the will-they-won't-they crutch that existed between Shawn and Jules. If I'm able to watch those last few episodes of Season 4 online, then I might give the show one more chance.

Fridays
Eureka (SyFy)
Eureka's bit is getting kind of stale, like Psych's, because every episode is pretty much the same. The town is put in harm's way thanks to an experiment gone wrong, Jack Carter and his band of misfit scientists have to solve the problem, and the least educated person (Carter) is always the one to figure out the solution. The show was interesting at the beginning, but three seasons of the same story is wearing thin. At least the show is still fun to watch, but here's to hoping for some new ideas.

Haven (SyFy)
Eureka's Friday Night companion, Haven, is supposed to be based on Stephen King's The Colorado Kid, and its premise is intriguing enough for me to check it out.

So from the looks of it, USA and SyFy will be my go-to stations this summer, which begs the question why NBC does so poorly when its cable cousins do so well.