Farewell to 2011

2011 has been a year of big changes for this blog. At the start of this year, I only had 3 posts and hadn’t even begun sharing the link. Now, I’m working on post 124 and get thousands of views every month.

As you can see, I’m also ending the year with a big change – a new layout. As much as I loved the look of the old layout, it was confusing for some and also probably hurting my chances of being found by search engines (with no text other than categories on the home page). I do plan to keep the same “wall of TV pics” look as my Twitter background, though. I’m still working through some of the kinks (like having to set images as featured images and adding read more links in ALL my old posts), so please let me know if you come across something that’s not working!

I also started trying out a bunch of TV shows in 2011, many of which debuted years ago, and blazed through entire seasons. UK’s Being Human was among the first, followed by giving Buffy the Vampire Slayer another shot (and loving it), and watching it concurrently with Angel, of which I’d only seen the first season years ago. I caught up on six seasons of Bones (maybe 2011 was the year of David Boreanaz) over 3 months, and managed to squeeze in 3 seasons of Veronica Mars during 3 weeks within those months. Later in the year, I started watching Warehouse 13 and Eureka, and am now on the shows’ latest seasons.

Not every show I tried in 2011 captured me, though. While it took me awhile to get into Eureka, Smallville didn’t make it past 2 episodes, and Supernatural is still hovering in “maybe I’ll get back to it later” land after about 5 episodes. Tru Calling is unfinished as well, but only because I’m comfortable with how season 2, episode 1 ended, and not sure the show’s mid-season cancellation will end things well.

Most of my shows that ended this year thankfully finished their full season runs. The Cape was cut from 13 episodes to 10, but still had a proper season finale (even if it only aired online). Shows like No Ordinary Family and V ended with great twists that made me long for another season, but Detroit 1-8-7 and Outsourced felt finished, as much as I wanted to spend another season with the characters.

And 2011 also brought in new shows to replace them. January brought the North American version of Being Human, June brought Suits, and July brought Alphas. SyFy replaced TNT as my second favorite cable network.

This fall’s bumper crop of excellent shows has sent my TV watching into overdrive. Aside from canceled-too-soon Free Agents and put-out-of-its-misery How to Be a Gentleman, all of these shows are looking likely for a second season: Once Upon a Time, 2 Broke Girls, Person of Interest, Suburgatory, New Girl, Ringer, and Grimm.

I had a lot of fun in 2011 with featured shows and giveaways. Unfortunately, the giveaways aren’t bringing in much traffic, and since I’m not even making enough with this site to pay for the domain name, all of their expense has come out of pocket. So the Community giveaway will be the last for a while – but feel free to try and change my mind! I would love to be able to offer giveaways in the future. I’m really hoping to get to the point someday soon where shows will sponsor their own contests on this blog, and I’ll be able to offer some unique swag and maybe even autographed items!

Hope you have an awesome 2012!