Contrary to rumors, I did not spend my summer hiding in the corner waiting for The Winchesters to return (but I can’t wait to comment on this new season). Along with the usual baseball obsession – Go Yankees!! – I enjoyed some really fun shows this summer, both new and old, and found myself looking forward to the continuation of them next year.

Big Brother – Let’s get this out of the way: I LOVE Big Brother. Always have, always will. It is cheezy and full of worthless people and consumes a ridiculous amount of time and space on my DVR, but I can count on it to amuse me to no end all freakin’ summer long. I don’t care what you think of me, the day CBS and Julie Chen finally abandon this show, summer will never be the same.

Eureka – One of my favorite summertime shows. This year they took what had become a bit of a tired series and rebooted it with what could have been a terrible time travel trope. The characters were reinvigorated, and we got to see an out-of-time James Callis as the villian-ish villian. Plenty of kookiness erupted in town, and a lot of was tied into the time travel event, which I thought was clever. Just when I thought I would be coasting through this series, I was entertained all summer long.

Warehouse 13 – Summer has a nice group of cheery sci-fi shows going on and this one has become one of my favorites. By the middle of the season I thought it had really found it’s footing, and was just plain funny. Pete and Myka have a great brother/sister relationship going (Hooray! for no will they/won’t they angst), and they have found a nice vibe for Claudia and Artie. Leena still feel superfluous, but maybe they have a plan. Excellent season ending cliffhanger, BTW.

Haven – I had a hard time getting into this one. It felt cheap (but don’t most things SyFy?) and a total rip-off of X-Files, but it really ended up growing on me. Sure, some of the mysteries caused by ‘The Troubles’ were ridiculous, but the characters sucked me right in. This one is still running, so I have no idea what’s next, but I am looking forward to getting to that last week episode on my DVR. Incidentally, this is one of those shows I would have never given time to if it wasn’t for OnDemand. I was able to catch up on a gloomy weekend and set the DVR to record the rest of the series. Does anyone watch television shows live anymore?

Royal Pains, White Collar, Dexter & Californication – I know, weird group. Royal Pains and White Collar I put together because they are silly little shows on USA that I find amusing, with actors that are charming and cute and that’s about all I gotta say about that. Dexter… well, y’all know about Dexter. This spring I finally joined Netflix, and was able to see season 2 of Dexter on Netflix Instant Play (saw season 1 on CBS back in the dark days of the writer’s strike). Best.Invention.Ever. I would have plowed through seasons 3 & 4 as well, but stupid ol’ Showtime doesn’t have them on OnDemand or InstantPlay, so I’m gonna have to wait on that. Showtime did the same trick with Californication, getting me all excited about season 1 and rekindling my Duchovny love, and then not letting me OnDemand anything else. That’s fine, I had a lot of Yankee games to watch anyway.