The Untimely Canon

Every person has media that they return to time after time. It is the media that has shaped them, molded them, and by which they judge the other media that they consume. It is their personal canon. As a self-important person who has his own blog, I, too, have a personal canon. However, since I run a site called Untimely Culture, I get to talk about my personal canon as The Untimely Canon. This is the page where you will find a constantly evolving list of the TV shows, films, music, books, and people who form my own personal canon. Indulge me.

As a fan of placing arbitrary strictures on myself, I have created a set of rules for induction into The Untimely Canon. They are:

  1. The piece of media has to be 5 years old or more. For TV shows, this means that they have to have gone off the air 5 or more years ago.
  2. The media has to be something that I find myself returning to again and again since consuming it the first time. This could mean that I have consumed it multiple times again since then or that I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about it.
  3. For a person to be inducted into The Untimely Canon Hall of Fame, they must appear in 3 or more pieces of canonical media, portrayed different characters in that media, and, most importantly, not be a trash human being. For instance, if, for some reason, Kevin Spacey ends up appearing in 3 canonical pieces of media, he will still never be eligible for the Hall of Fame because fuck that guy. On the other hand, if Bradley Whitford appears in 3 canonical pieces of media, which seems quite likely, I will gladly place him in the Hall.

Now, with those rules out of the way, here are the current, and constantly updating, members of The Untimely Canon(with the first entry in their blog series about that piece of media linked):

TV Shows

  • ER-Inducted into The Untimely Canon on 1/24/2018. Originally aired on NBC from 9/19/1994-4/2/2009. Was streamed on Hulu for the purposes of the canonical rewatch.er-today-180117-tease_4928b8cebc50cd8870e4570ec15506e3.today-inline-vid-featured-desktop

 

  • Gilmore Girls-Inducted into The Untimely Canon on 2/2/2018. Originally aired on The WB and The CW from 10/5/2000-5/15/2007. Was streamed on Netflix for the purposes of the canonical rewatch.

 

  • The West Wing–Inducted into The Untimely Canon on 2/5/2018. Originally aired on NBC from 9/22/1999-5/14/2006. Was streamed on Netflix for the purposes of the canonical rewatch.the-west-wing-cast-708368

 

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer–Inducted into The Untimely Canon on 2/7/2018. Originally aired on The WB and UPN from 3/10/1997-5/20/2003. Streamed on Hulu for the purposes of the canonical rewatch.BTVS
  • Firefly-Inducted into The Untimely Canon on 2/8/2018. Originally aired of FOX from 9/20/2002-12/20/2002. Streamed on Hulu for the canonical rewatch.firefly_cast