As anyone whose perused the book portion of my website has noticed, I’m a big fan of storytelling. I love a well-written book, where the story pulls me and it’s nearly impossible for me to put the book down. (Okay, I like the stories, although not the consequences of staying up too late reading.) I love stories that stick with me long after I’ve put the book down. Stories with characters I think about long afterwards.

And although I’ve never been a huge fan of the medium, there are also TV shows with good storytelling.

The funny thing, however, is that even I can’t predict what stories will stick with me.

But following a long virtual discussion with Jedi Jawa (no offense, but I have a hard time writing that and taking it seriously.) I started thinking about what–to me–makes a good story, and what are the stories that stick with me long after I’m done watching them.

There are two shows that are at the top of my list of all time favorites: Deep Space Nine and Firefly. I can watch these shows time and again and still they thrill me–hell, sometimes they’re even more enjoyable the better I get to know them (to paraphrase Michael, “would you stop laughing in advance!”)

What surprised me, however, was that Farscape stuck with me far more than Babylon 5 did. Now I have to admit that some of this was coming up with ways to fix some of the more problematic episodes (Take the mini-series, Peacekeeper Wars. I decided that if I ignore the entire Arin pregnancy thing, I quite liked the story.), but that’s not all of it. There’s something about the characters, the way they were written, and they way they were portrayed that crawled into my brain and took up residence.

But as much as I loved the storytelling of Babylon 5, for the most part it just didn’t stick with me in the same way. As much as I wanted to find out what happened, as much as I loved the twists and turns and the way everything tied back upon itself, I didn’t give the characters much thought once I was done watching. (With the notable exceptions of Ivonava, Marcus, and Vir.)

Which makes me wonder, what is more important in a show? Good writing or good acting? Or is it an individual thing? Obviously, when both come together (such as in Firefly) it is a wonder and a joy.

Which is a really long way of saying, holy crap I really love Six Feet Under and how come no one told me it was this good? I mean, there are no space ships, nothing gets blown up, and there’s lots of boinking… I should be hating it, but I’m not. And boy do I hope that there’s not some point where everything goes off in some direction that just pisses me off (i.e. the first half of season 6 of Buffy).