Based on what I am seeing on Facebook, I am apparently the only person on Earth who is not lamenting the season’s end of The Walking Dead and also not watching (nor have ever watched) Mad Men.

But that’s OK – this sort of thing isn’t exactly new territory for me. I am often on the opposite side of the fence on matters such as this. For example: I never saw an episode of Lost. I know. I’ll pause now so you can pick up your drink, or get your heart restarted or just allow time for you to recover from the shock of this bombshell.

While I am sure that Mad Men is a fine TV show, and I am sure that the near universal praise for the show is fully and truly warranted – I have little interest in watching it. And truth be told, for whatever reason – I never did. My reasons for this are best kept to myself. Suffice it to say that I see Mad Men as a fairly generic, sterotypical, recycled set up that has been covered many times over by countless TV shows before it.

I’m sure that this is a narrow minded and frustratingly dismissive attitude to take, but I’ve gotta be me. Sometimes I will decide years later to check out a show from the past and find out that my assessment of it was inaccurate. I don’t see that happening here, but you never know. I can see this happening with Lost, but not with Mad Men. Time will tell.

Now, the Walking Dead is another story. I did watch the first season, and thought it was one of the best shows around. All I needed to hear is that it was based on a comic book and that Frank Darabont (he of Shawshank Redemption fame) was going to be the writer/director for at least some of it, and I was intrigued. And was not disappointed.

Those first six episodes were chilling, compelling, horrifying and just plain fun. Everything you’d want a show to be! At least, what you’d want a horror show to be. I found the story and characters intriguing and the acting and writing was top notch. Every episode left me wanting more, and wanting to see what happened next.

Season two was another story. Started off with a hootenanny, then got a mite slow midway through. Came up with a humdinger of a midseason finale, then drifted back to meandering until the end of the sophomore offering. Unlike with the first season, I was not left with a burning desire to see the next season. I was interested, but the luster had faded. And I think that Darabont had since moved on to other projects somewhere during the season.

I watched maybe the first two or three installments of season three, then called it quits. Among my ill conceived reasons:

• I thought that the return of Andrea (truly, is there any more annoying character in TV history? If that’s her goal, the actress is doing an amazing job)
• the emergence of Carl as a gun toting twerp
• the inexplicable way that Andrea and Michionne were surprised by Merle (you’re on the run from zombies! all the time! any lapse in judgment could mean a grisly death! And you allow some dumb ass to sneak up on you?!?!?)
• Hershel getting bitten in what I thought was an obvious set up in the prison. I can’t have been the only viewer who saw that coming as soon as they set up the scene, right? And I’m hardly clairvoyant and I’m not saying that I’m great for seeing this…. I was annoyed when it happened.

Perhaps it’s for the best. I mean, we are talking about the extermination of the human race here. Eventually, all of these people will be Zombie Chow. I think I got the best of what the show had to offer, and I look back fondly to the scenes and moments that made the first two seasons so … utterly watchable.

Now, the good news in all of this is that I have a new show to be looking forward to: Joss Whedon’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. After The Avengers, I will definitely be giving this a look. And who knows, if things go well it could join Arrow and Big Bang Theory in a very exclusive club.

That being shows that I watch with anything resembling consistency.