No need to bother reading as many television blogs as I do. Here’s the news you should know:

• The Guardian reported that American television shows like Desperate Housewives, Friends, and The Late Show with David Letterman are doing more to win over the minds of Saudi youth than $500-million worth of American propaganda.
• NBC’s pilot Wonder Woman has found its hero and villain—Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) and Elizabeth Hurley (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery), respectively.
• Aaron Sorkin—a screenwriter who just won an Oscar for The Social Network and whom I admire for creating The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip—is returning to the small screen with an HBO drama about a cable news show.
• Before we get too sweet on HBO, though, bear in mind that the network passed on the comedy series Tilda, about a powerful Hollywood blogger. Why they would pass up the chance to work with Diane Keaton and Ellen Page is beyond me. (But let’s not forget, they also passed on Mad Men.)
• Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has joined Lost‘s Michael Emerson in J.J. Abrams’s CBS pilot Person of Interest, a drama about an ex-spy who fights crime vigilante-style.
• Emerson’s close friend and Lost costar Terry O’Quinn has joined the cast of ABC’s good-versus-evil pilot Hallelujah, created by Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives fame.
• Ronald D. Moore’s NBC pilot The 17th Precinct is now a full-fledged Battlestar Galactica reunion, with Jamie Bamber, James Callis, and Tricia Helfer. The cast also includes Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), Stockard Channing (The West Wing), Matt Long (Mad Men), and Eamonn Walker (Kings).
• Speaking of Kings (which I loved), its young lead Christopher Egan will portray Edgar Allen himself in ABC’s pilot Poe.
• AMC is developing a Reconstruction-era drama called Hell on Wheels about a former Confederate soldier who heads to the West to help build the first Transcontinental Railroad—oh, and to seek vengeance. The series stars Anson Mount as the protagonist and rapper Common as a freed slave he meets along the way.
• Salma Hayek and ABC are developing an eight-hour miniseries based on Wicked—the Gregory Maguire novel, mind you, not the musical it spawned.
• Julianne Moore will play folksy Sarah Palin in HBO’s Game Change, a TV movie based on the John Heilemann & Mark Halperin book of the same name, which chronicled the 2010 election. Will her portrayal of Palin hold a candle to her former 30 Rock costar Tina Fey’s?
• HBO is developing a drama about Nazi-battling magicians and con men entitled Hobgoblin. That premise may strike you as strange, but James Hibbard at EW uncovered a reference to a real-life Nazi-battling magician. All right, HBO, you have my attention. Now, would you mind casting Diane Keaton and Ellen Page?

Completist Destiny, as defined by Wikipedia, is the belief that a television addict such as myself is destined—nay, divinely ordained—to watch a series completely and completely chronologically. Fine, I admit: that might just be a dogma of my own creation. But I stick to it. (This is where you, in solidarity, shout, “Leave no episode behind!”)

Of course, I have to compromise sometimes, like when networks boneheadedly air episodes out of order, or when I’m watching TV with someone who’s not as obsessive-compulsive devoted to the intended chronology as I am.

Anyway, I was thinking today about the series I’ve watched in their entireties—i.e. series for which I’ve seen every episode made available. Here they all are, from the most prolific to the shortest-lived… and even the ones I’m not so proud I watched!

• The X-Files (205 episodes)
• Dawson’s Creek (128 episodes)
• Alias (105 episodes)
• Battlestar Galactica (78 episodes)
• Veronica Mars (64 episodes)
• Roswell (61 episodes)
• Samantha Who? (35 episodes)
• Eli Stone (26 episodes)
• Summerland (26 episodes)
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (22 episodes)
• Aliens in America (18 episodes)
• Worst Week (16 episodes)
• The Office (U.K. version, 14 episodes)
• Kings (13 episodes)
• Miss/Guided (7 episodes)

Any show that I’ve watched that is not included on this list is a show that I’m still in the middle of, a show that I’ve given up on, or one of the (few) shows that I only watch occasionally.

The sad truth is that very few of these shows ended of the producers’ own accord; far too many were axed. And some of them aren’t even available on DVD for future enjoyment.

I’ll update this list periodically as I polish off more shows, starting with my dearly-beloved Pushing Daisies, for which I only have one more episode. (And parting is hardly ever such sweet sorrow.)

Edits:

• Pushing Daisies (22 episodes, finished 9/12/09)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (31 episodes, finished 9/16/09)
• Dollhouse (26 episodes, finished 1/29/10)
• Nip/Tuck (100 episodes, finished 3/30/10)
• Ugly Betty (85 episodes, finished 4/15/10)
• Lost (121 episodes, finished 5/23/10)
• 24 (193 episodes, finished 5/24/10)
• FlashForward (22 episodes, finished 6/12/10)

Start with The West Wing. Now make the democracy an autocracy. Place that autocracy in a fictional country. Throw in marital strife, filial betrayal, oppressive corporations, hostile nations, wearisome wars, a young hero, and a tyrannical ruler. Pepper in some biblical references and glaze with poetic words structured in antiquated syntax. Do all this, and perhaps you’d have Kings, one of the most promising shows to have been cancelled this year.

I watched the first episode when it premiered in March, knowing little more about it than the premise: a modern-day retelling of the story of David and Goliath. The “high-concept”-ness of that pilot episode intrigued me, but it was the second episode, “Prosperity,” that really impressed me—with its elegance of narrative and of style and with the quality of acting from Ian McShane, Christopher Egan, and the rest of the cast.

Sadly, the show was doomed from the premiere—that first episode only attracted less than four million viewers, and the ratings only went downhill from there. The show was relegated to Saturday nights, effectively being put out to pasture by NBC. And then the last episodes were delayed until the summer (when, too, the final episodes of other canceled series aired).

I don’t often watch a new show when I know its fate has already been sealed. But Kings had captivated me so much that I watched all thirteen episodes. Luckily, the last episode aired was, in fact, the season finale and thus gave a modicum of closure to us fans. It’s a shame that more viewers did not, for whatever reason, tune in to this epic series, but at least it will endure on DVD and (until September 20) on Hulu.