TMP Television Edition: Fish Out of Water

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is Television Edition: Fish Out of Water. Science fiction was the first thing that came to my mind for this week's challenge. A few of the shows I thought of, I've used before...so I'm just getting a little "creative."

Stranger Things

In 1980s Indiana, a group of young friends witness supernatural forces and secret government exploits. As they search for answers, the children unravel a series of extraordinary mysteries.

I don't know if fish out of water holds up for the latter seasons, but the first one does with Eleven escaping from the facility and the boys being introduced to Eleven's world of the Upside Down.

The Twilight Zone

Everyday civilians cross over into familiar worlds that range from fantasy and science fiction to supernatural drama and black comedy.

Maybe 'fish out of water' is supposed to be interpreted as wide-eyed naive characters discovering some place new, but a lot of episodes drops characters into unexpected places that makes them question their reality or try to break free from the new world or timeline they discover. They're usually the outsider forced to look in. This might be technically a cheat since it's practically guaranteed for every character to end up having crossed The Twilight Zone in some way. 

Mork and Mindy

Mork, an alien from the planet Ork on a mission to Earth to study human behavior, travels to 1970s Boulder, Colo., where he meets up with Mindy, a young journalism graduate, after his egg-shaped spacecraft lands there. The bumbling alien is trying to get a handle on Earth culture, and his frequent dispatches back to his home planet give him the opportunity to sound off on human foibles.

Much more of a comedy than a science-fiction show, but Mork's adventures with humans are always so charming and sweet. You never quite know what you're going to get in any episode because Williams's improvised so much - which made Mork's zaniness even better.