So I tried icebear's suggestion of transcribing a TV series today. I was supposed to do 10 minutes in an hour, but I was only able to do the first 42 seconds of 婚姻保卫战 (unsure if this means "In Defense of Marriage" or "Marriage Wars") in an hour and a half:

他小心翼翼地游着
终于穿过了旋涡的中心
来到了巫婆住的地方
巫婆住的地方
是一间用死人的骨头盖成的房子
旁边缠许多可怕的怪树
它们说像
长着一百个头的蛇一样
从泥土里面佃出一支支

Tā xiǎoxīnyìyì de yóuzhe
Zhōngyú chuānguòle xuánwō de zhōngxīn
Lái dàole wūpó zhù dì dìfāng
Wūpó zhù dì dìfāng
Shì yī jiàn yòng sǐrén de gǔtou gài chéng de fángzi
Pángbiān chán xǔduō kě pà de guài shù
Tāmen shuō xiàng
Zhǎngzhe yībǎi gètóu de shé yīyàng
Cóng nítǔ lǐmiàn diàn chū yī zhī zhī

He carefully swam
and finally passed the center of the vortex
arriving at the place where the witch lives
The place of the witch
is a house built around the bones of the dead
wrapped around an awful lot of strange trees
They say they look like
a hundred snake heads growing
from the dirt -something- -something- -something-

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDhcKba-ZVg

This is arguably not the best way to learn the language for a beginner. In an hour and a half I could have done all my Skritter reviews and learned 10 new characters. I think graded readers with audio more appropriate for my level (<500 characters) would help me advance a lot more quickly than this?

范博涵, there is a "TV project" on Chinese-forums.com, where people have already done the work of transcribing soap operas. You can see here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/24097-tv-series-recommendations-and-index-thread/

I recommend starting with 奋斗. The language isn't difficult, and people seem to have done the most work with this show. People have typed transcripts for the first 6 shows, so you can read, review, & study these transcripts. Here is the page for 奋斗 http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/17355-first-episode-11-%E5%A5%8B%E6%96%97/

Agreed with atdlouis... build on the shoulders...

Yeah, I definitely need transcripts.
My wife already provided me with the following link for 婚姻保卫战:

http://video.baidu.com/s?f=1002&n=1&id=235457&word=%BB%E9%D2%F6%B1%A3%CE%C0%D5%BD&fr=vsalds

It has episodes 1-33 in great quality.
Now all I need are the subtitle files.