My biggest problem with most of the shows listed is they have to outdo themselves and go on for too long.
Season one: Great premise!
Season Two: Same premise, but TWICE the danger!
Season three: I don’t know, robot ninjas or something?
I miss when shows could just grow in the first season or two, and then you’d only get raising stakes two or three times a year (season finale/premier and sweeps). Otherwise they’re just stories.
These days shows have to justify themselves right out of the gate.
These days shows have to justify themselves right out of the gate.
I miss mid-budget live action scifi shows with strong enough episodic elements that I can actually remember individual episodes. These days seemingly every show feels like an 8-12 movie that blurs together.
Star Trek Strange New Worlds is the closest current thing to an exception. Before that The Orville.
Most other scifi that comes out has to be an “event”.
I miss mid-budget live action scifi shows with strong enough episodic elements that I can actually remember individual episodes
Kamen Rider.
The Orville had that in the first season or so, after that it went heavy into serialization. I dont think I even finished whatever the last season was because of it.
The most infamous example of this is Supernatural where the first few seasons were very episodic and exactly what you described. Then, after season 5 it keep escalating until dudes are fighting off the end of the world for the 6th time lmao
Hah, yes!
Just finished season 3 of Yellowjackets and White Lotus and I just felt, meh. I’m hopeful for season 4 of both shows but I’ll be living off the honeymoon phase from seasons 1 and 2.
Oh, this is about Riverdale, isn’t it?
Riverdale actually did what I’ve always wished for a boring failure of a show to do, and just completely go nuts.
Oh our boring high school drama show is slumping? How about an organ stealing cult, a superhero, and a guy escaping from the cops in a rocketship!
Its more that they have to keep the money train going, than they have to outdo themselves.
Never got the appeal of these ones. They aren’t bad shows, but they did not do it for me.
Game of Thrones
Lost
Better Call Saul
Peaky Blinders
Breaking Bad
Shit. That’s exactly my list.
- I didn’t even watch GoT long enough to see Emilia Clark in the buff. But, then, I’d read the first two books and absolutely loathed them, and didn’t find the TV series improved the story much.
- I liked the first season of Lost, but the second felt like the writers were like, “oh shit… we got a second season? Shitshitshit…” Like they were just making it up as they went, and the writing and plot was just… bad.
- I didn’t watch BCS because I didn’t like
- Breaking Bad. I mean, I like scenes from BB, but the show itself suffered (for me) from this tendency in the past decade to base entire shows on tense anxiety. Boardwalk Empires was another that used this mechanism, as did
- Peaky Blinders. Great writing. Great acting. But it’s just constant tension, and it’s simply not fun.
It’s like directors got ahold of this one technique and just beat it into every fucking show in the past decade. It’s tired, overused, and you’ll notice it’s a common trait of many of the shows you and agree on. You have to have tension, but I didn’t need every god damned minute to be wondering if someone’s going to get their throat graphically slashed with a straight-edge.
Oh man! You just put to words why I couldn’t stand Breaking Bad, and Boardwalk Empire.
I watched the first simply because a lot of people love it, and I try to watch everything that seems worth seeing. The second I saw some clips from that I really liked, but then I just didn’t stick with the actual show.
In both cases, the series left me on constant edge, in a really bad way.
Now I realize that I kept waiting for the shows to grant me some kind of catharsis, but it just never happened. Or it happened rarely and in ways that quickly gets brushed away as inconsequential.
Y’all are trippin, the gus storyline in Better Call Saul/BB is likely my favorite villain of all time.
Fair enough though, I was scared I was gonna see these shows listed in here and here we are!
You’re still allowed to enjoy them.
How could I after this
Fair point. You probably shouldn’t like or enjoy things that other people subjectively don’t like.
My condolences.
I’m not fond of the perpetual tension. Just awful.
this tendency in the past decade to base entire shows on tense anxiety.
Yup. I call it the “drama of paranoia,” and it’s exhausting after a while. It also gives you a veneer of “prestige” without having to make characters I give a shit about or plots that fit together at all. As a good example of a show that realized this, Mad Men always struggled with a certain early-season plotline until they finally just ripped off the band-aid and said,
spoiler
the “real” Don Draper’s widow handwaves something out with our boy Dick, and literally nobody else gives a shit.
What worked about that show had nothing to do with “ONE BIG SECRET.”
This, plus The Sopranos, The Office, Parks & Rec, IASIP, 30 Rock, etc.
I get that they’re well liked, and they are the source of lots of meme material, but I could never manage to get through a whole episode.
I’ve never been able to make it through an entire episode of Community, for the same reason. It’s memeable, but I just don’t find it funny at all.
I have watched any of those except the first couple of Breaking Bad. It was too real for me so I just couldnt.
I lasted 5 minutes with Peaky Blinders. The loud music drowning out the dialogue did my head in.
Big Bang Theory
Same here. I always felt they were making fun of my fellow nerds and geeks as opposed to celebrating our intelligence and quirkiness. The writers obviously got the humor and nuance but chose to poke fun so that the rest of the world could laugh at it. I mean I understand why but I didn’t really like it for that reason.
I didn’t even think they got the humor right. Watching episodes without the laugh track shoes the jokes are just a group of bullies being bullies to each other.
Laugh tracks always make me feel like I’m being programmed.
I’ve been called “Sheldon” for my autistic traits in a degrading manner. The show plays autism for laughs plenty of times, and also ridicules the “nerds” all the time for no reason. It’s like a bunch of self proclaimed high school “jocks” wrote it
The most infuriating part about it is I know that if I rant about how terrible bbt is, it will only cement me as Sheldon in their minds.
Lost was the tv version of clickbait. 3 concurrent story lines rotated from week to week. Every episode a cliffhanger that you had to wait 2 more weeks to resolve into a nothing burger. Even watching that shit on disc or streaming is annoying as fuck. I might have liked what was going on story wise, but I got too annoyed with the format to get past mid season 2.
Yeah. Lost was when I was intrugued by J J abrams style, and then completely turned off by his inability to tell a story or have a plan beyond the halfway point.
And then they involved him in seemingly every major movie franchise ever for the next two decades… and he kept doing the same crap. Lots of flash and dazzle and dramatic moments that ultimately mean nothing because the characters have no story to tell, no real arc, no consistent rules creating a believable universe for the watcher to be sucked in to - any rules can be thrown out the window anytime a dramatic cliche opportunity arises. Yet he still seems very popular.
Lost went on far too long and they backed themselves into a corner by saying that the big secret was what nobody had guessed, but this was right around the Internet getting popular to talk about tv shows, so everything good had already been suggested. If it had been me, I would have just picked the best one and gone with that…
There is a recut of it, still available via torrent, called Chronologically LOST. It is every scene, but in chronological order, and only once each. Really cool way to see the show and make sense of it.
Unfortunately, mid season 2 is where it finally stops having enormous fluff and starts picking up pace. Fair criticisms though
Friends.
Seems like everyone likes this show but I dont think I ever watched a full episode.
My humor is more like Scrubs, Seinfeld, IT Crowd.
Friends had Chandler and Joey bromance, which is a precursor to the Scrubs bromance.
The rest of the show isn’t similar, but that part was spot on.
I love Scrubs and IT Crowd, but Friends also. I don’t, however, like Frasier. People seem to fall into either the Friends or Frasier camp, and never the twain shall meet.
Friends or Frasier camp, and never the twain shall meet.
I didn’t cate for either.
I weirdly like both.
But I like a lot of random shit.
Fair enough. I find Friends to be incredibly unfunny and can’t stand sitting through a single episode. Frasier, on the other hand, I find to be pretty entertaining (until Niles and Daphne get together, then the wheels start falling off).
There are quite a few edited ‘Friends without the laugh track’ videos on YouTube showing how creepy and unfunny some of the characters are. Its a bit of a meme theres so many of them.
Oh I want to check those out… Thanks!
Walking dead. I think I finished the second episode. But I’m not even sure about that one. It was utterly boring
Walking dead is the king of spreading 4 episodes of content across 12 episodes. You could watch the season opener, the 2 episodes that close the first half and start the second if each season, and the finale, and not miss anything of substance.
Wait, is TWD available on the anime filler website?
You’ve seen the best. I stopped somewhere in the middle of S3 because it was so bad. S1 was tolerable but honestly only the pilot was good. Kids watched all of it so I’ve got an idea how it went on; like a bad and cheap soap opera
I watched up to the point where they pretended the Asian lad was dead, but actually he was hiding under a bin.
Not because it was cheap, but because I realised I no longer cared one way or the other.
The first few episodes were a slog, but it got much better.
I recomment to give it a try. Maybe start straight from season 2.
I watched the first 2 seasons or so. It felt like all the clichés from all the zombie movies put together in a single show, but worse.
Yellowstone. With shows like The Sopranos or Sons of Anarchy you know the characters are evil, but you can connect just enough for it to be compelling.
In Yellowstone it feels like they want you to see the characters as the heros, when they are mass-murdering, slave-owning oligarchs. They buy cops and politicians to gain power, but get bent on revenge if other powers don’t “play by the rules”. I didn’t last too long, but everyone else seems to love it.
I watched it for a while, but it just got stupider and stupider with every season. It’s a very American show, and it feels like conservative pandering much of the time (even though the show runner isn’t a conservative from what I hear).
it most catering to conservative circle jerking.
He is conservative, he’s even been on Joe Rogan’s podcast
It’s a soap opera and if you treat it for what it is It’s quite fun! People who never watched soap set expectations too high and expected real plot and depth of a real TV show which it never set out to do.
The Walking Dead. Felt more like the Talking Dead, the pacing was far too slow for me and it didn’t seem like much was happening.
Rick & Morty. Then the whole szechuan sauce thing happened and I can’t look at any content from that show without cringing. LOOK GUYS IM PICKLE RI-stop please it’s not funny.
Friends
How I met your mother
Big Bang Theory
The trilogy of “wtf is wrong with those people”
Bazinga.
The Umbrella Academy: in the first couple of series like nothing happens and everyone is very sad.
Breaking Bad. Just lost interest half way through.
I made it one episode. Extremely well done show about a tragically terrible flaw of American society that frustrates me daily. Didn’t need a reminder of how terrible things are.
Same. Walt is an unlikeable person making bad decisions. I grave up after season 1.
You know what might help you power through?
Will it make my teeth fall out?
I was gonna suggest a little coffee, but yes if your caffeine is contained in a sugary soda it definitely has the potential to rot your teeth.
I gave up on it once, and then continued at a later date. I felt that the mid seasons were a bit of a grind, but the last season goes up to 11 with an extremely satisfying ending.
Game of Thrones. To me it just came across as torture porn. Just a series of awful things happening to people from one scene to the next. The schtick about different kingdoms and families vying for the throne or whatever was just the backdrop and context to rape, abuse and murder, which was the star of the show.
I love fantasy but that show didn’t do it for me in the slightest. Not interested in checking out any of that guy’s books either.
The Mandalorian
Noped out after season 1. They revealed his face during a filler episode, during a boring scene, instead of waiting an episode or two longer for the real gut punch reveal at the end of the last episode.
It was stupid. It killed what would have been one of the best face reveals in cinema history. I had no patience for the show after that. Almost didn’t bother finishing the rest of the season. I don’t really care what their reasons were. Contractual. Whatever. Don’t care.
Most of the popular ones. Especially Game of Thrones. As soon as the incestuous couple threw the little boy off the tower, I was outta there. I’m so tired of shows about horrible people doing horrible things.
