Wag The Frog - same thing happened to me when I said I didn't like Seinfeld. There were only one or two things I found funny about that show and the rest was a waste of time and space.

Definitely not with you there. I don't think it's the greatest show of all time like some people, but even in syndication it cracks me up.

As for I Love Lucy, all I have to say is Vitameatavegemin.

das

I'd have to say Seinfeld. I guess I didnt just get the humor of this show.

I've seen episodes here and there of pretty much every other show listed here and enjoyed all of them.

Brian

das - I guess it's just not my humor. Pluse George was the most annoying insect on the planet.

at this thread.

This thread is ridiculous. Just because YOU didn't like a show doesn't mean it is overrated. Most of the shows listed here as "overrated" were some of the greatest shows ever created on television...and that is not opinion, it's fact.

Just because you don't get the humor of something you don't need to immediately need to say it's overrated because everyone else thinks it's funny. Same thing with drama, just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's overrated.

Even though I am a fan of the show, and am about 10 DVDs short of the entire collections.... how about The Twilight Zone? It's true that the show had some excellent episodes, and people do remember those episodes. However, as you go further into the older episodes, you got some that weren't exactly stellar.

Frasier

Seinfeld

ALL Reality Shows

I typed a nice long smart-ass reply, but I'll condense it to the following remark:



das

I tried to say the same thing back in my post on the first page, but you said it much better.

don't be dissing Lucy
her and the 10,000 maniacs are my hometown's only claims to fame

I'd have to say 'reality' shows and daytime soap operas are overrated. those daytime soaps are so predictable, and they're all the same. My mom admits to watching them for a while when I was a baby and she said she one episode this character got in an accident and was in an ambulance, and it took like two weeks worth of episodes for the ambulance to get to the hospital. How lame is that?

Uh... name me one show that is funny for a fact. A fact is something that everyone considers to be the truth. I don't know of any television show ever made that EVERYONE will agree is good. Liking a show doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you got it either; that's just pretentious. I got the humor in M*A*S*H* (what 7 year old wouldn't) but I don't think it's as funny as the self-appointed "experts" say it is. On the other hand I absolutely adore I Love Lucy and Seinfeld but I can understand if those shows don't appeal to some people's sense of humor. That doesn't mean I'm right and they're wrong it just means we have different tastes. Geez man get off the soapbox. It was just a friendly discussion. I'm not hunting people down that don't like Seinfeld.... well actually now that you mention it.... j/k

given peoples attention spans, it doesn't surprise me that this thread has turned out kinda bad.

surely it can be suggested that a series is overrated just as it can be suggested that a movie is. like pearl harbor or whatnot.

the problem here is, as i thought someone may have done something similar near the beginning, i could say all tv is overrated. go read a book.

or i could go the intelligent route and say, oh, star trek is overrated. and then go so far as to say, of course the shows influence cannot be ignored, but the acting in it was bad, the writing was formulaic, etc. etc.

you get the idea, throwing out tv show names is decidely uninteresting if you can't back it up.

incidentally, i would say star trek ranks up there in overrated-ness for the reasons above and there are prolly more.

i might suggest that Sportsline was a very underrated and quite enjoyable show. the dialogue was quite enjoyable. to just start it off...

Actually, a fact is something that's true, regardless of whether others consider it to be so or not. Both on this forum and in real life, people refuse to accept what is known to be true. Check your local news or stroll into Otter, and you'll see this in action. But that has no bearing on this discussion, so I'll move on ...

Note that he said "most" and "great" ... not "all" and "funny." I would argue, however, that there are many shows in the history of television that can be labelled "great" regardless of what you or I may think about them. Their impact on television history is well-documented and will never change. A show like I Love Lucy is one such show. It defined comedy as we know it, and damn_near every sit-com in the last 50 years has copied it (or The Honeymooners). Their domination of television when they originally aired and their subsequent influence on every show since then classifies them as "great" (to the level of fact) independent of current public opinion.

Still, I don't know what "overrated" means in the context of a television show.

das

P.S. M.A.S.H., like many shows, must be taken in the context of when it originally aired. I can see how people wouldn't enjoy it in syndication, but it really surprises me that anyone who watched it during its original run wasn't entertained by what they were doing with that show, especially the finale.

Excuse me? Which "formula" is this? The one that Star Trek created? You can say a LOT of negative things about Star Trek, but the number one reason for its massive appeal was that it was the furthest thing from formulaic and redefined science fiction television, moving away from cheesy monsters and stupid stories to intelligent plots and real-life dilemmas. You may not like the show (you're not alone), but it is not formulaic.

das

Agreed. The british version "Coupling" is much better.

My list:
3rd Rock
Everybody Loves Raymond - it's okay, but not as great as people claim
Survivor and everything else of the same "reality tv" ilk.

I was never a fan of that show, but I recognize its importance to television at the time. They did a lot of groundbreaking stuff on that show. Lucille Ball was a comic genius. Not as cool as Curly Howard, but definitely up there in the rankings as greatest all-time comedians.

I happen to like MASH, though I will never buy it on DVD (FX shows MASH all the time, so there is no need to buy...), but I can see why people think it is overrated. By contrast, that overrated show lasted a very long time because an awful lot of folks loved that show.

She also greenlighted Star Trek before Desilu went under. Behind the scenes she was somewhat of a visionary in her own way, beyond just being groundbreakingly funny. It's a shame she had so many failures after I Love Lucy finally ended.

das

Um, there are some of us out there that do realize this is all a matter of a person's opinion. Just because I didn't find Seinfeld very funny, doesn't mean that it's not. It simply means that I didn't find it funny. Last time I checked, it's not a crime.

I watched MASH first run and I loved it. I loved the humor and the messages they were trying to get across. Believe it or not, I also feel this show had some of the best *drama* on TV as well. Many folks here just don't like it. That's cool. The thread asked for opinions, we gave ours, let's get over it all and move on. Jese people - it's TV, not brain surgery!

I don't agree with this statement...

Not all TV is mindless drivel. I love all forms of entertainment and I consider a lot of it to be art, especially movies. I read many books, see many movies, listen to music profusely, and watch the TV shows that I like, and I consider most of it art. Believe me there is a lot of crap put down in book form too, and I have read them.

paleblue, right. i don't actually think that either. was just sorta going with the flow of the thread, naming things for the sake of naming them.

The thread could be retitled "What populalr TV shows do you really dislike" and then we could avoid the argument. The present title is not good at all though.

I can't speak for the person who started the thread, but I sort of think that he/she kind of had this in mind. I think that it would sort of be assumed that this would not be a serious debate over the quality of television programming and just a place to list a few shows that were critically and/or publically lauded over, while you just never really liked them.

A "hottest chick to appear in a Buffy episode" thread wouldn't exactly be a provable study on the aesthetic beauty of each girl, but just a place to list which babes you liked. The throw away/stupid threads can be fun too.

The thread name might be misleading but it did just seem to me to be a goofy thread. I'm not sure why it got so serious. Maybe the title of the thread or maybe the person needed to specify the criteria of an"overrated" tv show. I just assumed it wasn't so serious. My bad.

But if there were criteria and not just opinion, it would be hard for me to accept I Love Lucy and MASH as overrated. These were clearly 2 of the best television shows in the history of tv. Even if you don't like them, as das wrote, its nearly impossible to dispute this.

In the spirit of the thread, I'll mention a show that I find "overrated."

CSI

Every time I've watched it, I've enjoyed it to an extent, but it's little more than a glorified Murder, She Wrote. Yet it gets huge press and lots of award nominations. I certainly don't dislike the show or anything, but I do not understand all the hype over it.

das

Ahh...gotcha...my disagreeing wasn't an attack on you BTW.

For some reason some people tend to think that just because something is written in a book it is immediately better than it could ever be in any other medium.

Some I am guessing if all the Seinfeld episodes were put to book and was never made into a TV show...it would be genius. Reminds me when Jerry and George were trying to right the pilot episode..."Okay...you come in and say hi...", "and then I say how's it going..."

But although it was set in the Korean War wasn't it "subtly" to do with the Vietnam "conflict"? I think that on went on longer.... I actually liked seeing the MASH repeats although we were lucky because they were shown without the laughter soundtrack.

As for over-rated, hmmm, I 'll go with all the reality-type shows but that is only because I don't like them and won't follow them. They seem to get high enough ratings in most places....