Re: The Unpopular TV Show/Series Opinion Thread
 

I find most of those types of shows more fun. I saw Haven, Librarians, Warehouse 13, Continuum, Grimm, etc... The concepts stand out more to me than a lot of award-winning shows which never tend to be in the genres I watch.

Re: The Unpopular TV Show/Series Opinion Thread
 

I think people who think that really missed the point of the show. They showed it in quite brutal and unromanticized fashion. Tony was actually terrifying.

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Well, I think Godfather and Goodfellas/Casino did that first and paved the way for a mafia series. But yes, Sopranos did it on a week to week basis.

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Pfft. You can show that and still glorify and romanticize crime families.

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Yep. :up:

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I didn’t care for Seinfeld. Saw a few episodes, but never really could get into it.

Call me a heretic.

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Game of Thrones is the reason why everything on Pornhub is now stepbrother/stepsister, stepson/stepmother, or stepfather/stepdaughter?

It's basically just the same old bog-standard porn we've been watching for decades, and the whole "step" thing is so ubiquitous that it isn't even titillating.

As far as The Sopranos glorifying organized crime, our pop culture has been doing that for decades. People have been watching gangster movies since they started making movies, and even real-life outlaws like Jesse James and Bonnie & Clyde have been lionized for generations.

Re: The Unpopular TV Show/Series Opinion Thread
 

Wait until you get to the third season. rotfl

Most ensemble shows that run long enough do that with a breakout character. Happy Days become the Fonzie show. Seinfeld turned into Kramer. Family Matters became The Adventures of Urkel. And even supporting characters like Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Daryl on The Walking Dead started to get a lot of focus despite starting out as supporting characters.

In that regard, I can sort of understand that Harlan Ellison anecdote about William Shatner going through "The City on the Edge of Forever" script to make sure he had more lines than Leonard Nimoy. :lol:

I remember reading a while back that it's not economically feasible to do mid-length seasons. They either have to be short (<13) or long (>20) to budget out for some reason.

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Yeah, to actually have someone in your life like Tony Soprano, Walter White, or Jax Teller would be terrifying, but when you're watching them on television and there's no chance that they're going to show up at your front door asking for a favor, they can be fascinating to watch.

But they are written in a way that makes them sympathetic, and we, the audience, can feel like their monstrous actions are justified, and the actors who portray them imbue them with charisma to the point that most of the people watching their series root for them and cheer every time they kill someone or commit an atrocity.

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Except for a few bits and pieces, I thought Twin Peaks: The Return was fucking awful.

The thing that made the OG Twin Peaks (and even Fire Walk With Me) work is that it balanced its three major components so well: The nighttime soap opera plots of the townies, the police procedural parts with Dale Cooper and the local police, and the David Lynch weirdness.

But Twin Peaks: The Return fell flat because it went in too deep on the David Lynch weirdness and neglected the people of Twin Peaks. All of the stuff involving the townsfolk felt underdeveloped and just tacked to the point where it seemed like they had to be included because it's called Twin Peaks, but Lynch had no interest in actually doing anything with them like whatever the fuck was going on with Audrey and Jacobi with those fucking shovels.

And don't get me started on two months of that Dougie shit we had to suffer through.

Face it, the Emperor is just marching around naked with his dick flopping around.

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I agree. I’ve probably seen 20 episodes over the years and never once found it anything special.

And I like Jerry’s stand-up a lot.

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My wife likes to watch an episode here and there and I'll have a few chuckles but I have never once intentionally chosen to watch it of my own volition. It tends to feel like a Saturday Night Live sketch gone on way too long (though with moments of utter brilliance like Kramer building the talk show set in his living room or Elaine trying to get the food place to deliver to her because she's just outside their zone).

And I agree with the season length issue. When shows like Star Trek had 26 episode seasons, sure you'd get some stinkers like that DS9 one where they had to play the living board game, but on the other hand you can get series defining episodes like TNG's Data's Day.

Discovery accidentally did it with Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, but they never recaptured that spark again.


As for M*A*S*H, yeah, it turned into the Alan Alda show but I would rather rewatch those eps a dozen times before I'd intentionally watch Seinfeld.

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I think what made Tony somewhat rootable, is if he's killing other gangsters, ok, we'll root for the main character who we have a parasocial relationship with. But the show did a good job of showing how their actions harm innocent people, and how people were actually scared of him. His neighbor being a notable example.

I never really found Tony sympathetic, but then again, you never know the message people will take from a show. I mean, there are people who watch the Boys and cheer and root for Homelander, and don't recognize he's actually a villain because he's caped in a flag.

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That reminds me of a story of someone recounted of watching Dumbo (the old animated one) in class and when his mom knocks some manners into the bullies, all the kids were cheering including the kids that were the actual class bullies, like they had no self-awareness at all.

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Even bullies get bullied...

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And they still don’t see the problem…

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I’m a firm believer that no one has to defend their taste in TV and movies so I certainly won’t call you a heretic but the fact that people can throw out a Seinfeld reference 25 years after the show went off the air, and people understand the reference without having to have it explained to them, shows what a legendary show it actually is/was.


That being said, I’ll add that Futurama was a shitty show and paled in comparison to The Simpsons, even when The Simpsons was struggling with quality. And now, comparing it in hindsight to Rick and Morty, Futurama is an even worse show.

And speaking of which, while it’s got some clever storylines and witty dialogue, Rick and Morty isn’t the genius show its fans think it is.

Re: The Unpopular TV Show/Series Opinion Thread
 

The SWAT TV series with Shemar Moore is far better than the SWAT movie with Colin Farrell and Samuel L Jackson and also way way better than the 1 season 70s TV show.

:lol: Probably not really an unpopular opinion, but just how I feel. ;)

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I’m 14 episodes into Community, and I like it but don’t love it. But I know some shows take time to get their footing, and there was just an interesting development, so I’ll likely keep watching.

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I don't think that's an unpopular opinion, at least online.

I have a true unpopular opinion: audience laughter (not canned laughter, although I've seen both referred to as a "laugh track") is fine, and maybe even a good thing, depending on the show. SNL has had an audience for decades, as have a lot of sketch shows over the years. Late night shows have an audience, stand up specials have an audience. Even 30 Rock had a live audience for its two live episodes.

The key seems to be a live audience for a "live" performance, even if pre-taped. So something like the standard 3-camera sitcom stage setup, not for single-camera sitcoms. For me, the gold standard is the TV show Titus, where in the commentary on the DVD set, they go into how they wanted to keep the show as much like a live 1-act play for the audience:

• They kept the live performance limited to a single set per episode. This limited the amount of "down-time" between scenes due to set/lighting changes
• They pre-recorded any flashbacks/cutaways.
• They hired the director of the Emmys to direct the episodes, basically cutting the episode "live' by inserting the pre-recorded bit during the recording with the audience, to capture the audience's genuine reaction to those, in more-or less real-time.
• Limit the amount of retakes so the audience doesn't tire from hearing the same joke repeatedly.

I think it really works for that show, and if you removed the audience laughter, it'd be a lesser show. The issue is, most laugh-track shows, even those that record in front of an audience, are lazy, and play to the easy-to-please audience instead of making the show clever or interesting. Likewise, the audience can sometimes get obnoxious, like later seasons of Married with Children where there's like a minute of cheering whenever a cast member enters, before they even do anything. But largely the problem with laugh tracks isn't that they exist, but all too often they're done poorly.

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Rick and Morty had a very strong first season, it never really managed to hit that level of humor and creativity in its following 5 seasons.

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I see that as more that Seinfeld has been beaten into our heads as the end-all-be-all. Sure, I know what references like "they are real and they're spectacular" and "spongeworthy" mean, that doesn't mean I think they are funny.

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I’ve honestly seen a handful of episodes but it’s because of my friends’ love of the show that I know what a “puffy shirt” is and a “soup nazi” as well as an “Elaine dance” and to cringe when I hear the name “Newman”… but it’s all indirect.

Like you, I’ll never make of someone who likes a certain show, we all have different tastes. (Heck, I own every season of Reba on DVD.)

Oh, and to me, Michael Richards will always be Stanley Spadowski (let’s see who gets that reference).

Not being a fan of The Simpsons, I never watched Futurama nor any other the other Fox animated shows like Family Guy, American Dad, or The Cleveland Show - and that also extends to shows like Bob’s Burgers, Rick and Morty, The Venture Bros., etc.

They’re just not my cup of tea.

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If I don’t get it right, do I have to drink from the firehose?

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Only if you didn’t find the marble in the Oatmeal.


And Futurama is far more rewatchable than the Simpsons any day of the week. My wife and I haven’t really been interested in The Simpsons for years but we’ll rewatch Futurama all the time.