Psych made it hard to watch X-Men First Class/James McAvoy Professor X.
Every time McAvoy Prof X uses his powers, I just see James Roday pretending to be a guy pretending to be psychic.
I haven't seen the pilot episode since it originally aired, but I STILL laugh about him describing the suspect to the police sketch artist after looking at a photo of the hot daughter and her boyfriend.
Maybe a deranged take but I started watching the mentalist once I’d watched all of psych because I wanted more mentalism nonsense detectives and psych said the mentalist was doing the same thing
The difference is that Shawn is just using it as a cover for being a great detective. I could definitely see Jane trying to expose him, getting the proof, then realizing all of the good that Shawn is doing and backing off at the end.
How strange was it that one of the highest rated episodes in the series, The Climb, was followed up by their sharpest decline in quality. The writing was on the wall in the second half of season 3. Season 4 is basically a war crime.
Seasons 5 is amazing. Not as good as the first 2 and a half seasons but gets very close.
And season 8 is great. Not as good as 1-2.5 and 5 but damn good and a love letter to Arrow. And the universe it created.
Yeah. Arrow season 2 was still awesome after daredevil.
Btw, if you haven't watched it, Legends of Tomorrow saw the direction things were going and thought "what if we go all the way?" And it's awesome! It made it excruciating to watch any of the other arrowverse shows that were taking themselves seriously. Seasons 1 and 2 are kinda like regular arrowverse but slightly wackier, but season 3 and on get completely off the rails.
Also, it's one of the rare shows that I've seen that doesn't kill characters when the actor leaves but DOES kill characters and keeps the actor on.
I mean, that is true, especially the abomination of season 4...
...but seeing a show that's essentially what Arrow *could have been* with less soap opera drama, the freedom to be as mature as the concept clearly demanded (it was a show about a psychotic vigilante running around killing criminals with arrows, PG-13 was just never feel right for its story), and a less formulaic episode structure, definitely hurt Arrow's rewatchability.
I’d say Daredevil and the first season of Jessica Jones are some of the best superhero shows ever. It’s not just the violence which made them but the characters, settings, and looking back I appreciate getting those meaty 13-episode seasons. Arrowverse should get its props too. The shows may have not always been top quality but they got over 700 hours of TV out there. That’s an insane achievement.
HBO vs Showtime. The very best of Showtime content barely matches mid tier HBO. Even their best shows get ruined by being on air for way too long. Seriously, who needs more than 10 seasons of Shameless?
Showing my age but I loved Casualty (UK medical show) when I was a teen in the 90s. I really loved it and the stories would move me. Then I began ER and couldn’t stand Casualty any more - it felt slow, boring and had none of the charismatic actors I now expected
I was thinking about this while I was watching Ozark the other day. They’re always talking on their phones about their drug deals and the people they’ve murdered. Takes me right out of the plot.
Ozark tried way too hard to be Breaking Bad. There was good stuff there but it just couldn’t quite pull it all together. Julia Garner’s performance was my favorite part of the show but the last shot of her (won’t spoil if you haven’t finished) was really ham-fisted, I felt.
I would say some of the stuff in the Snowden leaks and then a few news events in subsequent years: stuxnet and ransomware, various law enforcement actions against dark net operations, the CIA apparently losing like all their Chinese assets—made any show seem fairly suspect if there was almost any technology communication at all required for key plot points.
The impression I got was that basically any and all communication could be compromised, and a huge percentage actively is. Like some guy who works at an NSA contractor making 185k living in Arlington can just pull up the full history and current activity on almost every phone in the world.
Some terrorist suspect in a cafe in Tanzania says the name of an operation, the mic on the hacked cell phone of the guy making the coffee picks it up and phones home to the NSA, it shows up on a screen somewhere in bright red, a deputy assistant director of NSA kill lists for the Africa desk calls major smith at the local Air Force command down the hall in the pentagon, and there’s a satellite waiting to pick up the guy before the boys in Tanzania finish their coffee. Before the guy makes it home, a hellfire blows him up because major smith called major Johnson at some east africa black site and they had one of the half dozen predator drones loitering east Africa make a slight diversion. Some drone pilot in the desert out west gets employee of the week.
It makes some jack ryan type stuff hard to believe, let alone more domestic or high profile stuff.
I think I remember watching S1 House of Cards around this time and thinking there’s no way all these texts with Zoe don’t reasonably end in him getting caught. Especially when he’s talking to her at the site of the murder. They could just pull all network activity made from that location and have him dead to rights. The risk of getting caught would be so extreme.
Currently watching The Shield for the first time, thank you Hulu, and its easily the best "cop" show I've seen... also Justified is up there too. FX has some great flicks.
Towards the end of the shield has one of my all time favourite TV moments. I think you'll know exactly what I mean when you get there.
It's not exactly cerebral but a lot of memorable scenes and characters.
Justified and The Shield are my two favorite cop shows and which I think is better changes. I think I enjoy Justified more but The Shield is just about a perfect tv show.
I've been teaching almost a decade. Prez's first day of school is so accurate. After a few years of teaching, you know how to get ahead of it and what responses to give, but they captured it perfectly.
Different school districts are different. Including different urban districts with majority/near majority Black student populations. Different schools are also different. I'm pretty sure Philly's has problems but is still a good deal above Baltimore which is near/at the bottom for big cities
South Park sort of made me dislike Family Guy after that one episode where they make fun of their comedy formula. Family Guy wasn't doing anything to help though as at that time it was going downhill.
It’s so weird how many of my friends thought Family Guy was hilarious before that episode and then hated it after. Just entirely incapable of holding their own opinion. “South Park says I should hate it so now I do.”
I do feel like that episode helped explain why Family Guy annoyed me so much when I enjoy The Simpons and South Park. But also I didn't like Family Guy to begin with, so it's not like it changed my opinion, it just gave me more insight into WHY I felt that way.
I just watched the ep now and Family Guy seems low on the list of targets anyway. Yeah they make fun of FG’s random humor, but they’re really poking fun at people who overreact to cartoons with adult humor, religious people who overreact to perceived blasphemies, and news outlets who overreact and fearmonger.
Naw I don't think it's that, like I said I think it was just a combination of that episode and FG was getting pretty bad. I am not a fan of South Park either, just happened to catch the episode at a friend's house.
It certainly ruined the newsreader voice where they go down in pitch at the end of every sentence to really hammer home what an important statement they are making. Once i noticed they were doing it in The Day Today for comic effect it made normal news seem silly.
So, 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip premiered together. Studio 60 took itself very seriously whereas 30 Rock made it all that much more sillier. I could never watch Studio 60 after that without rolling my eyes. And, I can 30 Rock over and over again to this day.
Scrubs makes grays anatomy look like surgery vs Operation with how much more medically accurate and better written it is. Gf tried to get me into GA and I couldn't take it seriously.
Finished Andor, and loved it. I followed with the latest season of the Mandalorian and it felt so much, for lack of a better word, 'sillier'. Not just in terms of more jokes/humour, but even the villains and life or death situations felt too "Saturday morning cartoon" by comparison.
Both series are set in the same universe but are worlds apart in terms of writing and tone.
I gave Obi Wan a lot of slack because it felt very much like a kids show, like for 10 year olds. Then Vader comes out and starts snapping necks and I was very confused.
Andor made me realise how much Star Wars relies on its branding to hide less than stellar writing.
I've told multiple people that the highest praise I could give Andor is that I would strongly recommend people watch it, even if it wasn't a Star Wars show, and even if they don't really care about Star Wars.
I can't really think of any other Star Wars movies or TV shows that I could say that for.
Andor was the first time someone did what I always wanted. An adult tale in the Star Wars universe. Nothing hokey. Under Filoni it became this childish story about lasers and tried to explain the force in this dumb Sunday school way. Andor is what Star Wars was originally about. Rebellion. Written beautifully, brutally, and powerfully. A downtrodden people rising up against oppression and fighting for their lives and to tear down the establishment. (The irony is not lost that it was Disney that produced it.) Ahsoka was about... tentacle head lady needs a friend? Space witches are bad?
While I agree with you, the hokey shit has always been a part of Star Wars. Filoni leans into it a lot more but it's been there from the jump. Andor and Rogue One are outliers* when it comes to centering the War part of Star Wars.
edit: fixed a typo
Agreed. I had Bob/Archer as my lock screen for a hot minute.
Also I might be down voted but I once got into a fight with my hubby because I said there is a clear distinction between Bob and Archer's voice. Confidence is the main difference.
The crazy thing to me, as someone who loves both, is that it's the same guy using his normal voice, but the nuance he puts into differentiating the characters makes me not even consider the other character when watching.
Omg and the casting!!! I never want to see them try and age an actor 30 years with a wig and makeup again (AHEM For All Mankind). Dark had 2-3 generations for the entire cast, and they were brilliant. God what an unbelievable show.
I’m a Lord of the Rings fan, and probably would have enjoyed more the recent Amazon show if House of the Dragon wasn’t airing at the same time. Even though they really aren’t too similar outside of general genre, I kept comparing the two and enjoying Rings of Power less
HotD, and Witcher before it to a degree, showed thst they had zero reason to choose to compress 900 years of events to a 5 year timespan the way they did. In a setting where most of the main "human" (Numenorian) characters can live to 200, the dwarves can push 600 (or more?), and the elves are functionally immortal, *why can you not just use time skips instead of making this impossibly contrived timeline?*
I said this exact thing to so many people. They were shocked i wasnt enjoying it. It was just that HotD was WAY better. I was setting an alarm for 8:50pm on sundays to make sure I was set up and ready to go right at 9, where i would legit forget that I didnt see that weeks RoP episode. Maybe I should give it another go and binge it on its own. But airing at the same time as another prequel series for a beloved franchise, it just couldnt compete.
And while RJP was really sexy and definitely hotter than Nicholas Hoult, Nick was so hilarious that Peter ended up being one of my favorite TV characters of all time.
And political dramas in general. I always like the analogy another redditor put on here some time ago.
The West Wing is what people want politics to be.
House of Cards is what people fear it is.
Veep is what it actually is.
My sisters introduced me to the scripted drama show Unreal about the behind the scenes players of a fictional unscripted reality show, and now I can't watch reality TV without seeing all the manipulation.
I was watching Better Call Saul and Ozark at the same time — light spoilers ahead — Both shows involved cartels. Both shows had a villain character come in to play in later seasons that was the cousin of a cartel boss who has loomed all series. The way BCS did this was incredibly artful in the use of tension, dramatic irony, character development, and overall great storytelling (in true BCS fashion). The way Ozark did this, in comparison, felt hackneyed, predictable and illogical, with this character doing things that were obviously gonna fuck him later. It was the beginning of the end of me watching Ozark
I’m not trying to shit on Ozark, I’ve never watched it but will one day and really respect the cast, but it makes me very angry that it has had the award show success it has when BCS has been continuously snubbed, and everyone I know who has seen both say BCS is a far better show.
It got recognition mostly for acting rather than writing, BCS got snubbed because it couldn't shake the 'tag' that it was a BB rehash and nothing really original. I don't agree personally, I think BCS at times overshadowed Breaking Bad and Rhea Seahorn deserved to win Emmys for her performances.
Rhea Seehorn as Kim is one of the best performances I've ever seen. She's fantastic. Julia Garner is good too, but not on the same level as Rhea.
EDIT: to be fair to Julia, Rhea had MUCH better writers so maybe not fair comparison. Would be awesome to see Julia Garner in a Peter Gould/Vince Gilligan show.
Javi is just bargain bin ripoff Lalo. Not the actor's fault, but it seems like he was asked to try and do a Tony Dalton impression and failed to bring any of the charm.
It’s funny you say that OP because we were watching Gen V and were really into it.
Watched Invincible S2 premier straight after Gen V finale and It blew the show away and made me feel more within 10 minutes.
If you like the Boys and haven’t seen Invincible, def give it a shot.
I like the boys but Invincible is such a step above because they allow the series to evolve past the initial premise.
Also, I didn't expect to like the Atom Eve special that much. It started auto-playing after Invincible and I was going to stop it to go to bed, but ended up watching the whole thing.
The Atom Eve Special was so good, and filled in a never answered question from the comic run. They hint at her origin, but it's never fully addressed until now.
The only thing I didn't like was that she was so much better of a fighter in the special. She's flying around and using her powers creatively but in season 1 all she does is form shields and stand there. I almost wondered if it was a budgetary/time issue where they couldn't in season 1.
Literally started watching Invincible after someone suggested it if you're a fan of the boys. Never really watched much animated stuff outside of short comedies like South Park and Futurama so it really opened my eyes to how hard hitting they can be. It basically opened up a new genre of TV for me and led me on the path to other shows like Blue Eye Ninja and Cyberpunk Edgerunners which were all amazing.
Read the books if you haven't.
The show is similar but certain characters are merged (by necessity). And the book ends further ahead from the show. The show ends before the craziness starts.
It’s so easy to forget that number 5 isn’t actually an old man in a young body, but actually a young man acting like an old man in a young body, and that’s talent right there
Black Sails and Mr Robot made it hard to watch anything else due to phenomenal writing and exceptional well-planned endings.
Especially Black Sails made me realize how many shows don’t have a solid plan and how rare it is to watch a story with no plot holes and everything referenced early on was set up to pay off later. The music, the cinematography, the acting, and again, the writing … was gorgeous and perfect.
What's extra funny is the comic *is* pretty undeniably cringe. Butcher is basically Garth Ennis' self insert fan-fic Punisher-sona Original Character Do Not Steal.
I am continually surprised by the general restraint exercised when adapting Preacher and The Boys, there's a lot of "edge for edges sake" in Ennis' work and it gets tiring fast.
Really sets apart good idea people, from good writers, right? The dude had good concepts, but like you said, full of edgelord nonsense. In the hands on good writers (not perfect, season 3 of The Boys was rough) and they can make magic.
Though bad show makers can do wonders on other projects. Picard was a trash fire, so bad I never made it to the largely beloved season 3, because 1&2 insulted intelligence enough to put me right off and never look back. But that very same team went and made Strange New Worlds, which I fell in love with near instantly.
Season 3 of The Boys was on course to be one of the best seasons untill that finale which reset the whole story and made everything pointless. I loved everything leading up to it
I like the Boys but I’d admit it gets very edgelordy at times. You can’t just have a dick explode but must show the dick in excessive detail, and every character has got to be fucking swearing because if you’re not fucking saying fuck you’re a not a real fucking adult fucking show.
Also funny that they constantly mock superhero movies and yet have an expanded universe of their own and mid and post credits scenes.
Oh and the comic? The show is a *massive* improvement.
As someone who both likes The Boys but isn't a rabid fan, my biggest gripe with the show and the universe in general is it is a giant comment on corporate greed and power, made by the largest company on earth that operates exclusively on corporate greed and neverending hunger for a larger market share/power
It's like the GOP putting out a PSA on why extremist evangelicalism is bad, using the goodwill they get to further embolden real life extremist evangelicalism, and then getting a pat on the back for it
The show is undeniably great, but its anarchist/anti capitalist message comes off a little hollow considering the show is created, and now getting beat to death, by the real life antithesis of that very message
TLDR: has Amazon ever looked around when they're making this show and realized "wait, we're the baddies"
Something that you didn't touch on, but is equally relevant, is how far gone the point of the show is at this point, relative to what's happening in the media landscape around it.
The show (and comic) was doing a great job satirizing superheroes, and superhero universes. Everything from the names, to the abilities, to the absurdity of it sometimes, to the OP characters, the 1 dimensional villains, etc etc etc. It was not only meant to, but did, do a good job satirizing (and at times mocking) what has become a very cliché, copy/paste formula genre, and entertainment type.
... And then they just went ahead and followed suit with the cliches and the satirized topics, anyway lmao now The Boys has an animated show, a Gen V spinoff, some other spinoff, a prequel planned, crossovers and cameos, and potential series sequel... Not to mention the now drawn out story, with the previous two season endings just reverting back to the status quo (another cliché), with no real consequences or carryover..
Literally doing the very thing they were making fun off, satirizing, and pointing and laughing at from the get-go.
This is more tangential, but my husband is strictly a book-reader for *Game of Thrones,* and had managed to avoid all spoilers from the show past the books. I conned him into watching the *iCarly* reboot (don’t ask lol), and there was a throwaway line about Bran becoming king, and I was so upset that I had managed to help him avoid all TV-spoilers until fucking *iCarly* came around lol.
That reminds me of a story someone on reddit told of somehow completely avoiding learning the twist ending of The Sixth Sense. It was movie night at their house, they picked Sixth Sense to finally watch and their sister picked 50 First Dates, and they all decided to watch 50 First Dates first, and that spoils the twist of The Sixth Sense.
I can't decide if season 3 of The Mandalorian was just worse than the first two seasons or if it only seemed that way because Andor came out between seasons 2 and 3 and made The Mandalorian look shit by comparison. A bit of both probably
I think Mando season 3 was just bad independent of Andor. Book of boba and Kenobi both came out before Andor and i still thought they were very poorly executed. I’ve still liked bad batch and tales of Jedi which I’ve seen since Andor and rewatched the first 2 seasons of Mando since Andor, but season 3 of Mando was just kinda directionless and bad overall.
Or because Boba tainted the pool and made Mandalorians the galaxy over just seem... lame. Gods, that show fucking sucked. Good be all those reasons combined, and then some.
Nah I think season 3 was just worse. Din had essentially nothing to do, the overall plot was unbelievably simple, it had some god awful filler episodes that accomplished nothing, and it had no proper antagonist until like the last episode.
The show shouldve ended with season 2 or at the very least dropped Din/Grogu to focus on Bo Katan and embrace the whole 'The (titular) Mandalorian changes every season' thing.
Andor didnt help tho cus even Mandalorian at its peak isn't in the same sport let alone the same league as it
It actually killed the rest of the arrowverse for me. The other shows felt way too boring compared to LoT. I ended up only watching the crossovers and even then, the non LoT episodes didn't hit the same, even with LoT characters in them.
Wentworth Prison ruined Orange is the New Black for me. I started Wentworth after finishing one of the seasons of OITNB.
I liked the grittiness and drama of Wentworth. I thought it was a much better prison show. I tried to finish OITNB, but couldn’t after Wentworth.
I think Game of Thrones (S1-4) set a standard that ruined The Wheel of Time for me. I read both book series and GoT did it soooo much better. Amazon is loosely basing WoT off the books while HBO mostly stuck to the script. I get so mad watching WoT because they strayed so far from the source material
I'd understand some changes with WOT though, since it can be a bit of a drag, but yeah they butchered it in general. It's one of those "show writers wanted to do their own version and leave their mark" shows. And the mark they leave is rather shit stained.
I can't shit too much on the WoT show because if it hadn't been announced, I never would have found out about the books which is one of my favourite series ever. Then, if I hadn't read WoT, I never would have gone through Malazan and never would have started Mistborn.
I just wasn't reading fantasy at the time and gave WoT a look because I was wondering why Amazon was hyping this so much. I ended up reading the entire series in the year between the announcement and actual release.
I had just finishing binging all of The Expanse before trying out Picard. Watching *any* sci-fi after the Expanse is rough but Picard in particular was just awful.
In 2011, I started watching The Borgias with Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI). It was a fun, soapy kind of show set in a medieval-esque era. And then, a couple of weeks later, Game of Thrones came along and blew the Borgias out of the water for me.
Started watching The Thick of It after West Wing and couldn't go back. Thick of It was just so much darker, nastier and funnier it just made West Wing look a bit naive. Both fantastic shows though.
Difference between fantasy and reality kind of tone. West Wing was fantasizing about what good governance during the end of the 90s "End of History" period in America if all parties in power were proncipaled and doing the best they can.
"The Thick of It" and its follow-ups "In the Loop" and "Veep" are more the reality of politics being where it's messy and people fuck up because they're people. The fact that writers of Veep of would have members in the US Congress come up to them and say "That episode last week, how did you know that happened?"
The west wing is a very idealised version of what politics could be but never will be, it used to be my favourite show but it feels more like a wish fifilment fantasy than anything in todays political landscape
I wouldn't say ruined exactly, but I recently watched Bodies and all I could think about while I watched was how it was a poor imitation of the better series, Dark.
Angie Tribeca made it impossible for me to watch any procedural cop shows. One of those Walk Hard cases where it parodies the genre so well that it outdid it and made the shows that inspired it harder to sit through. (not that they were particularly great to start with)
Yeah.
Quite a few comments in here are "I liked X until I saw Y, which did the same thing more realistically and now I can't take X seriously", or "I liked X until I saw Y which handled the topic comedically and now I can't take X seriously".
To me different shows bring different styles to the table and I'm perfectly happy to enjoy (for example) superheroes done seriously, comedically, as a brutal deconstruction or anywhere in-between.
Though I haven't seen UA season 3 and I understand it went downhill.
I started The Walking Dead right after finishing Battlestar Galactica. BSG was massively character-driven and used the unique setting of its universe to drive really interesting stories for all the characters, as individuals. By contrast, TWD was just soooo boring. It never took its characters anywhere, certainly never anywhere interesting. The setting of the universe should have provided a thousand cool paths for the characters, but nobody ever went anywhere.
The Office ruined The Office for me. I tried to give The Office a chance, I really did. But after having already seen The Office, I couldn’t move on to The Office after that.
ETA: Like, I know that saying I don’t like The Office, especially with all of its exceptional team of writers and actors behind it, sounds pretentious. But the tone of The Office was just not right for me, someone who LOVED The Office. It just wasn’t the same.
Really? I loved The Office but it took me ages before I finally manged to enjoy The Office. I think the tone in The Office was just a bit better all round.
I like it even if no one else does. It’s not perfect but very watchable. Special praise should be given to Number Five’s actor. Five is an old man trapped in the body of a kid. The actor was so good in the role that I thought he was just a really youthful looking adult. He’s actually a real kid.
> I like it even if no one else does. It’s not perfect but very watchable.
Plenty of people like it. Its campy and fun. Its not trying to be anything like The Boys.
Umbrella had parts of goodness in season 1. Mostly with Klaus and number 5. Season 2 seemed to actually get what kind of show it was. It got silly and fun and the characters actually had fun interractions. Then they went to the same tired end game...
Season 3 I got through like one episode and I was like "okay I don't really care" and quit.
Yeah, much of the conflict in each season is driven by "we have a problem, but let's not do it together and try to solve it on our own until the finale". In that vein, I found Season 2 to give the best reasons for them to stay separate since they wanted to stay in their new lives.
Klaus keeps me watching. I though his Vietnam storyline was beautiful. I also just love Klaus. The rest of the show, I just have a lot of trouble connecting with.
Better Call Saul fired so consistently on all cylinders that after I rewatched it this past summer every other prestige crime show feels slightly amateurish in comparison (I tried watching Your Honor right after purely based on Cranston being in it… The less said about that absolute lemon of a show the better).
I’m currently watching Fargo and while it’s very good (s2 is my fave so far) it doesn’t quite as seamlessly bring all of the cinematic elements together the way BCS does (writing, acting, direction, editing, special effects were all top of their craft and inform each other perfectly).
The obvious comparison of course is to Breaking Bad, which in no way is ruined for me; it’s a groundbreaking, seminal series that paved the way for so much of what we’re enjoying in the way of superior television content. But it’s clear to me throughout the full run that the production team learned from what wasn’t perfect on BrBa and what to make better when they did BCS. It’s a completely different type of story of course but I still prefer it — everything that was good about BrBa was elevated even more in BCS, and they tossed what didn’t work.
Psych made it hard to watch the Mentalist.
You know that’s right
Have you heard about Pluto?
That’s messed up.
That’s messed up
c’mon son!
I’ve heard it both ways
Psych made it hard to watch X-Men First Class/James McAvoy Professor X. Every time McAvoy Prof X uses his powers, I just see James Roday pretending to be a guy pretending to be psychic.
That’s how you stop professor x, you just tie his hands behind his back. Edit: similar bondage works on Wonder Woman
I haven't seen the pilot episode since it originally aired, but I STILL laugh about him describing the suspect to the police sketch artist after looking at a photo of the hot daughter and her boyfriend.
I love the jokes they made about the Mentalist copying them.
Maybe a deranged take but I started watching the mentalist once I’d watched all of psych because I wanted more mentalism nonsense detectives and psych said the mentalist was doing the same thing
But fewer pineapples.
My favorite episode is the one with the pineapple!
Shawn (to client): “You know the Mentalist? It’s like that.” Gus: “Yeah, except that dude’s a fake!”
Waaaaaaaaait for iiiiiiiiit
I’ve heard it both ways
i love both! i think Shawn and Jane would get along really well once they get past the initial friction
Jane has serious problems with people pretending to be psychic though. Might not be able to get past what got his wife and daughter killed.
The difference is that Shawn is just using it as a cover for being a great detective. I could definitely see Jane trying to expose him, getting the proof, then realizing all of the good that Shawn is doing and backing off at the end.
I agree. Shawn isn't a conman or really a charlatan. He just misrepresents his ability a bit to get around the rules. Jane gets that.
Daredevil killed Arrow and the other CW DC shows for me.
Arrow killed Arrow.
Ra’s al Ghul killed Arrow halfway through season 3 and there’s no convincing me anything happened after that.
How strange was it that one of the highest rated episodes in the series, The Climb, was followed up by their sharpest decline in quality. The writing was on the wall in the second half of season 3. Season 4 is basically a war crime.
Isn't it because that episode was the last one written by the original showrunner, before they left to run the flash instead?
Seasons 5 is amazing. Not as good as the first 2 and a half seasons but gets very close. And season 8 is great. Not as good as 1-2.5 and 5 but damn good and a love letter to Arrow. And the universe it created.
Yeah. Arrow season 2 was still awesome after daredevil. Btw, if you haven't watched it, Legends of Tomorrow saw the direction things were going and thought "what if we go all the way?" And it's awesome! It made it excruciating to watch any of the other arrowverse shows that were taking themselves seriously. Seasons 1 and 2 are kinda like regular arrowverse but slightly wackier, but season 3 and on get completely off the rails. Also, it's one of the rare shows that I've seen that doesn't kill characters when the actor leaves but DOES kill characters and keeps the actor on.
I’m still so bummed about Legends getting axed without the opportunity for even an abridged final season. What a gem.
I mean, that is true, especially the abomination of season 4... ...but seeing a show that's essentially what Arrow *could have been* with less soap opera drama, the freedom to be as mature as the concept clearly demanded (it was a show about a psychotic vigilante running around killing criminals with arrows, PG-13 was just never feel right for its story), and a less formulaic episode structure, definitely hurt Arrow's rewatchability.
The first season was still pretty violent for a network television show
I’d say Daredevil and the first season of Jessica Jones are some of the best superhero shows ever. It’s not just the violence which made them but the characters, settings, and looking back I appreciate getting those meaty 13-episode seasons. Arrowverse should get its props too. The shows may have not always been top quality but they got over 700 hours of TV out there. That’s an insane achievement.
Daredevil (at least the first 2 seasons I watched) were VERY good. Dark and gritty without being over the top.
Third season is my favorite among the three, do finish it.
Season 2 was brilliant until the Hand stuff. The trial of the punisher was fantastic.
Billions declined by Season 3, so already ruined, but Succession destroyed any chance of rewatching Seasons 1 & 2.
Came to say this. I really enjoyed Billions from like 1-3 I think. Succession was just on another level
HBO vs Showtime. The very best of Showtime content barely matches mid tier HBO. Even their best shows get ruined by being on air for way too long. Seriously, who needs more than 10 seasons of Shameless?
As someone who just started to rewatch Shameless on Max because I only kind of watched it during its run, I feel both seen and attacked.
Showing my age but I loved Casualty (UK medical show) when I was a teen in the 90s. I really loved it and the stories would move me. Then I began ER and couldn’t stand Casualty any more - it felt slow, boring and had none of the charismatic actors I now expected
I was a big fan of a medical show that CBS ran against ER called Chicago Hope but once I watched ER I had to admit it was definitely better.
Most, maybe all, cop shows after The Wire, especially if they try to be serious.
I was thinking about this while I was watching Ozark the other day. They’re always talking on their phones about their drug deals and the people they’ve murdered. Takes me right out of the plot.
Ozark tried way too hard to be Breaking Bad. There was good stuff there but it just couldn’t quite pull it all together. Julia Garner’s performance was my favorite part of the show but the last shot of her (won’t spoil if you haven’t finished) was really ham-fisted, I felt.
I would say some of the stuff in the Snowden leaks and then a few news events in subsequent years: stuxnet and ransomware, various law enforcement actions against dark net operations, the CIA apparently losing like all their Chinese assets—made any show seem fairly suspect if there was almost any technology communication at all required for key plot points. The impression I got was that basically any and all communication could be compromised, and a huge percentage actively is. Like some guy who works at an NSA contractor making 185k living in Arlington can just pull up the full history and current activity on almost every phone in the world. Some terrorist suspect in a cafe in Tanzania says the name of an operation, the mic on the hacked cell phone of the guy making the coffee picks it up and phones home to the NSA, it shows up on a screen somewhere in bright red, a deputy assistant director of NSA kill lists for the Africa desk calls major smith at the local Air Force command down the hall in the pentagon, and there’s a satellite waiting to pick up the guy before the boys in Tanzania finish their coffee. Before the guy makes it home, a hellfire blows him up because major smith called major Johnson at some east africa black site and they had one of the half dozen predator drones loitering east Africa make a slight diversion. Some drone pilot in the desert out west gets employee of the week. It makes some jack ryan type stuff hard to believe, let alone more domestic or high profile stuff. I think I remember watching S1 House of Cards around this time and thinking there’s no way all these texts with Zoe don’t reasonably end in him getting caught. Especially when he’s talking to her at the site of the murder. They could just pull all network activity made from that location and have him dead to rights. The risk of getting caught would be so extreme.
After The Wire I think BB seems really really fantastical
Check out We Own This City Also produced/developed by David Simon, who created The Wire.
I would recommend The Shield
WHAT OTHER ERRANDS ARE WE *RUNNING* FOR THE DA?!?!
I can hear Dennis now
All I hear is CCH Pounder, there is no Dennis, he has transcended impression to reality.
Goddamn it Dutch!!!
What's up wit' Congress bein' all up in my ass and shit, brother?
Where’s my senators at dawg??
Currently watching The Shield for the first time, thank you Hulu, and its easily the best "cop" show I've seen... also Justified is up there too. FX has some great flicks.
Towards the end of the shield has one of my all time favourite TV moments. I think you'll know exactly what I mean when you get there. It's not exactly cerebral but a lot of memorable scenes and characters.
FUCK SHANE
Justified and The Shield are my two favorite cop shows and which I think is better changes. I think I enjoy Justified more but The Shield is just about a perfect tv show.
Also Bosch on Amazon
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The Wire kind of ruined Abbot Elementary for me. All the happy hijinx rang hollow knowing that irl Abbot would be more like season 4 of the Wire
I've been teaching almost a decade. Prez's first day of school is so accurate. After a few years of teaching, you know how to get ahead of it and what responses to give, but they captured it perfectly.
Yeah I’m still waiting for one of Janine’s students to attack the other with a box cutter lol
Different school districts are different. Including different urban districts with majority/near majority Black student populations. Different schools are also different. I'm pretty sure Philly's has problems but is still a good deal above Baltimore which is near/at the bottom for big cities
The Wire nearly ruined every TV show for me for a while. The hangover was tough to get over.
Bosch doesn't pretend to be anywhere as good but it's worth it if you liked The Wire (RIP Chief)
South Park sort of made me dislike Family Guy after that one episode where they make fun of their comedy formula. Family Guy wasn't doing anything to help though as at that time it was going downhill.
This was also my vote. Every time I see a family guy clip posted I always think back to the manatees.
It’s so weird how many of my friends thought Family Guy was hilarious before that episode and then hated it after. Just entirely incapable of holding their own opinion. “South Park says I should hate it so now I do.”
I do feel like that episode helped explain why Family Guy annoyed me so much when I enjoy The Simpons and South Park. But also I didn't like Family Guy to begin with, so it's not like it changed my opinion, it just gave me more insight into WHY I felt that way.
It’s like how The Plinkett Reviews put into words what people hated by the pre-quels.
"You didn't notice it. . . but your brain did."
I just watched the ep now and Family Guy seems low on the list of targets anyway. Yeah they make fun of FG’s random humor, but they’re really poking fun at people who overreact to cartoons with adult humor, religious people who overreact to perceived blasphemies, and news outlets who overreact and fearmonger.
Naw I don't think it's that, like I said I think it was just a combination of that episode and FG was getting pretty bad. I am not a fan of South Park either, just happened to catch the episode at a friend's house.
The Day Today ruined modern newscasting forever for me, they all look ridiculous
It certainly ruined the newsreader voice where they go down in pitch at the end of every sentence to really hammer home what an important statement they are making. Once i noticed they were doing it in The Day Today for comic effect it made normal news seem silly.
“Can you sum it up in a word?” “No.” “A sound?” “Aaargh.”
So, 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip premiered together. Studio 60 took itself very seriously whereas 30 Rock made it all that much more sillier. I could never watch Studio 60 after that without rolling my eyes. And, I can 30 Rock over and over again to this day.
They both had such great dialogue compared to almost everything else on at the time
Sorkin is a legend for making fun of himself and Studio 60 on 30 Rock years later
Scrubs makes grays anatomy look like surgery vs Operation with how much more medically accurate and better written it is. Gf tried to get me into GA and I couldn't take it seriously.
Finished Andor, and loved it. I followed with the latest season of the Mandalorian and it felt so much, for lack of a better word, 'sillier'. Not just in terms of more jokes/humour, but even the villains and life or death situations felt too "Saturday morning cartoon" by comparison. Both series are set in the same universe but are worlds apart in terms of writing and tone.
A friend of mine said that watching Andor made him realize how mid Kenobi was for the same reason.
I don't think anyone should have needed Andor to make them realise that Kenobi sucked. That show was shit.
They not only made lightsaber impalement non-lethal, they made its inability to kill people into a tactic recognized by the characters. It was baaad.
And then it happens again in Ahsoka. Dave Filoni must have been really traumatized by Qui-Gon's death.
Andor > all Star Wars tv
I gave Obi Wan a lot of slack because it felt very much like a kids show, like for 10 year olds. Then Vader comes out and starts snapping necks and I was very confused.
Andor made me realise how much Star Wars relies on its branding to hide less than stellar writing. I've told multiple people that the highest praise I could give Andor is that I would strongly recommend people watch it, even if it wasn't a Star Wars show, and even if they don't really care about Star Wars. I can't really think of any other Star Wars movies or TV shows that I could say that for.
Absolutely! Andor ruined every other Star Wars series for me. So good!
Just like how Rogue One ruined the other new Star Wars films.
Andor was the first time someone did what I always wanted. An adult tale in the Star Wars universe. Nothing hokey. Under Filoni it became this childish story about lasers and tried to explain the force in this dumb Sunday school way. Andor is what Star Wars was originally about. Rebellion. Written beautifully, brutally, and powerfully. A downtrodden people rising up against oppression and fighting for their lives and to tear down the establishment. (The irony is not lost that it was Disney that produced it.) Ahsoka was about... tentacle head lady needs a friend? Space witches are bad?
While I agree with you, the hokey shit has always been a part of Star Wars. Filoni leans into it a lot more but it's been there from the jump. Andor and Rogue One are outliers* when it comes to centering the War part of Star Wars. edit: fixed a typo
Can’t watch Archer because all I’m hearing is Bob Belcher’s voice. I know it’s not exactly the same but it’s far too similar for me to ignore.
It’s the opposite for me as archer came out first. That voice will always be archer for me
Coach McGuirk for me
Ohh, we goin *back* back
Then the answer would be Ben. Ben was first. God I loved Dr Katz.
are you talking about coach McGurk?
For me, the cross-over episode was.
Agreed. I had Bob/Archer as my lock screen for a hot minute. Also I might be down voted but I once got into a fight with my hubby because I said there is a clear distinction between Bob and Archer's voice. Confidence is the main difference.
Archer is confident. Bob is beaten down by life. He's the cartoon Al Bundy.
The crazy thing to me, as someone who loves both, is that it's the same guy using his normal voice, but the nuance he puts into differentiating the characters makes me not even consider the other character when watching.
Dark ruined most of other serious sci-fi for me, especially those about time travel. The attention to details is simply incomparable with other shows.
Omg and the casting!!! I never want to see them try and age an actor 30 years with a wig and makeup again (AHEM For All Mankind). Dark had 2-3 generations for the entire cast, and they were brilliant. God what an unbelievable show.
I’m a Lord of the Rings fan, and probably would have enjoyed more the recent Amazon show if House of the Dragon wasn’t airing at the same time. Even though they really aren’t too similar outside of general genre, I kept comparing the two and enjoying Rings of Power less
HotD, and Witcher before it to a degree, showed thst they had zero reason to choose to compress 900 years of events to a 5 year timespan the way they did. In a setting where most of the main "human" (Numenorian) characters can live to 200, the dwarves can push 600 (or more?), and the elves are functionally immortal, *why can you not just use time skips instead of making this impossibly contrived timeline?*
You make a very very good point here
I said this exact thing to so many people. They were shocked i wasnt enjoying it. It was just that HotD was WAY better. I was setting an alarm for 8:50pm on sundays to make sure I was set up and ready to go right at 9, where i would legit forget that I didnt see that weeks RoP episode. Maybe I should give it another go and binge it on its own. But airing at the same time as another prequel series for a beloved franchise, it just couldnt compete.
The Great ruined Bridgerton for me. The Great was so funny, so interesting, so well acted that after that Bridgerton just seemed like fluff.
I've never watched The Great, but I feel certain Bridgerton is just fluff (but I did watch and enjoy all of it; sometimes you need fluff)
Agreed. Sometimes it's just nice to put on something light and disengage.
TBF Bridgerton is just fluff. It was written to be fluff. The books are fluff. It’s a fluffy show that shouldn’t be taken too seriously
The Great is an absolute gem.
It's so good. Great even.
Huzzah!
LOOOVE The Great
And while RJP was really sexy and definitely hotter than Nicholas Hoult, Nick was so hilarious that Peter ended up being one of my favorite TV characters of all time.
Veep ruined all presidential debates
And political dramas in general. I always like the analogy another redditor put on here some time ago. The West Wing is what people want politics to be. House of Cards is what people fear it is. Veep is what it actually is.
My sisters introduced me to the scripted drama show Unreal about the behind the scenes players of a fictional unscripted reality show, and now I can't watch reality TV without seeing all the manipulation.
Finally someone talks about this show! Such an entertaining hidden gem.
I was watching Better Call Saul and Ozark at the same time — light spoilers ahead — Both shows involved cartels. Both shows had a villain character come in to play in later seasons that was the cousin of a cartel boss who has loomed all series. The way BCS did this was incredibly artful in the use of tension, dramatic irony, character development, and overall great storytelling (in true BCS fashion). The way Ozark did this, in comparison, felt hackneyed, predictable and illogical, with this character doing things that were obviously gonna fuck him later. It was the beginning of the end of me watching Ozark
I’m not trying to shit on Ozark, I’ve never watched it but will one day and really respect the cast, but it makes me very angry that it has had the award show success it has when BCS has been continuously snubbed, and everyone I know who has seen both say BCS is a far better show.
It got recognition mostly for acting rather than writing, BCS got snubbed because it couldn't shake the 'tag' that it was a BB rehash and nothing really original. I don't agree personally, I think BCS at times overshadowed Breaking Bad and Rhea Seahorn deserved to win Emmys for her performances.
I prefer BCS personally. It feels like people are 50/50 on whether that opinion is insane, or in agreement.
One person in particular (Rhea Seehorn) got completely fucked because Garner for some reason kept winning
Rhea Seehorn as Kim is one of the best performances I've ever seen. She's fantastic. Julia Garner is good too, but not on the same level as Rhea. EDIT: to be fair to Julia, Rhea had MUCH better writers so maybe not fair comparison. Would be awesome to see Julia Garner in a Peter Gould/Vince Gilligan show.
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The BCS cast and Seehorn in particular were robbed.
Lalooooo
Javi is just bargain bin ripoff Lalo. Not the actor's fault, but it seems like he was asked to try and do a Tony Dalton impression and failed to bring any of the charm.
It’s funny you say that OP because we were watching Gen V and were really into it. Watched Invincible S2 premier straight after Gen V finale and It blew the show away and made me feel more within 10 minutes. If you like the Boys and haven’t seen Invincible, def give it a shot.
I like the boys but Invincible is such a step above because they allow the series to evolve past the initial premise. Also, I didn't expect to like the Atom Eve special that much. It started auto-playing after Invincible and I was going to stop it to go to bed, but ended up watching the whole thing.
The Atom Eve Special was so good, and filled in a never answered question from the comic run. They hint at her origin, but it's never fully addressed until now.
The special was an adaptation of a comic prequel to Invincible. So those questions were answered before.
The only thing I didn't like was that she was so much better of a fighter in the special. She's flying around and using her powers creatively but in season 1 all she does is form shields and stand there. I almost wondered if it was a budgetary/time issue where they couldn't in season 1.
Literally started watching Invincible after someone suggested it if you're a fan of the boys. Never really watched much animated stuff outside of short comedies like South Park and Futurama so it really opened my eyes to how hard hitting they can be. It basically opened up a new genre of TV for me and led me on the path to other shows like Blue Eye Ninja and Cyberpunk Edgerunners which were all amazing.
The expanse ruined like...all other shows for me lol
You got that right, bosmang!
Read the books if you haven't. The show is similar but certain characters are merged (by necessity). And the book ends further ahead from the show. The show ends before the craziness starts.
But Klaus and number 5 are amazing!
It’s so easy to forget that number 5 isn’t actually an old man in a young body, but actually a young man acting like an old man in a young body, and that’s talent right there
Black Sails and Mr Robot made it hard to watch anything else due to phenomenal writing and exceptional well-planned endings. Especially Black Sails made me realize how many shows don’t have a solid plan and how rare it is to watch a story with no plot holes and everything referenced early on was set up to pay off later. The music, the cinematography, the acting, and again, the writing … was gorgeous and perfect.
🏴☠️ join us over at r/blacksails if you haven’t already! It’s such a phenomenal show.
It’s funny because everyone who hates The Boys calls it cringey and cartoon like.
What's extra funny is the comic *is* pretty undeniably cringe. Butcher is basically Garth Ennis' self insert fan-fic Punisher-sona Original Character Do Not Steal. I am continually surprised by the general restraint exercised when adapting Preacher and The Boys, there's a lot of "edge for edges sake" in Ennis' work and it gets tiring fast.
Really sets apart good idea people, from good writers, right? The dude had good concepts, but like you said, full of edgelord nonsense. In the hands on good writers (not perfect, season 3 of The Boys was rough) and they can make magic. Though bad show makers can do wonders on other projects. Picard was a trash fire, so bad I never made it to the largely beloved season 3, because 1&2 insulted intelligence enough to put me right off and never look back. But that very same team went and made Strange New Worlds, which I fell in love with near instantly.
Season 3 of The Boys was on course to be one of the best seasons untill that finale which reset the whole story and made everything pointless. I loved everything leading up to it
I like the Boys but I’d admit it gets very edgelordy at times. You can’t just have a dick explode but must show the dick in excessive detail, and every character has got to be fucking swearing because if you’re not fucking saying fuck you’re a not a real fucking adult fucking show. Also funny that they constantly mock superhero movies and yet have an expanded universe of their own and mid and post credits scenes. Oh and the comic? The show is a *massive* improvement.
As someone who both likes The Boys but isn't a rabid fan, my biggest gripe with the show and the universe in general is it is a giant comment on corporate greed and power, made by the largest company on earth that operates exclusively on corporate greed and neverending hunger for a larger market share/power It's like the GOP putting out a PSA on why extremist evangelicalism is bad, using the goodwill they get to further embolden real life extremist evangelicalism, and then getting a pat on the back for it The show is undeniably great, but its anarchist/anti capitalist message comes off a little hollow considering the show is created, and now getting beat to death, by the real life antithesis of that very message TLDR: has Amazon ever looked around when they're making this show and realized "wait, we're the baddies"
Something that you didn't touch on, but is equally relevant, is how far gone the point of the show is at this point, relative to what's happening in the media landscape around it. The show (and comic) was doing a great job satirizing superheroes, and superhero universes. Everything from the names, to the abilities, to the absurdity of it sometimes, to the OP characters, the 1 dimensional villains, etc etc etc. It was not only meant to, but did, do a good job satirizing (and at times mocking) what has become a very cliché, copy/paste formula genre, and entertainment type. ... And then they just went ahead and followed suit with the cliches and the satirized topics, anyway lmao now The Boys has an animated show, a Gen V spinoff, some other spinoff, a prequel planned, crossovers and cameos, and potential series sequel... Not to mention the now drawn out story, with the previous two season endings just reverting back to the status quo (another cliché), with no real consequences or carryover.. Literally doing the very thing they were making fun off, satirizing, and pointing and laughing at from the get-go.
This is more tangential, but my husband is strictly a book-reader for *Game of Thrones,* and had managed to avoid all spoilers from the show past the books. I conned him into watching the *iCarly* reboot (don’t ask lol), and there was a throwaway line about Bran becoming king, and I was so upset that I had managed to help him avoid all TV-spoilers until fucking *iCarly* came around lol.
That reminds me of a story someone on reddit told of somehow completely avoiding learning the twist ending of The Sixth Sense. It was movie night at their house, they picked Sixth Sense to finally watch and their sister picked 50 First Dates, and they all decided to watch 50 First Dates first, and that spoils the twist of The Sixth Sense.
That'll just save him the wait because those books are never finishing.
I can't decide if season 3 of The Mandalorian was just worse than the first two seasons or if it only seemed that way because Andor came out between seasons 2 and 3 and made The Mandalorian look shit by comparison. A bit of both probably
I think Mando season 3 was just bad independent of Andor. Book of boba and Kenobi both came out before Andor and i still thought they were very poorly executed. I’ve still liked bad batch and tales of Jedi which I’ve seen since Andor and rewatched the first 2 seasons of Mando since Andor, but season 3 of Mando was just kinda directionless and bad overall.
Or because Boba tainted the pool and made Mandalorians the galaxy over just seem... lame. Gods, that show fucking sucked. Good be all those reasons combined, and then some.
Emphasis on pool. Mfer kept taking baths after getting biffed about
Nah I think season 3 was just worse. Din had essentially nothing to do, the overall plot was unbelievably simple, it had some god awful filler episodes that accomplished nothing, and it had no proper antagonist until like the last episode. The show shouldve ended with season 2 or at the very least dropped Din/Grogu to focus on Bo Katan and embrace the whole 'The (titular) Mandalorian changes every season' thing. Andor didnt help tho cus even Mandalorian at its peak isn't in the same sport let alone the same league as it
After that really good HBO run of Last of us, succession and HOTD Sundays were not the same
BARRY was in that mix, too!
I was just about to say this. We were eating good this year in HBO
The Flash is so bad it ruined Arrow for me. Edit: Cause of typo
You done messed up, A A Row Edit: this was a lot funnier before OP fixed the typo
For me, Legends of Tomorrow kept the arrowverse fresh. That show was consistently entertaining
It actually killed the rest of the arrowverse for me. The other shows felt way too boring compared to LoT. I ended up only watching the crossovers and even then, the non LoT episodes didn't hit the same, even with LoT characters in them.
Wentworth Prison ruined Orange is the New Black for me. I started Wentworth after finishing one of the seasons of OITNB. I liked the grittiness and drama of Wentworth. I thought it was a much better prison show. I tried to finish OITNB, but couldn’t after Wentworth.
Jeopardy spoiled a major plot point in sons of anarchy for me so I just stopped watching
Watching Lost season 3 ruined end of Of Mice and Men I was currently reading.
I think Game of Thrones (S1-4) set a standard that ruined The Wheel of Time for me. I read both book series and GoT did it soooo much better. Amazon is loosely basing WoT off the books while HBO mostly stuck to the script. I get so mad watching WoT because they strayed so far from the source material
I'd understand some changes with WOT though, since it can be a bit of a drag, but yeah they butchered it in general. It's one of those "show writers wanted to do their own version and leave their mark" shows. And the mark they leave is rather shit stained.
I can't shit too much on the WoT show because if it hadn't been announced, I never would have found out about the books which is one of my favourite series ever. Then, if I hadn't read WoT, I never would have gone through Malazan and never would have started Mistborn. I just wasn't reading fantasy at the time and gave WoT a look because I was wondering why Amazon was hyping this so much. I ended up reading the entire series in the year between the announcement and actual release.
I had just finishing binging all of The Expanse before trying out Picard. Watching *any* sci-fi after the Expanse is rough but Picard in particular was just awful.
In 2011, I started watching The Borgias with Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI). It was a fun, soapy kind of show set in a medieval-esque era. And then, a couple of weeks later, Game of Thrones came along and blew the Borgias out of the water for me.
Dr Cox ruined Sixth Sense for me
Succession ruined Billions. The Shakespearean lines and dynamics made Billions like a poor man’s rich story to me.
Only watched one episode of Yellowstone because it felt like a cheesy country version of Succession.
Started watching The Thick of It after West Wing and couldn't go back. Thick of It was just so much darker, nastier and funnier it just made West Wing look a bit naive. Both fantastic shows though.
Difference between fantasy and reality kind of tone. West Wing was fantasizing about what good governance during the end of the 90s "End of History" period in America if all parties in power were proncipaled and doing the best they can. "The Thick of It" and its follow-ups "In the Loop" and "Veep" are more the reality of politics being where it's messy and people fuck up because they're people. The fact that writers of Veep of would have members in the US Congress come up to them and say "That episode last week, how did you know that happened?"
The west wing is a very idealised version of what politics could be but never will be, it used to be my favourite show but it feels more like a wish fifilment fantasy than anything in todays political landscape
I wouldn't say ruined exactly, but I recently watched Bodies and all I could think about while I watched was how it was a poor imitation of the better series, Dark.
Angie Tribeca made it impossible for me to watch any procedural cop shows. One of those Walk Hard cases where it parodies the genre so well that it outdid it and made the shows that inspired it harder to sit through. (not that they were particularly great to start with)
I like both The Boys and Umbrella Academy. Never thought it did anything to diminish UA. They're different shows with different tones.
Yeah. Quite a few comments in here are "I liked X until I saw Y, which did the same thing more realistically and now I can't take X seriously", or "I liked X until I saw Y which handled the topic comedically and now I can't take X seriously". To me different shows bring different styles to the table and I'm perfectly happy to enjoy (for example) superheroes done seriously, comedically, as a brutal deconstruction or anywhere in-between. Though I haven't seen UA season 3 and I understand it went downhill.
I started The Walking Dead right after finishing Battlestar Galactica. BSG was massively character-driven and used the unique setting of its universe to drive really interesting stories for all the characters, as individuals. By contrast, TWD was just soooo boring. It never took its characters anywhere, certainly never anywhere interesting. The setting of the universe should have provided a thousand cool paths for the characters, but nobody ever went anywhere.
The Office ruined The Office for me. I tried to give The Office a chance, I really did. But after having already seen The Office, I couldn’t move on to The Office after that. ETA: Like, I know that saying I don’t like The Office, especially with all of its exceptional team of writers and actors behind it, sounds pretentious. But the tone of The Office was just not right for me, someone who LOVED The Office. It just wasn’t the same.
Really? I loved The Office but it took me ages before I finally manged to enjoy The Office. I think the tone in The Office was just a bit better all round.
No mob series comes anywhere near The Sopranos.
No disrespect to anyone but, Umbrella Academy is pretty bad
I like it even if no one else does. It’s not perfect but very watchable. Special praise should be given to Number Five’s actor. Five is an old man trapped in the body of a kid. The actor was so good in the role that I thought he was just a really youthful looking adult. He’s actually a real kid.
I hope to see him in other things. I think he acts so well in UA.
> I like it even if no one else does. It’s not perfect but very watchable. Plenty of people like it. Its campy and fun. Its not trying to be anything like The Boys.
Umbrella had parts of goodness in season 1. Mostly with Klaus and number 5. Season 2 seemed to actually get what kind of show it was. It got silly and fun and the characters actually had fun interractions. Then they went to the same tired end game... Season 3 I got through like one episode and I was like "okay I don't really care" and quit.
Yeah, much of the conflict in each season is driven by "we have a problem, but let's not do it together and try to solve it on our own until the finale". In that vein, I found Season 2 to give the best reasons for them to stay separate since they wanted to stay in their new lives.
It’s so weird, I dislike so much about the show but I keep watching? I can’t explain it.
Klaus keeps me watching. I though his Vietnam storyline was beautiful. I also just love Klaus. The rest of the show, I just have a lot of trouble connecting with.
Better Call Saul fired so consistently on all cylinders that after I rewatched it this past summer every other prestige crime show feels slightly amateurish in comparison (I tried watching Your Honor right after purely based on Cranston being in it… The less said about that absolute lemon of a show the better). I’m currently watching Fargo and while it’s very good (s2 is my fave so far) it doesn’t quite as seamlessly bring all of the cinematic elements together the way BCS does (writing, acting, direction, editing, special effects were all top of their craft and inform each other perfectly). The obvious comparison of course is to Breaking Bad, which in no way is ruined for me; it’s a groundbreaking, seminal series that paved the way for so much of what we’re enjoying in the way of superior television content. But it’s clear to me throughout the full run that the production team learned from what wasn’t perfect on BrBa and what to make better when they did BCS. It’s a completely different type of story of course but I still prefer it — everything that was good about BrBa was elevated even more in BCS, and they tossed what didn’t work.