Dislike of/disinterest in modern canonical greats

Cafe Society
1

So something that comes up a fair bit in Cafe Society (ie, much of this thread) is people either saying that they haven’t watched, or dislike, some of the modern canonical classics of pop culture… Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, etc. (Swap in “listened to” for “watched” for bands (The Beatles), “read” for books (Harry Potter), etc.)

Given that the thread is entitled “Cafe Society Confessions”, this implies that those make the proclamation are in some way expecting to be judged/criticized. Which, of course does happen, in at least some contexts.

So I thought I’d start a thread to discuss this phenomenon.

Disclaimer: I’m in no way attempting to junior-mod what people can or can not post in SDMB threads, nor am I trying to tell people what opinions or expressions thereof are in some way acceptable. These are just my personal reactions.
So… what types of comments are there, and what reaction do I have to them?

(1) “I watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad, I just couldn’t get into it”. This is, as far as I’m concerned, absolutely 100% reasonable. I love, love, LOVE Breaking Bad and have highly recommended it to many people, but hey, tastes differ. The only two responses I might have would be to (a) inquire as to precisely what you didn’t like, to satisfy my own curiosity, or (b) ask if you remember exactly how many episodes you had watched, as there are some shows which have a key early moment where it’s very clear that if you watch as far as X and you still didn’t like it, then it’s just not for you

(2) “I’ve never seen Breaking Bad”. Again, whatever. There are plenty of things I haven’t seen/read/watched. There are two contexts in which I find this objectionable: (a) If someone goes all the way into a thread about Breaking Bad to point out they’ve never watched Breaking Bad. I mean, why? Wtf? Seriously, why waste your and all of our times? (b) If someone phrases it in a way that clearly implies they think they’re some kind of super-special unique nonconformist rebel just because they haven’t watched Breaking Bad. OK, you haven’t watched it. Neither have hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world and a fair portion of the SDMB.

(3) “…one of those stupid braindead shows like Real Housewives or Breaking Bad”. This is a fairly rare one, but people will occasionally take something that is highly respected, both critically and on the SDMB, and just casually mention how terrible it is, as if that’s just a known, agreed-upon fact. Hey, if you think Breaking Bad is stupid, you’re free to have that opinion. But you are in the minority, on the SDMB (at least among people who have opinions about Breaking Bad), among TV reviewers as a whole, and among the wider TV-viewing community. To pretend otherwise is the height of arrogance. If you want to argue that BB is stupid, go ahead and so argue. I won’t deny you your right to your opinion… but if you don’t acknowledge that your opinion is quite unusual it makes you seem either deliberately contrarian or incredibly clueless.

(4) “(I think) Breaking Bad is overrated”. Again, I’m mostly OK with this… although it suffers from some vagueness. Do you mean “Breaking Bad is a genuinely high quality show, but it doesn’t crack my top 25 of all time, whereas consensus puts it in the top 5”? Or do you mean “Breaking Bad is the suxxor”?

(5) “Game of Thrones is nothing but tits and dragons” or “Pixar movies are just stories for kids stuffed with celebrity voices”. No, that’s not true. You’re just making yourself look stupid. If you don’t like something, fine, tastes are subjective, but if you make sweeping statements about a work which are either objectively untrue or at least close to it, then it’s entirely reasonable for people to argue with you in a way that it wouldn’t be if you just said you didn’t like it. So if you say something like that and someone calls you on it, don’t fall back on “hey, it’s just my opinion, man”.

(6) “I never watch modern TV shows”. This one is interesting. On the one hand, hey, certainly there’s no reason any of us should tell you what you should do with your time. On the other hand, there’s an incredibly diverse art form experiencing an unprecedented renaissance right now. There are extremely-high-quality TV shows being made right now to appeal to nearly any taste. Now, if you don’t watch them just because your lifestyle or budget doesn’t allow it, or because your life is so jam packed full of stuff that there’s just never any opportunity to watch modern TV shows, hey, more power to you. But if you don’t watch modern TV shows just because you’re ornery and somehow got it into your head that TV peaked with I Love Lucy and all that’s on these days is 600 channels of Kardashians, well, then you’re just doing yourself a disservice. (This one is most noticeable when applied to TV because of the current boom of high quality TV, but also applies to books, movies, music, etc.)

(6a) A looser version of (6) is people who say they have no interest in X, where X is such a wide topic that it seems nearly impossible that a single lack of interest could cover it. For instance, “comic book/superhero movies or tv shows”. Presumably you’re mainly talking about things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But even within Marvel you have outliers like Jessica Jones or Legion which have very little in common with Iron Man. And there are so many movies and tv shows that are in some way based on a comic book (or graphic novel) these days, or that have some super-powered character, that it seems a bit odd to just immediately assume none will interest you. Similarly, “I don’t like Adam Sandler movies”. Sure, it’s very reasonable to dislik Grown Ups 2 and Jack and Jill and lump them into the same category. But even Adam Sandler has made some movies outside his comfort zone… such as Funny People or Punch Drunk Love. So if someone says “what kinds of movies don’t you like” and you say “anything with Adam Sandler”, I hope for your sake that you’re at least mentally adding an asterisk…

OK, enough wall of text. Thoughts? Comments?

2

I was one of the ones who noted not liking shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, and Mad Men in the previous thread.

And, my reasoning for that, as I described in that thread, is pretty much your example #1. I tried all of them, and didn’t enjoy them. I don’t generally enjoy shows (or movies, or books) in which the main / primary characters are all unlikable, or regularly do horrible things. And, in the case of Game of Thrones, in which I’ve also tried to read the books, it seemed like every time I did find a character that I liked, that character would die horribly.

In addition, I’ve never been a fan of fiction (or non-fiction) about organized crime, which is another specific reason for my dislike of The Sopranos.

3

To add a data point.

I started watching Breaking Bad after the whole show had finished. I started watching knowing it was considered a great show plus the show eventually came to a planned finish plus (important this for a free to air UK channel) my broadcaster was promising to show all the episodes.

With all that in mind I thought the first episode was pretty dire. Even the first few episodes had me struggling. Even the first season I thought it made missteps along the way. But being broadcast an episode a day, five days a week, I stuck with it and grew to enjoy and appreciate it. By the end I did think it was good. But had I been watching it once a week when it went out originally I strongly suspect I would have bailed early and then I would have been unlikely to return.

TCMF-2L

4

I know there are some darn fine offerings out there. I prefer to spend my time reading, but I’ll watch a VERY limited few shows.

I started following Gotham…but it got too bloody for me. Constantine was great! Father Brown Mysteries are really jolly, and, for totally light and fun, there’s Murder in Paradise.

There have got to be lots and lots of other treasures. But… By and large, I just don’t like TV.

Curl me up with a good book, Telemann in the background, a cuppa, and life is good.

5

I find in my dotage that I have very little tolerance of or interest any more in TV dramas. The reason is that they are so damned predictable and/or repetitive. No matter how good the acting (and some of it is very good indeed) if the plot doesn’t hold my attention I am going to get bored quickly.

The most recent example for me is How To Get Away With Murder. When I signed up for Netflix I decided to try it out. I watched the first episode, and between the obvious plot directions and the teasers, I groaned and thought that I knew pretty much where it was going. Not in the details, but in the general arc. The main suspense points were: who was going to be killed; and who was the killer going to be. Added possible interest if the homicide was accidental or justified, or if it was really murder. I found I didn’t care about any of those things. Maybe it was because so many of the main characters seemed a little too stock.

Other series like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos I simply wasn’t interested in watching for the same reason I never watched The Godfather - I am not interested in watching shows that glorify bad people, even a little bit. I don’t care what other people watch, but those kinds of shows turn me off.

Then there is scheduling. If the great dramas are on at 10 pm and there is nothing I want to watch between 7 and 10 (which happens all too often), I am unlikely to sit around waiting for the good stuff.

I find I do ok with sitcoms if they are well-written, because they are much less about the story arc than they are about the (to be hoped for) witty banter.

6

I watched the first episode of Breaking Bad, but never got back to it. I didn’t think it was bad, but wasn’t interested in more (Same with Sons of Anarchy). They may be fine shows, but I’m not willing to commit to them.

I don’t have HBO, So Game of Thrones is out.

I watched one episode of Mad Men and that was enough. The sloppy writing and blatant anachronism turned me right off. The resolution of the episode was a massive be cheat, akin to having Robert E. Lee win at Gettysburg by calling in air support. I tried it a couple of other times, but it always threw in something that was completely wrong for the time.

7

Another thought: I don’t want to follow a show where you have to see every episode. I like shows with stand-alone eps. Father Brown, Murder in Paradise, Miss Fisher, that Canadian chap (one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen!) Murdoch Mysteries!

I’m not at all interested in mega-serials like GoT or the like, because I just don’t want to dedicate myself to the plot. Give me something bite-sized, not a seven-course meal.

(However, I readily recognize that there are people who LOVE that kind of thing! I know several people of that type, who absolutely DOTE on deep, complex, intricate, detailed story arcs. One good friend is also very fond of daytime soap operas, for the same reason.)

8

Not to be too confrontational, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen How To Get Away With Murder ranked anywhere near the top echelon of recent TV. If you’re looking for a drama with (a) a difficult-to-predict plot, and (b) no glorifying bad people, you might enjoy, maybe, Broadchurch? It also kind of depends on precisely how define “glorify”. There are a fair number of shows like Fargo, where we spend a fair bit of time with the bad guys, and learn what makes them tick, but in which they’re still clearly bad, and we presumably still want the good guys to win.

Do you still have Netflix?

9

That definitely makes things tougher for you… fairly few of the “best” recent shows have primarily standalone episodes.

There are some shows which are basically miniseries… so instead of following a plot for all 62 episodes of Breaking Bad, you just need to follow it for 8 or 10 episodes… for instance, the afore-mentioned Fargo, or Band of Brothers.

Black Mirror, which is more or less a modern version of The Twilight Zone, is all standalone mini-movies.

Other shows such as Sherlock or Firefly are largely standalone, but with small amounts of connective plot-line which show up more in some episodes than others.

10

I watched a couple of episodes of Breaking Bad and didn’t like it. It’s the Wire for suburbanites

I watch Game of Thrones, but can we stop pretending it’s high art? It pretty much is tits and dragons, but with good(ish) acting and high production values. One Irish actress quit rather than do what she said was essentially soft core porn. She later appeared on the show and admitted that the industry punished her for her comments. http://hbowatch.com/model-quits-game-of-thrones-over-sex-scene/

There are a lot of great TV shows being made and there are a lot of second tier shows that are good, but not great which is where I think Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones fall. There’s also sex, baseball and fly fishing so if someone doesn’t get around to your favorite show…oh, well.

11

There are a lot of popular shows I don’t like or have chosen not to watch. Mostly it’s due to subject matter, or a sense of being outside of the target demographic, but it’s also occasionally drama fatigue, where it just gets depressing watching all these horrible people go through miserable situations with seemingly no happiness at the end of the ride. Walking Dead is a prime example of that one.

I used to go into threads and say I don’t like them, in the hope that others would also say that and we could discuss both sides of a show’s popularity. But that doesn’t go down too well, it’s generally considered threadshitting, which is fair enough really even if I occasionally accompany it with constructive criticism, and I try not to do that anymore.

As I get older, my tastes are changing a little bit, not always keeping up with the trends, but I recognise that life’s too short to waste my time on entertainment that isn’t working for me, and I am a lot more brutal with abandoning a show early if it feels like it’s not going to be my thing. I have a thousand other shows to catch up on to waste my time on that will just irritate me. I am >< this close to abandoning the last couple of CW DC superhero shows, as they’re starting to get frustratingly cheesy and cluttered.

12

I try to live by “It’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a dick about it.”

If some work of entertainment comes up in discussion, and I don’t like it, I may say as much, but I don’t seek out discussions of that particular work to do so. When I comment on disliking something, I make an effort to give my reasons–and to avoid insulting the people who do like it. After all, there are plenty of things I like that a lot of other people don’t.

Of course, if someone insults me for something I like or dislike, the gloves come off, but that is over being a dick about it, not about what they like or dislike. :smiley:

13

One of the biggest reasons I don’t bother getting into these long running box set shows can be summed up in one word. “Lost”.

Fool me once…

14

The bolded part would be me. I don’t watch (modern) TV shows, and very few movies because I have other, much more important (to me) priorities. My life is indeed jam packed full of music and books and, since I have a family and a job, I have to make choices. I have heard of this “golden age of TV shows” and I’m sure that people who appreciate this art form are completely sincere. It’s just not for me. Or rather, there are lots of other things that I’d rather spend my relatively limited free time on.

Your example made me chuckle a bit because that’s an ultra niche genre in my view. Which leads to my next point.

I suppose that you’re a fan of comic book/superhero movies. If that’s a case, you may be a bit to close to the subject to judge its general appeal objectively. A couple of months ago, I started a thread on piano concertos. The list included only works that are considered standard repertoire and have been recorded dozens of times over decades by the greatest pianists of the 20th century. I thought that folks here would be familiar with all, or at least most, of them. How naïve. To my astonishment, several dopers confessed that they knew none of the works in the list. Some only had a vague idea of a couple of them. Now, the reason for this was simple: I didn’t realize that these works are basic knowledge to me, and the people who, not only enjoy, but actually spend hours each week listening to classical music. So, in my opinion, there’s no way you could possibly mix up a Mozart concerto with one by Bartók. But for some people, it’s just snotty piano music with bleeping instruments in the background and for most, something they just aren’t interested in enough to pay attention.

15

As a datapoint, I will not watch certain shows based on message and sexual content, and won’t try a show because of a weird premise (Gotham without Batman). If Gotham is actually good, I do not feel a loss because I’ve already watched hundreds of other shows in my life.

I do not have to see 50 Shades movies to have a bad feeling about them.

I also do not have all the time in the world to watch multiple seasons from the so-called Golden Age of TV.

16

I rarely watch TV. I’ve a nice library of films. I haven’t seen much if any of Mad Men or Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy or Lost or any of a dozen other series. Game of Thrones is a special case: I know that I want to watch it, but I won’t watch it until it’s finished, and then I’ll buy the boxed set and binge-watch it.

17

Posters in this thread have been really good about resisting the urge to debate the relative values of various TV shows. I’d like to keep things that way but I do have to ask: you say there are great shows being made but that Breaking Bad is not great and is second tier. What then are the current or relatively current shows that are an entire tier better than Breaking Bad? What populates that First Tier?

18

Damn it, I came here to trash* Dancing With the Stars.*

19

I’d say Mad Men, The Wire (going back), Fargo and the Americans are all better. I’d also include Archer and Louie as better, but they’re half hour comedies.

20

My Catch-22 is that I’m generally not willing to watch a brand new show (or simply unaware of it). But the time it gets to be a phenomenon with a big following, we’re usually into Season Two and now I don’t feel like I have 13+ hours to spend catching up. Worse is that we only have one ‘real’ TV and my wife is usually occupying that so if it’s not a show she’s likely to be interested in, I’m even less likely to try it. So I never get around it and the backlog grows and grows until now it’s 60+ hours I’d have to commit and I just resign myself to never doing it.

Only recent show to break this mold was Mad Men which released its Season One set when I had a rare slow period and my wife was immediately hooked on it so we made it through S1 and started watching it on Sundays as it aired. Plus the weekly threads here made it enjoyable to watch and discuss the following day.