I haven’t seen The Hobbit movies.
The Hobbit movies are the mediocrity of which we speak; the difference b/w them and, IMHO, the more well-crafted films of the LOTR trilogy.
And she sat there and pretended to enjoy it. That was real acting.
Death in Paradise is the very definition of mediocre for me. Exotic location with gorgeous scenery, and yet utterly banal mysteries usually solved out of nowhere by a police officer who seems like a complete buffoon but turns out to have god-like deductive powers in lieu of any kind of clever plotting or twist. At least it was when I gave up watching it about 3 years in.
Queens of Mystery has an interesting premise:the lead detective has three mystery writing aunts who butt in to her investigation. The style is much like Pushing Daisies with an omniscient narrator telling the story. There’s also the central mystery about what happened to the detective’s mother, who vanished when she was a baby, and her aunts seem to be covering something up. But it never really gels, and they replaced the original actress playing the detective and you could barely notice.
My theory about Clue is that it’s a much more satisfying experience the way most people see it nowadays: with all three endings back-to-back. If it has a reputation for being mediocre, that comes from the people who saw it in its original theatrical release, with only one of the endings.
And The Cheap Detective, by the same director and screenwriter.
I had watched the first season of Queens of Mystery and my primary reason for sticking with it was to find out what had happened with the mother. After what happened in the final episode of that first season I refused to watch the second season.
So you stopped watching twenty years ago? The show has been on for a long time.
More like 10-ish years ago, if the poster stopped watching after three seasons; the series only started in 2011.
It’s been on for a long while (14 seasons now, though I’m not sure that the latest season is available in the U.S. yet), and I’ve watched, if not every single episode, then the vast majority of them, multiple times.
They’re now on their fifth Detective Inspector (lead character); all of them have had different personalities and quirks, and the show feels a little bit different (but only a little bit) during each of their tenures, due to this.
That said, the show is also extremely formulaic: it’s nearly always a locked-room mystery, and the DI nearly always makes some big, unexpected leap of logic to solve the crime late in the episode. All five of the DI characters are not from the island, and the “fish out of water” element of their characters, compared to the island natives, is always there. There are some side plots and minor character development over the course of episodes, but those are minor elements, compared to the main murder-mystery plot. The cast has almost entirely turned over, several times, over the course of the series, but none of those changes have materially changed the show.
It’s a popular show, it’s enjoyable, the scenery is beautiful, but when you sit down to an episode, you pretty much know exactly what you’re going to get. It doesn’t quite fit the definition of “cozy mystery” (most “cozies” feature amateur detectives) but it checks a lot of the cozy boxes. It’s comfort-food TV for people who enjoy that genre and the formula, which pretty much fits the OP of “average,” IMO.
I can’t believe no one has yet mentioned the Lucille Ball TV shows from the 1960s, the ones with Gale Gordon and Vivian Vance (and others). Can Lucy get caught in the bank safe or bathtub or the house roof until she wails and gets saved by a fireman? Of course she can, and she will, but it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t mean to include the wonderful I Love Lucy, of course.
That’s odd. I thought ‘The Family’ sketches were all razor sharp, passive-aggressive, explosive but short-lived rage that was both hilarious and tragic. Ed, Eunice, and Mama were all frustrated and disappointed in life and attacked each other like rats in a cage. Ed was stuck with Eunice with a nowhere job, Eunice had frustrated dreams of being somebody, and self-centered, sharp tongued Mama was disgusted with the whole lot of them. I wonder what a psychiatrist would have to say about then. … ‘Mama’s Family’ is a vastly watered down version with other family members brought in after Carol Burnett, Rue McClanahan and Betty White left. Those ‘kids’ mercifully disappeared, though horny Vinton and Naomi filled the over-acting slot pretty well. Bubba, Eunice and Ed’s abandoned son, was real eye candy, way too hot and … cocky… to be their offspring.
‘The Family’ skits with Tim Conway are on youtube.
‘Mama’s Family’ is still running on basic cable, marathons. A bit mean-spirited at times, but Mama does love her family and Iola underneath it all.
I guess I never cared about the characters. And to be honest, that may have led to me not paying enough attention to know about the distinction you make, between the skits and the series. I will check out the skits on youtube.
I was wondering what I’d classify as “average/mediocre”, and this helped.
A good definition of for me is right here: Someone describes a show and, even though I have nothing to do today (and I’d probably enjoy it), it’s not worth my time to look it up.
This was just my opinion. I know a lot of people are turned off by the fighting and shouting. The ‘Family’ skits on Carol Burnett were much more harsh and abrasive than ‘Mama’, which is still hardly all sweetness and light.
Good call. I would watch pretty much any of the morning and afternoon reruns when I was a kid, but not the Ricky-less Lucy shows. There were also several westerns in syndication that seemed like weak Bonnaza like The Big Valley or The High Chaparral.
Westerns were a staple of prime-time TV in the 1950s and early 1960s; they were fairly easy for the studios to crank out, because they already had a ton of stages, outdoor sets, and costumes, as Westerns had also been a staple of the studios’ theatrical films for decades.
In James Garner’s autobiography, he noted that, during his time as the star of Maverick, the studio had shooting of his series (and others) down to a production-line art: they would set up a production team in the center of one of their outdoor Western sets, shoot a scene or two for one show pointed in one direction, then rotate, shoot a scene or two for a different show in a different direction, etc.
Gunsmoke has endured, for a bunch of reasons, but yeah, there were tons of other Westerns at the time, most of which were pretty mediocre, and have faded from memory. That said, some of the “secondary digital channel” syndicated networks (like MeTV, Antenna TV, Heroes & Icons, INSP, etc.) still run some of those old, second-tier Western series regularly.
The funny part is, I don’t remember which version I watched. I can’t remember if there were three endings or one. I think I may have turned it off not knowing there were other endings coming… At least that’s funny to me.
When I hear people talk about old Carol Burnett skits and which ones are the best, the two that are always on top are the dentist skit (which I didn’t like as much, but I’m also not much into slapstick comedy) and “The Family” sketch that has Tim Conway’s elephant story. If you’re into that type of timing based humor, it’s some of the best material of that kind that there is.
Not the Gone with the Wind sketch?