Attributing the success of Dan Brown and Stephen King to the same thing casts grave doubt on your taste and judgment.
Attributing the success of Dan Brown and Stephen King to the same thing casts grave doubt on your taste and judgment.>>Max The Vool
I’m glad someone said it!
Oh, I thought we were allowed to have our own opinions in this forum. From my POV, your attributing their success to anything else casts graver than grave doubt on *your *judgment.
So where does that leave us?
I guess the success of Dan Brown isn’t attributable to fornits?
I loved 6fu. I thought it was a great show even though I was inclined not to watch it (wasn’t into prime time dramas) and I didn’t buy American Beauty. Season one totally captivated me. None of the other seasons were as good, and season 4 was downright pain-inducing. The deaths started getting dumber and less relevant, the conflict started getting monotonous, people started getting more annoying. But I watched it all and cried at the finale because of my investment from season one.
My verdict - obviously you’re going to hate it if you watch season 4 first, try to put it out of your mind and watch it in order. If you watched 4, then 1, you’re likely to carry that hate over and spoil 1 for yourself. If you watched one first and didn’t like it, can’t help you, you just didn’t like it.
I enjoyed how my perceptions of the people didn’t affect my perception of the show as a whole. I remember not liking Brenda at all at first, then she became ok. I never really bought Claire as an artist, but I liked how she ended up. Ruth wasn’t likeable to me, but her sadness was very compelling. I loved Rico until he turned into such an asshole about the business. I actually liked kooky characters obviously meant to be disliked (to a point), like Mitzi and Billy and Brenda’s parents - I liked that they developed to be likeable even though I wouldn’t like them in real life - more dynamic than the way it usually seems to go. The only characters I never liked were crazy professor guy and his daughter the quaker (Maggie?).
I will advise people watching the Bravo version to watch it on dvd, because I thought the edited-for-swearing version sounded totally stupid in comparison. The dialogue is just not realistic.
May I ask what you were expecting, lissener? You seem to be saying that the show was obvious and trite, but surely the title refers to more than just the main characters feelings? You slam the show with a soap opera comparison which baffles me. Both are dramas and deal with characters over time and that’s about all the similarities. Hell, you could say the same about LOTR, The Brother’s Karamazov and even Waiting for Godot.
You didn’t care for the show. Ok. What bothers me is that you say you won’t recommend the show to people who come in and ask. You don’t know these people–do you specify that this is just your opion, that the show has won awards, that it is critically acclaimed and popular?
I am not a Soprano’s fan, but I can understand why others would like it. Surely the case is the same here, no?
What I expect from all art: for it to be the 1% indirectly referred to in the maxim “99% of everything is crap.” 99% of the time, I’m disappointed. Also, the critical reputation of this show led me to expect better. *Also *also, it was not simply disappointing, it was egregiously, aggressively unpleasant.
That’s all it succeeded in communicating to me: all the characters had the same neurosis: they buried their feelings* Six Feet Under *(get it?!?!?).
Wow. If there were a Nobel Prize for missing the point, I’d buy you a Swedish for Tourists book. You seem to be suggesting, that I was suggesting, that any literature–even the World’s Great Works–that has a plot is interchangeable with General Hospital. I have to assume you meant no such thing. If that is indeed, let me know, so I can decide if it’s worth my energy to enter such a, a, a maelstrom of illogic.
Wow. Into the maelstrom. So, if you worked in a video store, and a customer asked your opinion, you’d feel constrained to withhold it, and instead spout some line of memorized critical consensus? Seriously?
I loved the show at first. Nate was an amazing character who I loved, and the family seemed dysfunctional but realistic. I was enthralled. I think where it took a turn for the soap opera-ish was the Lisa story line. I never liked Lisa, couldn’t see that relationship, and her ultimate fate strained my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. It was unrealistic and lame, IMO. That damaged my opinion of the show but didn’t destroy it completely.
At least three people have mentioned the deaths that started each episode. Has anyone else out there ever wished for the kick-off deaths to be collected onto one CD? No episodes, just all of the beginning deaths, with maybe some commentary on any interesting things that happened regarding the deceased in the episode to which they were attached.
Or is it just me?
In The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Molly would sometimes talk to her deceased father. It made me cry the first time I saw it. It was an emotional release to find that the experience wasn’t restricted to my mind only.
I had no trouble understanding the nature of the “conversations” people sometimes have with people they’ve lost. And I’m not talking about anything supernatural. Yllaria, I think your idea is beautiful. There’s a lot of material there that could be used for workshops on death and dying and family issues.
So let me get this straight, you hated the characters but cared enough about them to see what happens next? Either you have a lot of free time or you liked it more than you think you did.
Six Feet Under is my favorite show, but it’s not without its faults. Seasons 1 and 2 were perfection, and as I recall Alan Ball meant to have it end there. The end of season 2, with Nate getting on his dad’s bus of death, would have been a brilliant finale. Every character at that point made an arc, there was nothing left to probe, and the funeral home gimmick had lost its newness. But HBO forced them with a truckload of money to create more seasons.
Season 3 was weird, and I still think they went the wrong direction with Nate marrying Lisa. We all knew he’d get back together with Brenda, so why waste time? Maya was annoying, and being a daddy didn’t fit with Nate’s persona. I remember how the entire TWOP forum was convinced that the first episode of season 3 was a dream because it was so odd and awkward. However, season 3 introduced some of the best characters, such as Arthur, Lisa’s boss Carol, Russel, and Olivier.
Season 4 was pretty bad, except for That’s My Dog and Terror Starts at Home. I honestly don’t remember much of season 5 besides the awesome finale.
The reason I love the show is precisely because the characters are so flawed. They’re whiny and self absorbed, like you and I, and therefore I felt more sympathetic toward them because they were believable.
I loved the first season, and I did watch them all the way through on DVD. It had one of the best series wrap-ups I’ve ever seen.
The show reminds me of a John Irving novel, they way I can’t decide if I actually enjoyed it or not. Most of the characters were so unlikeable, there was nobody to root for. But I kept watching it.
They almost lost me when Ruth took up with Arthur, Rainn Wilson’s character. That was hard to sit through.
Who was the mature one? The one who would make rational decisions? Oh right, there wasn’t one!
Every character was the same!!
If watched it all and found it amusing but it ain’t no Sopranos.
I pretty much agree with every word of eleanorigby’s posts above - loved this show so, so much. It took me a couple of years to get into it actually, and I ended up being in a race trying to watch all the previous seasons on DVD before the finale aired, which was a very interesting way to watch it, one that I’d almost recommend.
I miss when the last couple shows were on - me and a friend from work would have to call each other after each one and console the other.
Another fan of the series here. It isn’t for everybody, sure. I resisted a friend’s recommendation for years, but I got hooked after seeing one episode on DVD. I ended up watching the entire series over the next couple of weeks. On a side note, it prompted me to go back and watch “American Beauty” (which I hated when it first came out), with a new perspective, and a new appreciation.
All of this is your opinion. The show was not to your taste-why not just say that, instead of trying to run the show and its fans down? If 99% of everything disappoints you, you have a long life ahead. 99% vs 1% seems a bit black and white to me–how about 80/20?
Yes, I got it the first time you posted it. I got it the very first show. Most people bury their feelings-or hide them or deny them. How like life this show is! How egregiously, aggressively unpleasant TV can be in refuting that very human aspect–but shows like SFU don’t. In SFU we saw a serious gay relationship, not camp, not comic relief, but a realistic one. We saw race relations, gender frictions, addictions, consequences for bad choices, love faded and worn out, control misconstrued as love, mental illness (realistically portrayed for once), and much more.
None of these things (except the healthy gay relationship) are pleasant or fun. It’s a drama. The plot depends on tension and conflict (but there was humor as well-the Kathy Bates character was wonderful). I don’t really need to 'splain this to you, do I? Underneath all of the scathing dismissal is this: the show was not to your taste. End of story.
But I didn’t miss the point–you did. SFU has as much to do with soap operas, such as All My Children as soaps do with existential lit or the classics, i.e. not much except for characters changing over time. None of the plots are interchangeable-that’s your interpretation. Since you brought the point up, though-all literature (or pulp fic or soaps), they all essentially tell a story, and a story is fundamentally the change in characters over time. That may be all they have in common, but they do share that. To make another analogy, paintings start with marks on a flat surface, but after that one essential aspect, not so much…
If I worked in a video store, I’d have the sense to reply to the customer that I didn’t care for the series, but that it was critically acclaimed and very popular. Is that so hard? Or is your opinion the only one that matters? I work in a library; people ask me for suggestions all the time. I certainly don’t use their request as a chance to browbeat them about my discernment or make them feel lesser because of their supposed lack. Not even if they are asking for the latest Danielle Steele or Tabor Evans. It’s not my job to change their taste. (I am in no way equating SFU with Steele or Evans, btw).
You’re supposed to move the merchandise, even in a video store, not “wow” the clientele with your superior taste and discriminating palate for canned entertainment. Frankly, if I asked the guy in our local video store his opinion on something and he responded with anything resembling your opinion, I’d think to myself: this guy’s a wanker. Who is he to be the arbiter of taste for his customers? And then I’d dismiss you as a possible source for reasonable input.
The end of Six Feet Under is the funniest finale I’ve ever seen in a tv show.
My guess is he is referring to Sturgeon’s Law, which states “90% of Everything is Crud.”
I’m also guessing that you do not feel compelled to read a book before you can comment on it.
I don’t think this is what Eleanor Rigby was saying, but even if she was, what’s wrong with it? I’ve never read Terry Pratchett but if someone asked me about his books, I could comment that I’ve heard that they’re funny and popular. Not very enlightening, of course, but might be slightly helpful to someone who doesn’t like humorous stuff.
I’d never recommend a book I haven’t read, but recommending and commenting aren’t the same thing.
Well, working in a library, you soon realize that you cannot read everything. But I don’t see where you got that from. Why would I comment on a book I haven’t read? How could I? If I have read reviews of it, and a patron asks me, then that is what I say: I haven’t personally read it, but that it was liked by the critics or disliked or whatever. Very strange guess on your part.