We had a discussion at work today about unpopular popular shows.
It eventually boiled down to “which popular shows have you actually watched but quickly given up on?”
The hands down winner seemed to be Heroes.
Mine were
24 - half an episode
Lost - one episode
Heroes - two episodes
There are many that I have never seen like all the Whedon stuff but we are only counting stuff you tried to watch.
So which hit shows totally failed you?
*Lost *immediately lost me - I think I’ve seen two partial episodes. My view was “I’ve already seen Twin Peaks, and I don’t want to see it again.”
24 - I watched the first season, but the second one made me desperately wish that someone had shot Jack’s daughter instead of his wife at the end of Season 1. Dear God, she was annoying. I just couldn’t risk watching it lest she appear onscreen again.
Dollhouse - One episode. Here’s why.
Beauty and the Beast. Half a scene. It didn’t help that I had recently seen Cocteau’s version, but when they showed Linda Hamilton with the fakest looking wound in the history of TV (it looked like someone marked up her face with a black MagicMarker), I quit.
Lost – an episode. I came in late in the first season because my wife was watching. They were showing some sort of mysterious something in a cave. I asked her, “Are they going to resolve this tonight, or is it just a tease?” She said, “Just a tease.” I walked away and haven’t watched again.
Seinfeld. About four episodes of Seinfeld (I had seen all four of The Seinfeld Chronicles. Every time Jason Alexander showed up with his destitute-man’s Woody Allen imitation, the show just stopped being anything I wanted to watch (I didn’t care much for Kramer, either, though I could understand why he was so popular). Alexander has the unique talent of sucking all the entertainment out of anything he did.
Curb Your Enthusiasm – I had no trouble curbing it. I mean, you had a character who was George Costanza but with even less charm and played by a less-talented actor.
Mad Men – 1 episode. They used such an outrageous cheat to resolve things – on the level of having Custer call in for air support at Little Big Horn – and Don Draper was a whiny little sleezeball. Plus they really had no feel for the 60s.
The CSI franchise - one episode. I just don’t understand the appeal.
Lost - 1.5 episodes. ALIAS left a bad taste in my mouth from JJ, so I’m holding off until the series is over to see if there isn’t rioting in the streets. The 1.5 episodes was from when I forgot to change the channel while I was reading or on the internet.
American Idol - 1 episode. I saw the finale of the first season, because a friend insisted on it. Just not my thing.
Everything.
No, seriously, my list of shows that I regularly watch gets smaller every year, and I’m more than OK with that. I sometimes try to catch stuff that “everyone’s talking about” and give up quickly, because “everyone” turns out to be brain-dead idiots. Lately, I don’t even bother trying to catch something that I “must see” because I know I’m just going to be burned. I have 3 shows left on my list that I try to catch when they come on, and that’s it. (Down from 5 last year, but 2 of those shows had their series finales last year, wasn’t a case of me leaving them, they were good shows)
Can’t think of any real good example, the only one that comes to mind was one on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s national broadcaster, well, the publicly-owned one anyways) when they touted a new show by Ron James to fill a hole in their schedule. I like Ron James and think his standup is great. this is why I’m convinced that he is embarassed for what he’s doing now, while the standup bits are good, the “skits” are completely not his style, and look like they were conjured up from the minds of writers from shows like MadTV, again not the kind of stuff suiting him. Even if I really, really hate a TV show or movie, I at least make an effort to sit through the whole ting as a show of poliltess (only later am I “on the Internet in minutes registering my disgust”) but I can’t honestly recall if I made it to the credits of that.
Lost – I agree about the comparison with Twin Peaks. I wasn’t going to get burned again.
Ditto for the suite of SF-based “Lost” wannabees like Invasion that came out at the same time, and which didn’t even last a single season. I’d like to see a genuine thought-out-in-advance story arc, not a make-it-up-as-we-go-along string the audience along show.
I saw part of an episode of NCIS on an airplane. It was so bad that it makes most any other television look good by comparison. Parks and Recreation(?) was on my last flight and I would have stopped watching that except for the attractive brunettes. So I just took the headset off of my ears. It was really stupid as well as unfunny.
House I watched ten minutes of the first episode and found the main character so repugnant for so many reasons I turned it off and have never gone back to watch anothr episode.
I have to agree with this one. In one of my first apartments out of college I was getting free cable, including HBO (the people who had lived there before had apparently never bothered canceling it, and I never got a bill for it). I got into some other HBO shows this way. But I just couldn’t see what the big deal was about Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was actually a pretty big Seinfeld fan, but I just couldn’t get myself to like this.
You’re right in that it’s like watching a real life George Costanza, but without the quirks that made his character funny.
The Office. I will watch damn near anything in syndication, but not that.
All CSIs. The editing alone, like you’re watching MTV videos, was enough to scare me off them.
Dollhouse, Arrested Development, Curb - all less than one episode
V, Heroes - maybe an episode and a half
I gave Heroes a season and a half, then gave it up. Such promise, such a good beginning, such a great villain…disappointing.
Cashmere Mafia; One and a half minutes.
Seriously. We watched it for about ninety seconds (I’m going by memory; it might have been as long as a couple of minutes) and were just appalled. I was staggered that actual fellow human beings would allow such a thing to be aired.
The Sopranos- I did manage to watch the first three or four episodes, only because I was REALLY excited when I got my DVD player so I could finally watch it (no HBO at the time). I still watch random episodes every once in a while but I just don’t really like it. I know I should like it, it seems like it would be a show that I would love, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
Enterprise
I watched all the Star Treks and was happy things were continuing. And intrigued about the premise.
But had to make myself finish the first episode and couldn’t make myself finish the next two and just gave up
Most reality shows, especially after it becomes obvious that their version of reality is still scripted and heavily edited.
I don’t really watch much TV these days, it seems…
I gave up on Lost after two episodes. I didn’t liken it to Twin Peaks, in my mind, but it just seemed dumb and weird and pointless. A smoke monster? On an island? C’mon. :rolleyes:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It strikes me as Seinfeld minus all the funny stuff and with an even bigger jerk as the star.
Yea, I think I watched most of two episodes, but I don’t really get the appeal. Its just some scruffy guy stumbling around insulting people. I can go to the local dive bar and see that, and most of the insults aren’t even funny, just dickish.
I totally concur. I watched my one and only episode last Thurs night. In fact, I started a thread on it. I thought the acting stunk and writing was worse.