I’ve gone through spurts where I force myself to experience “classics”. The great cinema, literature, etc, of days long gone. I often find them dull and/or hopelessly out of date. I’m sure they were great back in the day, but now we have things like internet and video games - you know, FUN things - and they can no longer compete. However, I found myself really enjoying Citizen Kane, even though I (like everyone else in the developed world) knew the big twist. It was just downright entertaining.
I also like Dickens, but that’s a different thread.
L.A. Story. I’m not a big fan of romantic comedies to begin with. Throw in a traffic-alert sign to give the main character advice on his love life and some Enya music, and there’s just no way it should have worked. But it does. Most rom-coms try to make the leads so generically appealing that we’re just supposed to take it on faith that they’re right for each other. Harris and Sara in L.A. Story are both so genuinely quirky that they should be together; like when you make a joke and only one person in the room laughs. And the whole movie makes fun of Los Angeles in a way that only someone who loves it could.
I stumbled across Prison Break when they were actually escaping from the prison. I’m not one for action/advanture, but I was hooked. Mostly because it is so damn impossible, and also cause I would pay to watch Wentworth Miller stand there and do nothing.
Melrose Place. Had no interest** at all **in watching it when it first ran in the '90s. But my wife was a huge fan of show and when we moved in together she insisted on getting the DVDs from Netflix. I thought, “All right, I’ll humor her and give it a chance. And if I don’t like it, which I’m pretty sure I won’t, I can always just fall asleep on the couch while she’s watching it.”
But you know that Seinfeld episode, where they’re all ashamed to admit they watch it, but in reality are addicted to it. Well that’s what happened to me. Yes, it’s trashy and over-the-top, but that’s precisely what makes it so great. The writers didn’t give a damn about verisimilitude, and as a result they just ran wild, appealed to your basest train wreck-loving instincts and sucked you right in.
Now I can’t wait for the new version to start on the CW.
I have to second Avatar. My younger daughter was watching it and I was passing through the room. I said “They’re storming the Forbidden City? That’s cool.”
When she told me that the Bad Guys had airships, I had to watch an episode or three.
What does “I really don’t think it’s quite accurate” mean??? It’s a glammed-up FANTASY, duh, look at all those emaciated middle aged women, mutton dressed as lamb for one thing!..Anyway -I, too, like Everybody Loves Raymond. I find it strangely soothing to watch at the end of a hard day, knowing I’m guaranteed to laugh at least once. And the near silence of the kids is just an extra blessing…Some years ago I never missed an episode of Andromeda. I just thought Kevin Sorbo and the rest of the cast was just SO hot, and they had great clothes and hair. Yeah, it was unseemly to be watching a space opera instead of some kind of chick flick. So be it.
I hardly ever watch network TV anymore. I’m more of a sports and movie channel kind of guy. But I caught a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother and I thought it was funny as hell and very well done. The premise is pretty original and ingenious as to how they can run with it forever if they want to, or they can decide to wrap it up in one episode by just coming up with the coda … " … and that’s how I met your mother … " thanks for tuning in.
I just got Season One from NetFlix. I’ll probably get Season Two when I’m through with it. I just may put this one on my DVR list.
I suppose I like it because I was a big fan of *Friends * (in its earlier seasons anyway) … which this is essentially, with one fewer female lead.
Another Simpsons convert here, though the conversion happened in 1995 or 1996. The Simpsons was just getting started when I was a student teacher in spring of 1990, and it was huge with my students, so I equated it with dumb kids and their dumb tastes. It took a grad school colleague whose taste I trusted to tell me that (and I still remember these as his exact words) “it’s a show that rewards you for paying attention” to give it at try.
I was also late coming to The X-Files, not really getting into it until just before the first movie came out, when FX ran a week or two of 4-episode-per-night mytharc back story.
I watched the premiere of The Sopranos and gave up on it, but when it kept getting great press as the best thing on TV, I tried it again, and was completely consumed by it for the remainder of its run.
I read an article recently that the King of Queens is doing very well in syndication – better than in first run on CBS. Basically it works as a “comfort food” type of show. It’s OK, though rarely spectacular, it’s funny. It’s something to watch at 10:00 before bed. I’m the same way, too. I saw it only a few times on CBS, but I watch it frequently at night now.
I had trouble getting into Buffy when it first came out, but eventually I grew to like the show. Other than that, I can’t think of anything offhand where I thought “Hey, I didn’t think I’d like this, but I do!” but I did this to my wife, she was never really into science fiction but we got hooked on Farscape together, then Battlestar Galactica, and now Doctor Who and Torchwood. She’s essentially ceded all DVD renting decisions to me. Hah! No crappy romcoms for us!
Me, too. Luckily, I had a friend who convinced me to start watching it about halfway through the first season. It was NOTHING like what I expected and I was hooked. I’ve been a huge X-Phile ever since (although I’m not really a fandom member, never joined the various boards, etc.). And, I’m a rebel in that I didn’t hate the post-Duchovny seasons, although I luuuuuuv him. I appreciated what they tried to do with it.
I saw one of my favorite NCIS moments the other day. The team were tracking a terrorist cell and had come upon a mentaly-challenged man being used as a suicide bomber. They realized that his bomb was going to go off in less than a minute, in the middle of a crowded plaza; Ziva volunteers to try to disarm it, and Gibbs orders everyone else to clear out–though he, of course, makes no move to do so. DiNozza and McGee look at him, shrug, and move closer to Ziva, prompting an enormously exasperated, wordless appeal to the heavens, who realizes that, of course, they are acting exactly like him.
I was surprised by how much I didn’t hate Armageddon, which I saw maybe a year and a half ago on TV in Bulgaria. (I was like, “It’s in English! I don’t care how bad it is!”) Obviously, it’s not great, but it’s fairly amusing and mindlessly entertaining. I thought it was quite a bit better than Deep Impact, the movie with almost the same plot that came out at the same time - and which I was subjected to on an airplane. Note to airlines: don’t show disaster movies, mmkay?
Add me to the list of Simpsons converts - but I figured it out early on, at least, still at the beginning of the first season. I was eleven.
Kyla, are you brain dead? You like Armageddon over Deep Impact?
Okay, admittedly, Armageddon has a more fun approach, whereas Deep Impact is more serious. But Armageddon was such a crap-fest, it makes the new Star Trek movie look like Citizen Kane or 12 Angry Men.
Buffy was the show I didn’t watch because I thought it would be juvenile 90210 crap fantasy, but 6 months in to the first season someone convinced me to give it a try, and I became a convert.
I accidentally watched the first episode of America’s Next Top Model and was fascinated enough that I had to watch that season. I hate “reality” shows, and the idea of watching bitchy snobs tear each other down while they compete for the chance to be insulted by professionals was not something I would think entertaining, yet somehow I was sucked in. But only that one season. Never watched it since.
I remember watching my first X-Files. The show ended unresolved. I looked over at my husband and said “what happens now, it can’t be over.” He said, “That is why it is an X-File.” I was hooked.
I’ll back up the Armageddon love. Sorry, when they are rounding up the rough-necks and putting them through the tests and letting them cut loose…I am all over it. Heck, I even like Ben Affleck in it, which surprised the hell out of me.
Also, The Simpson’s had one of the finest pinball games ever made. I would drive about 45 minutes to play it and Black Knight. Regularly. I refused to watch the show however. Now? I’m not a fanatic, but I’ve been known to say “Mmmm…purple.” from time to time.