Any and all shows about little people. I get having some kind of special on them, or something. But to show them just living their normal lives? Not only is it boring, it smacks of “awwww, lookit them, they’re trying to be JUST like normal people! Isn’t that cute?”
That “Four Weddings” show, where four women critique each other’s weddings to win a honeymoon. Superficial, shallow cattiness about something that ultimately doesn’t even matter.
“19 Kids and Counting.” Just…“19 Kids and Counting.”
In fact, I just want TLC to stay the hell away from weddings, babies, and little people altogether. Enough, already. The only remotely worthwhile shows on that channel anymore are What Not to Wear and Mystery Diagnosis.
There are probably hundreds of shows that I would hate, if I watched them. However, I don’t watch them. In most cases I don’t even know about them. Nobody’s forcing me.
Unlike the music I have to listen to everywhere. (The worst was one day when a song I dislike came on. I switched my radio channel in the car. I didn’t even care if I had to listen to a commercial. Then I went into the store–and they were playing the same channel I’d just switched away from! So I left.)
PS the song was “Red Rain” by an artist I generally like, and I’m sure it’s somebody’s favorite.
Nancy Grace. I would be interested in a show about crimes and the judicial system. This is not it. She over covers cases. Anyone with a disenting opionion is treated with distain, (innocent until proven guilty, how dare you suggest that!)
However 30 Rock isn’t popular in Australia and is on late at night. I caught one episode and thought it was crap and started a thread asking whether it is the most overrated show of all time. Dopers assured me it is brilliant so I tried it again the next week. It was so bad I gave up after a few minutes.
Then late last year I saw a piece on the best TV shows of the last decade which listed not-to-be-missed episodes. So I got The Rural Juror episode and once again not funny.
Finally a thread a few weeks ago lauded the episode that had been on that week. I got a copy thinking that if I watched it and then read the thread I could work out what people like about the show. I was left more puzzled. The things people liked were the very things that I thought were really poorly written and executed.
I suppose it says more about me than the show but what irritates me is how well regarded it is. Even shows I don’t like I can usually appreciate what others see in them. However **30 Rock ** winning Emmies, to me, is like Rolling Stone announcing the greatest rock band of all time to be The Archies.
I hate anything popular in American culture because I’m much too smart to enjoy such pedestrian efforts. I also hate anything popular on the SDMB, again because I’m much too smart. Basically, anything popular is beneath me because I’m so special and wonderful.
I hate any show with an emasculating bitch character and kids in it. Real life kids are kind of annoying; tv kids make me want to kill them.
I don’t really like “Grey’s Anatomy” (Ellen “Lemonface” Pompeo can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I’m concerned, and she can take Former Geekboy with her), but the damned show is sucking me in anyway.
I also don’t like “L.A. Ink,” and got sucked in by it, too. Horrible people doing horrible things…can’t…look…away.
I’m having a hard time thinking of shows I truly hate and don’t watch because I don’t watch them. They have left my consciousness.
I don’t really hate TV shows so much as I’m disinterested in them.
But if I had to identify a show I was interested in the least, I would say* 2.5 Men*.
I tried to like American Idol, but they were just too mean to the contestants for my taste. I love So You Think You Can Dance, so it’s not reality show hate. I just remember watching the opening of this season (my first time watching American Idol) and they basically spent a whole segment making fun of a guy for being from a rural area and playing up what a ‘‘hick’’ he was. Then when he got in front of the judges they reminded me more of a highschool clique than a group of professional adults evaluating the performance skills of contestants.
When he got downstairs, he told his buddies, ‘‘They crucified me.’’ And he was right.
:DOnce I got forced to watch an episode of that “Tila Tequila” show once. A bunch of meathead morons and vacuous lipstick lesbians demeaning and embarrassing themselves so they can try and get with the world’s biggest skank. Not even a little bit entertaining.
I get the discomfort regarding the little people shows. On one hand, I get the idea behind having a show about them and there are certainly more boring subjects for a reality show (Cake Boss is one that I just do not get and find intensely boring). On the other hand, the fact that there’s more than one show and the way in which the shows are marketed does seem patronizing and a little off.
For that matter I feel the same way about the “Couples who have large numbers of children” shows. Firstly because those people are just gross and terrible. Jon and Kate are now well-known to be utter wastes of life who never should have procreated at all, let alone so many times, but it was evident from their show years ago that they were both douchebags. Secondly because these people are invariably exploiting their brood for fame. In twenty years, “Meth addict Duggar child robs 7/11” is going to be the equivalent of the stories we have now about Gary Coleman and Cory Haim.
You know, I agree with everything you mention except Welk.
I’m a musician, and I like how Welk kept alive a lot of the pre-rock pop vernacular with his big band (complete with string section), theatre-style overtures and the like - even the idea that instrumental soloists, who played horns for god’s sake, were worth featuring. Much of this goes back to the 1920s or even earlier, and most of it ended with Welk.
You can keep the pseudo-country and -gospel numbers, the high-70s costumery, and Guy and Ralna (especially Guy). There was musicianship and showmanship on that show, and they have since become deeply estranged.
Well, I like House and will happily sit in front of the TV all day and all night long when Bravo and USA show House marathons :D. What I utterly despise:
Real Housewives - yakking ninnies with too much money discussing breast implants.
That screeching harpy who’s on before Nancy Grace, yammering on about the latest child murder - “Little Becky Sue was found dead…Little Becky Sue disappeared Monday…the parents of Little Becky Sue are suspected…”. Repeat, every day, for a year.
Daytime ‘judge whoever’ shows - all the cases are the same. Unattractive dullards suing other unattractive dullards for non-payment of rent/damage to their trashy cars/damage to their ratty hair extensions. These shows are Time Fillers, serving the same purpose as infomercials flogging flab-ab-machines.
Lifetime movies for helpless victimized women! Just the titles seem aimed at the simple-minded - “Her Husband’s Affair” - “The Wives He Forgot” - “My Husband’s Secret Life” - “Fighting for My Daughter”. My favorite was the poor, abused husband with a porn-stache, beaten up by his wife and afraid to tell anyone, it was actually kind of comical, it was so over-the-top. (I’m not in favor of anyone beating anyone up, but jeez, what does it take to inspire the poor doofus to pack up and walk out the door?)
Private Practice - spinoff from Grey’s Anatomy, focussing on Kate Walsh (looking more like a dumbstruck cow every week) and her lifelong quest to find a man to, ah, stuff her ladybits, interspersed with gory childbirth stories and the worst TV acting imaginable. (Catch that little story last year with the pregnant doctor abducted and rendered paralyzed by a psycho who cut the fetus out of her womb using information and instruments bought online? Unspeakable.)
And while I don’t exactly hate it, I’ve grown disillusioned with Mythbusters since they’ve seem to have run out of actual myths to bust, and have resorted to just blowing stuff up. It might be fun if you are actually there, but it grows tiresome week after week.
Ugh. I hate that. I don’t grok its popularity at all. It feels like a bunch of amateur writers opened up the Big Book of Nerd/Dork/Geek Cliches and tried to stuff as many of them into each episode as possible.
What you say has merit, but I have to add in my mother’s insistence that I watch that show with her or at least leave her to watch it during a time slot when there were other shows I preferred. My wife’s mother treats her the same way – at age 90+.
As a tangential comment, Billy Bob Thornton once said (paraphrasing)
I dislike anything with not a single sympathetic character. I also dislike shows which are basically an unending series of Idiot Plots. Seinfeld fails on both counts; oh, I watched it during its heyday, but have no interest in it at all now.