I thought Walter’s first kill was when it just started to get good. The scene with the plate and the missing piece sealed the deal for me. I never missed an episode after that.
I would like to say that as someone who was seven years old when TNG came out, Wesley was a big reason I became a Star Trek fan. I liked the fact there was a kid on the ship. Gave me someone to relate to.
That being said, I will rewatch all of TNG except the first season. There was no excuse for that crap.
Apparently Wesley was the only teenager on the ship. All of the other children were primary- or pre-schoolers.
I have nothing against there being young crew members on board. In real life, a lot of people join the service fresh out of high school. But 14-year-olds don’t get to live on an active-duty naval vessel just because their mother is the ship’s surgeon.
When Chekov was introduced to appeal to the “youth” audience, he was already 22 and an official member of the crew.
I found it interesting that NBC wanted to put kid cadets on the Enterprise when the Saturday-morning animated series was in development, but Roddenberry refused. He must have had one hell of a spiritual experience (probably chemical-fueled) to go so far in the opposite direction.
A 16-year-old enlisted man or woman I could accept, but I just found 14-year-old Wesley unbelievably grating. He was a very ill-conceived character,. but then a lot more in the series was ill-conceived as well.
… or get to sit with the Captain on the bridge. Let alone be manning controls on the ship!
If Wesley had had a harmless job delivering box lunches to the crew, or changing bedpans in Sick Bay, I would’ve believed it was at least possible, and wouldn’t have minded him half as much.
I’m reminded of the 15-year-old who caused an Aeroflot liner to crash in Siberia because his dad, the pilot, let him take the controls.
I gave up on Harry Turtledove’s Timeline 101 series when I realized he’d spent several books just building up to “Confederate Hitler and the Holocaust happens in the South to blacks”. I gave up on him altogether shortly thereafter when In The Presence of Mine Enemies turned out to be “The fall of the Soviet Union but with Nazis”, because I’d realized his idea of “alternate history” largely consisted of having the same events happen but to different people.
In retrospect, I should have given up on him after the Mark Twain sex scene.
And where is this?
I’ll need page numbers as well, if I’m going to be sure to avoid it…
True, but once TNG got past the first season, you got strong, good episodes like “Chains of Command” snd “The Inner Light”. There’s a reason TvTropes used it as the trope namer for “Growing The Beard”.
I gave up on him within a few chapters after realizing that almost every single prominent historical figure that existed in that time period would be included except for the women. The writing was wooden. The whole thing seemed like some weird fanfic prompt exercise.
Somewhere in How Few Remain. You’ll forgive me for not having had the book in my possession for 20+ years now.
Now that I think about it, the George Armstrong Custer sex scene might be worse.
I realized this way too late as well. It seemed to me that he mostly wrote shifted history as opposed to alternate history.
Tuetledove did not write alternate history
He wrote regular history with the serial numbers filed off and other names pasted on.
I thought the first season of House of Cards was really enjoyable. I’m pretty sure I slogged my way through season 2 because I was curious how it ended, but the magic was gone. I definitely didn’t finish season 3.
Same.
One critic, at the time of House of Cards final season, noted the inherent problem: after Frank Underwood actually became President, the series had no idea what to do next.
Same. First season of Broadchurch was amazing! Second season was terrible with characters behaving in ridiculous ways and plot twists that were terribly forced and unbelievable.
Same. Torture porn.
I enjoyed most of How I Met Your Mother, which went, what, nine seasons? But the way they wrapped it up left such a bad taste in my mouth (and the same for many others, I understand) that I have no desire whatsoever to ever see any of the episodes again. So, when I saw advertisements for How I Met Your Father, which, while not knowing anything about the show, I couldn’t help but see it as an extension of HIMYM, and thus am abandoning it before it even starts. Do I win?
Depends on what your memory of it is. The series does hold up in general up until around Season 8, when it all sort of falls apart. I did think it was just the final season all based around the wedding, but the one before was pretty much all over the place. Usually the rule is “if there’s a baby then it goes to crap”. A lot seem to blame that awful final episode, but lets face it, it was pretty shit before that.
However, the first seasons up to around there are pretty decent. If you’re good with not caring who the mother was, which was always just an excuse.
Update
How Did They Get Played has now officially transitioned into the “Get Played” podcast now fully abandoning their original gimmick of just talking about bad video games. So they spent about two and a half years with their original format before fully becoming the generic video game podcast it desperately wanted to be.