For a while I enjoyed the History Channel reality shows like Pawn Stars and American Pickers, mostly because I liked learning about the old stuff that they would buy on both shows. But I lost interest because I got tired of the contrived conflict between the characters on the shows, much of which was obviously scripted.
Oh, the History Channel used to have occasional interesting material. Then it just went into the toilet. Just like, there used to be a watchable show or two on Bravo, but it became ill and turned into a festering rot. Television seems to be chewing off its own limbs in an effort to escape the trap it set for itself, and in a few years, it will be 5% content, 20% product placement, 60% ads.
Except for Seven of Nine. She kept me watching far longer than I was interested in the show as a whole.
As I remember it, the issue wasn’t so much the nudes in and of themselves as that she posed in, and out, of a vaguely Trek-like costume, with vaguely Trek-like props. Nothing that would amount to actual copyright infringement or fool anyone into thinking they were actual Trek props, but it was clearly referencing the character of Tasha Yar. An actress posing nude is one thing, but an actress posing nude as their character is another. Again, the costume and props obviously weren’t meant to actually fool anyone, but the reference to her character was unavoidable.
I completely lost all interest in “Lost” when I realized who was going to get off the island.
I appreciated (“enjoyed” isn’t quite the right word) the first few seasons of “Intervention”, the A&E series, but after a while, it just became one 20-something heroin addict who blamed their oral surgeon for getting them hooked after another, and wasn’t even interesting any more.
Bravo and Ovation used to be quite highbrow, and now, they’re anything but.
Bravo also seems to have taken over where the Logo network, which used to be mostly LGBTQ+ programming, took off.
Car shows:
Iron Resurrection. It at first seemed like a breath of fresh air from the other car shows. It actually showed real work being done, didn’t just handwave over the issues of some of the rebuilds. That lasted a few episodes. Then it was back to manufactured conflict, “personalities” becoming the focus, cutting back on the actual work, making each episode about two cars (and never seeming to work on either one). This was all in season 1. Season 2 was even worse.
Overhaulin’. Again, started good, but then became all about the “Story” of the person and nothing about the rebuild. And, again, it became all about the personalities. Plus endless “here’s what happened so far”, and “here’s what we did five minutes ago before the commercial” (or, here’s what we did one minute ago, that we just showed you). In that respect, it was worse than Mythbusters, and that ain’t easy!
American Hot Rod. Started out about the build (sound familiar) but turned into a bunch of people pissing and moaning about each other.
Plus (and this is subjective, YMMV) thay started making such UGLY cars. On IR, everything had to be slammed. What they didn’t slam they made uglier. 22 inch wheels on everything.
Maybe I just don’t understand TV. Maybe that’s what everyone wants - conflict.
Hmm. I once had a copy of that magazine; I’ll have to find it and take another look.
Killing Eve. Started out terrific the first season. Second season wasn’t quite as strong but still eminently watchable. Third season was absolute dreck - the writers clearly have no idea what to do with the characters anymore. I’ll probably be jumping ship permanently.
I loooooved Outlander until the season where we were introduced to Claire’s adult daughter Brianna. Her acting was so abysmal that I could not continue to care about the story.
Also, we just plowed through a bunch of old episodes of Three’s Company. It was so fun to watch until the Ropers left. I love Don Knotts but he and that sex-starved Lana…I could not be bothered for five minutes.
Pawn Stars and American Pickers are among the shows for which I ask “Is that still on?!?” at the start of each new season. Others include Hell’s Kitchen and Dragon’s Den. They all fall into the category “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen 'em all.”
The TV show travelers. I ended up watching all 3 seasons but it really went downhill. the first season was about advanced technology and changing the future with the help of quantum AI. The final 2 seasons are about a civil war.
Also if the AI was anywhere near as smart as everyone said, it shouldn’t have screwed things up (at least in the TV show).
Some time back I was super stoked to find out that the Horatio Hornblower books had been made into an eight episode TV miniseries from 1998 to 2003.
As I watched the first episode, I realized that they had taken one of the central conflicts from the first book in the series (the dual) and turned the bad guy into an almost impossibly nasty and undefeatable boogyman caricature of the believably mean fellow from the book.
I saw that all subtlety was lost for the sake of simplifying the plot and making a good show. Cutting out unnecessary detail and focusing on one or two conflicts is fair, but changing things entirely? Nope.
Surely the rest of the series would represent the books in name only, so I never bothered watching the others.
I think you mean duel, not dual.
I followed the same path on those. Manufactured conflict and fake customers (Pawn Stars) or planted treasures (American Pickers) ruined them.
I turned to Antiques Roadshow to get my fix of really neat stories about old things told by experts in the field. It’s not as fast paced, but still always seems to have some really cool stuff. Sadly, even the Roadshow is not immune to scandal.
Believe me, autocorrect was fighting me all the way through that post. But as a long time database guy, it might have simply been inertia from five million times typing “select * from dual” (an Oracle thing).
I remember one of the students in a graduate course I took on US Foreign Policy handing in a paper on “Communist gorillas.”
When the instructor told her this was wrong, she said “Well, my Spell Check said it was all right.”
I spent the rest of that class doodling Communist gorillas and sliding them over to her. 
Yeah, I think I gave up at a dozen or so. It was also apparent by that time that Evanovich was no longer using a editor. Information revealed in one chapter would be introduced as new in the next chapter. She was definitely phoning it in.
I really liked Clan of the Cave Bear but in Valley of Horses, I didn’t even get to Ayla’s meeting up with Jondalar. I did skip through to the steamy parts, but even Jondalar’s gargantuan penis couldn’t hold my interest for long.
Nope, the series is excellent.