Brain Bleed: The Shows We Hate & The Reasons We Hate Them

[SmithW6079]

The shows whose existence offend me are those arranged marriage, get-married-to-a-stranger- to -be-on-tv" shows.

Is this what we've come to?

Yes, even as evangelicals and fundamentalists screech how gay people marrying will destroy the sanctity of marriage.

[millennium]

I'm one of the 1% who LIKED the finale.  People moaned and groaned and bitched about it, but Seinfeld was a show about a bunch of people who were jerks.  The people doing it knew it, even if the public fooled themselves into thinking these people were "likable".  Them going to jail in an over the top way in the finale for BEING jerks?  I laughed my ass off.

 

And then I laughed even harder at the public outrage over the finale.  I said to myself "you've been watching a show about these people being total shitheads for years and you're butthurt that they not only admitted it at the end but tweaked the viewers for going along with it? Come on!"

 

I do understand on one level--viewers don't like to feel they're the ones being made fun of.  And that's basically what that finale did. But for those who kinda realized all along it was a show about schmucks (not really "nothing" as they claimed), it was a fitting way to end. 

 

I love the Seinfeld finale too.   What I've never been able to figure out is what everybody else wanted to happen in that last episode?  What didn't they see that made them so unhappy?

 

Being sent to jail as an example case of the Good Samaritan law hit an absurdity level perfectly in keeping with the rest of the show -- plus it afforded a logical excuse to parade many of the secondary characters that made the show so funny (Babu, the Soup Nazi, the Puffy shirt woman, etc.).   From a writing standpoint, I thought the Seinfeld finale was a true accomplishment.   And I love those final few moments when Jerry's doing his standup bit before the prisoners.  "Why don't I come down to where you work and snatch the license plate out of your hand?"

 

In fact, I found myself deeply disappointed when the stint in prison wasn't mentioned by the characters as part of the pseudo-reunion episodes on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Edited July 11, 2015 by millennium

[millennium]

See, any show that's super-popular, I automatically hate (The Walking Dead, for one) - least common denominator and all that.  A show that appeals to a broad audience MUST be disappointing crap.

 

 

I'm right there with you, but ... I must confess, I have gone back and watched some of the shows I hated on when they were super-popular, despite not having seen them.

 

And some of them were pretty good.

Just about everything on what was once the great Learning Channel.  Ditto with The History Channel.  And A&E.  And Discovery.  Just makes me sad now.

 

Watch Vikings on History.   It will make you forget Pawn Stars ever existed.

[millennium]

Anyway, despite that one comic book and that one TV exception?  I still hate Zombie stuff, even most of it sight unseen. Fuck you, Walking Dead, I don't give a shit (and DOUBLE fuck you, Chris Hardwick, for wasting electrons with an annoying looking talk show ABOUT the Zombie show I don't want to watch in the first place). Screw off, various Zombie movies people annoyingly gush about all of the time--maybe one or two of you might not actually deserve my disdain, but in general I'm going to play the percentages and avoid you like the plague (ha, drum roll please--I didn't even intend that pun but just noticed it).

 

This is a great post, and you get double points for trashing the insufferable Chris Hardwick.     I have hated zombies forever.   I'm a lifelong fan of horror and I become visibly offended every time I see Night of the Living Dead cited on "Greatest Horror Films of All Time" lists.  It's a shitty, amateurish, boring movie.    And Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead and the rest of it?  Nuh-uh.  Not happening in my reality.

 

Despite all that, I watched a few seasons of The Walking Dead.   I was more interested in the storyline and character dynamics than anything else.   The zombies weren't scary at all; after the first few minutes I came to see them as merely a device to move the characters towards new directions.   Even so, the show eventually began to suck so bad that I had to swear it off for good.   The season after I quit, it reached even new heights of popularity.   I hear there's a spin off now.    The real tragedy is that its success is spawning other zombie-related projects, in TV, movies and even books.  I was searching for some summer reading and googled "Best Horror Books of 2014" or some list like that and it was one zombie book after another.    Very discouraging.

Okay, so my contributions to the list:

 

Farscape

Babylon 5

 

I like sci-fi a lot, but I have always felt an inexplicable aversion to these shows.    I have no reason that can be put into words.   I have never seen an episode of either one.

[HalcyonDays]

Anyway, despite that one comic book and that one TV exception?  I still hate Zombie stuff, even most of it sight unseen.

 

*gasp!* Sacrilege, Kromm and millenium, sacrilege!! *grin*

 

More shows I hate....anything about couples have huge numbers of babies or many numbers of wives. I do not get the appeal of the Jon/Kate + Eight, the Duggars and I want to slap the guy with the many wives. And how come there is no My Five Husbands, dammit!

 

Confession though - I get a kick out of reading about the behind-the-scenes drama, messed up lives and the terrible/arrogant/dickish behaviour of these people (hello Kate Gosselin and Duggars).

 

I know a lot of people like these kind of shows (evidence, active forums and many seasons) but I just revolt at the idea behind them. *shrug*

[ABay]

Can I join the zombie-hating table? I don't understand the appeal at all. In spite of deep loathing for all things zombie, I watched a few episodes of The Walking Dead because an actor I like was on it but not even my fondness for him could make me sit through more zombies.

 

I hope the plethora of zombies infecting popular culture will go away soon and take the fascination with post-apocalyptic hellscapes with them.

[Guest]

I have an abiding dislike for shows that are such critical darlings that they win all the awards year after year.  So despite never watching them, I don't like Modern Family, Veep, Breaking Bad, etc.

[Kromm]

I can make an exception though for things they're kind of CALLING Zombies that really aren't.  iZombie seems to mostly fall in that category. If you treat a Zombie more like a Vampire than a Zombie, then it's kind of a Vampire.

[Snowprince]

The Tracy Morgan Show (2003). The pre-premiere promo's convinced me to stay far, far away. Apparently I wasn't alone, cancelled after 16 episodes (two more were in the can but never aired).

Edited July 16, 2015 by Snowprince

[cpcathy]

I hate Veep and have not seen it, even once.

I can't stand that Julia Louis Dreyfus is now the cornerstone of sitcom actresses.

[Danny Franks]

Breaking Bad, because I'm sick to death of people yammering about how incredible it is and idolising a drug dealer. Not anything close to being something I want to watch. If one more person tells me I've just got to watch it, I'm going to kick them in the shin.

 

All the zombie shows. Because zombies are boring. How did everyone start believing they were super awesome cool? I just don't get it. What is so amazing about them? I did watch the first two seasons of The Walking Dead, but by the end of that, I was sick and tired of the zombies and the humans in it.

 

Any sort of competition based 'reality' TV nonsense. Dancing, singing, modelling, baking, sewing (yes, really. There's a sewing one on the BBC). It's all just the cheapest of cheap drama, and so much of it is manufactured by people assigned to play certain roles anyway. Who cares whether some arrogant shit sucks up to Alan Sugar enough to get a crappy job shilling his crappy products?

 

The Big Bang Theory. My god, I hate those unfunny, unsophisticated, 'we've got a laugh track to tell you when something's funny, because we don't trust you to get it... and also because it's actually not really funny anyway' sitcoms that become hugely successful for no real reason other than viewer laziness. I particularly hate this one, because everything I've ever read about it tells me that it's not a show for geeks, but a show making fun of geeks, and generating laughs at their expense. Now, I have seen a few clips of this show, but never a whole episode. Each clip has been painfully, embarrassingly unfunny and miserable, yet is still accompanied by whoops of fake laughter. Plus, if I see that pucker-faced twerp who plays the main one (the one who always wears comic book t-shirts) on my TV screen, I instantly change the channel.

[Chaos Theory]

This is a weird category for me; one that I don't particularly understand.  Hating a show you have never watched.  There are shows that I don't have any particular need or want to watch and my reasons are sometimes complicated and sometimes they are simply a matter of "Just don't wanna."   

 

True story. had little or no interest to watch Sons of Anarchy or Spartacus when they both started   (Too much testosterone on both) but I am a fan of Katey Segal and Lucy Lawless so I gave both a shot.   Boy am I glad I did.  I ended up loving both.

 

So that is kinda the reason why I don't write off shows for general principals.  At least not dramas anyway.  

 

There are a few however that I do tend to not want to watch.  I am pissed at NBC for canceling Hannibal so I keep threatening to not watch any of their lineup this fall but I am weak so who knows how long that will last especially if any of their new shows turn out to be good.    I

Edited July 16, 2015 by Chaos Theory

[Shannon L.]

 

Breaking Bad, because I'm sick to death of people yammering about how incredible it is and idolising a drug dealer.

I'm sorry, but this is a statement I will forever disagree with.  Maybe some fans idolized him (although, all I ever heard about was the great acting, directing, etc), but seriously, I thought it was one fascinating, yet depressing, ugly look at how *% up those people became.  However, I never tell anyone that they have to watch it.  My husband hated it and stopped watching after 4 episodes.  It's depressing and sad and violent and, while a few people garnered the rare moment of sympathy from me, there was no one to root for and that made it hard for some people to watch.  Did I like it?  Yes--I agree with the nods to acting, directing, etc, but I'm not going to go on and on about how someone "has to see it!!"

Edited July 17, 2015 by Shannon L.

[Guest]

I'm sorry, but this is a statement I will forever disagree with. 

 

Maybe you are talking about the former, but the yammering about how Breaking Bad was the best show that ever was and the places you can stream it is ceaseless and unavoidable.  Enough already.

[Shannon L.]

 

I'm sorry, but this is a statement I will forever disagree with.

Maybe you are talking about the former, but the yammering about how Breaking Bad was the best show that ever was and the places you can stream it is ceaseless and unavoidable.  Enough already.

Sorry, I should clarify.  I disagree with the notion that the show "idolized" a drug dealer.  I can relate to hating the yammering about how good it was because I'm sick of hearing about Game of Thrones, even though I'm well into the first season right now. 

[Chaos Theory]

Sorry, I should clarify. I disagree with the notion that the show "idolized" a drug dealer. I can relate to hating the yammering about how good it was because I'm sick of hearing about Game of Thrones, even though I'm well into the first season right now.

The show never idolized Walter White. It actually did the opposite. From the start it showed a brilliant man who could have done brilliant things but his hubris kept getting in the way. Even as a drug dealer he was never satisfied. Every time something punched against his ego he reacted exponentially.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Chaos Theory

[bmasters9]

That's me with Everyone Loves Raymond. I have no reason to hate it, but I cringe at every commercial. I also have an irrational hatred for Patricia Heaton, though, I'm not sure if I've ever watched anything she's been in and can't name any reason that she irks me.

 

I found it incredibly unfunny when it was originally on, and because I did, it will never be in my DVD collection. I'm not wasting money on something that I didn't find funny to begin with, and this is such a thing. 

I know this is Sacrilegious to say but for me it's:

Golden Girls

As soon as I hear the first note I have got to change the channel, Stat! Never seen more than one minute of the show but for some reason I have an irrational hatred for it! Maybe it's the cult following of it that annoys me (I'm a diehard I Love Lucy Fan so I understand the sentiment), or the bright, dated scenery? Something about it....

That title track is just as bad as that of Friends, IMO. Not just that, but I strongly dislike the show (don't know the reason or reasons why, though). 

[cpcathy]

You're not alone, I despise the Golden Girls.

[Chaos Theory]

I think I got one.  I never watched Seinfeld but have a weird hatred for it and I am not sure why.  I think it was because when people explained it to me "a show about nothing" it kinda annoyed me with its pretentiousness which is ironic as hell because I love some of the most pretentious dramas on TV.  

 

Also Friends.  Never watched it.  Hate it anyway.  Can't tell you exactly why.  

Edited July 18, 2015 by Chaos Theory

[Danny Franks]

Sorry, I should clarify. I disagree with the notion that the show "idolized" a drug dealer. I can relate to hating the yammering about how good it was because I'm sick of hearing about Game of Thrones, even though I'm well into the first season right now.

Oh, I'm aware that the show's content didn't glorify Walter White, and that the point of it was to see a man's fall into darkness. Sadly, most people who have told me to watch it seemed to have missed that point, rather astoundingly.

All I kept hearing was about how badass Walter was, and all the ruthless, vile things he did were painted as cool. But, given the way the Heisenberg merchandise has been marketed, I won't give the show or network a complete pass either. It's presented as cool and edgy.

[kiddo82]

Kinda the same way Tony Montana is seen as some sort of folk hero today.

[Chaos Theory]

People like mobster stories. For the record I am one of them. Not that I find them edgy or that they glorify violence; I like them because they show the darker side of life. I've said this on other boards (hell I might if even said it on this one) I like a good downward spiral and mob stories usually guarantee a good one.

[Shannon L.]

 

All I kept hearing was about how badass Walter was, and all the ruthless, vile things he did were painted as cool. But, given the way the Heisenberg merchandise has been marketed, I won't give the show or network a complete pass either. It's presented as cool and edgy.

I wondered if that might be it.  It was edgy, but just because of the type of story they were telling--the premise is one that I think is original, but there are plenty of shows I don't watch, so maybe I'm wrong.  A lot of what I was hearing was from our movie/tv industry friends, so it was all about the artistic aspects of it:  the writing, the acting, directing, etc.  Whenever my husband said he wasn't watching it because there was no one to root for, they all agreed that the characters were horrible people and it was depressing, then go on and on about the technical aspect of it. 

[Chaos Theory]

To be honest hating something because people tell you you just have to watch it never made sense to me.   The only thing this actually accomplishes is missing out on quality television.  I understanding wanting to be a nonconformist.  There is a certain appeal to it but what good does it do when you miss out on a show that you actually would have loved?  That being said there are plenty of shows you would never have liked anyway for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with popular and/or critical appeal.    In my case they happen to be most comedies.  Right now the only two comedies I watch are the Big Bang Theory and Moms.  Ironcially both are Chucke Lorre comedies and both are pretty good.     Not liking a drama is a bit more of a stretch and I have given most at least a chance to impress me.  Most I will eventually watch a couple of episodes before I write them off.  It is most comedies that I don;t bother with because comedies are the ones I tend to not like anyway no matter how much critical acclaim they might get.  

[ShellSeeker]

Grey's Anatomy. I watched about 10 seconds of one episode and found it so awful that I had to turn it off. The dialogue was just terrible. Something about "choose me, pick me, love me." Made me want to throw up.

[panthergirl13]

Criminal Minds and pretty much any other CBS procedural. My sister loves this stuff and has told me I *have* to watch it because I like dark, gritty stuff on cable. I got through about 15 minutes of CM and that was enough for me. 

 

Everybody Loves Raymond is another one she lurrrrrves and I won't watch. But I do have a funny ELR story: a few years back I was planning a trip to Italy with my boyfriend who was just 'meh' about the whole thing. I complained to my sister that I wanted him to be more into it, and was worried the trip would be a disaster. She said "Oh no... there's an episode of 'Raymond' where that happens and when they all get to Italy he loves it!!" Fast forward 2 months and we are in Positano. I turn around and who is standing next to me? Ray Romano. No shit.

[MaryMitch]

I've never watched "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette". But I hate them because (a) my sister and niece talk about it all the time, (b) they are all over the magazines, taking up space, and © the whole idea of it is distasteful to me.  My sis has tried to get me to watch, but I just can't/won't.

[TaraS1]

All of you who hate The Golden Girls are withered little Sicilian geckos who can blow it out your vertoovenhoovens. :-)

There are tons of popular shows that I'll never watch because they don't interest me (Walking Dead, Big Bang, etc.), but shows that I *hate* and will never watch? Gilmore Girls and Parenthood. If Lauren Graham's in it, I don't need to see a second of it to know I loathe it.

Also, Scandal and Good Wife. I hate shows with insanely overrated lead actresses.

[zxy556575]

Arrested Development - I might have watched except that it it seemed to attract all the pretentious people who usually demur that they "never watch TV" but that this was so good it was worth their precious time. Never have and never will watch one minute.

 

Lost - Just echh with your plane crash and mystical events and only focusing on maybe 8 people even though there were a considerably larger number of initial survivors. I particularly hate that I know all this despite never watching any of it. The pervasive, unavoidable overload of cultural information made me crazy.

 

The Apprentice - Regular or celebrity and solely because of Trump. I watch and enjoy a lot of junk TV and don't begrudge others their favorites, but this one actually made me angry that it existed for years and years.

Edited July 28, 2015 by lordonia

[selkie]

I wish the Martha Stewart Apprentice season had gotten better ratings because I discovered that I really like the concept of the show if Donald Trump isn't present. I wonder if Bethenny Frankel would have been as successful as she has been f she had won that season.

Edited July 27, 2015 by selkie

[whatsatool]

I'm a PBS camper but I can't sit through Father Brown.

[QueerGirrl]

Ray Donovan  I don't think I'm going to make it thru season 3 at this point.  There is not one person that isn't insufferable on that show!  The three people I like (Lena, Avi and Terry) have less screen time and not even Jon Voight's Mickey can't keep me focused enough.

[partofme]

Mad Men  I watched the first 4 episodes but it was way too boring.

[bmasters9]

Seinfeld - stupid sellfish people acting stupid and selfish.

That was the whole point of why I never liked Seinfeld, and why I strongly feel that the DVD releases of the same (seasonal or otherwise) would be an incredible waste of money for me.

[lavenderblue]

I would have gone for more of Martha's Apprentice. It wasn't without its inanity, like Hateful Jim (TM Keckler's TWoP recaps), but the tasks were kind of fun. Some of the contestants even had a genuine interest in doing the sort of job they were competing to win, like my favorite from the show, Marcela Valladolid, who now has a successful career on Food Network and her own Safeway product line.

 

The Celebrity concept for the show, though, has always put me off and would with any host, and this is the "show I've never watched [except for one desperate evening] but hate anyway." I know there's an ostensible charitable aspect, but as a piece of entertainment, I prefer the suspended-disbelief of the business competition aspect over the other baggage the celebrity angle brings.

Edited July 30, 2015 by lavenderblue

[Hybridcookie]

Life Unexpected - It's an older show now (from 2010) and I'm watching it on for the first time on Netlfix, and I like most of the cast (Shiri Appleby (who I used to hate, but who has won my over after Unreal), Britt Robertson, Ksenia Solo, Kerr Smith), I want to like it, but I can't stand Baze, and the more I watch, the more off-putting he becomes, and it drags down my enjoyment. I'm quitting at episode 8 (the one with the car)

 

If there's anyone out there who watched the whole show, please tell me that Cate and Baze didn't end up together!

 

ETA: And I've just read that Emma Caulfield and Landon Liboiron are in Season 2. Luckily Season 2 isn't on Netflix or they might have sucked me back in

Edited August 25, 2015 by Hybridcookie

[ByTor]

Parenthood.  I have never seen a show where every single character is intolerable.  OK...not only is Jabbar  tolerable, but speaking as one who is not a "kid person", if all kids were like Jabbar I'd have a dozen of them. 

[Jaded]

Parenthood.  I have never seen a show where every single character is intolerable.  OK...not only is Jabbar  tolerable, but speaking as one who is not a "kid person", if all kids were like Jabbar I'd have a dozen of them. 

I tried giving the show a chance so many times. I watched the first couple of seasons pretty much then it seemed like everyone became incredibly annoying to me. Jabbar was the most tolerable though. He rarely got on my nerves. After the 2nd season I'd try and watch one, two or three episodes in a row and then stop again. I even tried watching all of the last season since it was going off the air but couldn't make it through that either. I know some people raved about it and i wanted to like it so much more because there were so many people in the cast that I had enjoyed from other shows.

[DeLurker]

Parks and Recreation - a show that looks pretty good on paper, but it never engaged me despite repeatedly trying.  It may be Amy Poehler - I don't hate her but maybe she's not the right person to build a show around for me.  I kinda like the rest of the cast.

[Demented Daisy]

Daredevil.  I heard so much about how good it is, how much better it is than the other superhero shows, so I was curious.  I didn't even make it to the end of the first season.  So very bored.  Even when Vincent D'Onofrio showed up as Kingpin, I was underwhelmed.

 

Although, some of that might have to do with the fact I had just finished up Sense8.  A whole lot of shows will pale in comparison, IMO.

[ChaseMCP]

Bob's Burgers. I won't say I hate the show, because I don't, but I've watched it a couple times and I'm not feeling it. I just can't get past the two female characters who obviously have male voices, it's too distracting. It's still something I'll put on in the background occasionally, just in case it draws my interest at some point, but I'm not seeing it happen anytime soon. 

 

Archer. Another show I'm still sort-of trying but haven't gotten into. Sometimes I'll laugh at it, but I guess it's too...out there, maybe? As with Bob's Burgers, I'll keep Archer on in the background because I want to give it a chance, but nothing so far. And I watch South Park too, so I have nothing against these types of cartoons. I guess they're just not fitting me. 

[TheGreenKnight]

Most of the ones that come to mind are comedies: Seinfield, Friends, Cheers, How I Met Your Mother. I guess I'll chalk that up to everyone laughs at different things. The funny thing is I hated Frasier for the longest time, but finally forced myself to try it out. It took almost two seasons worth of episodes, but I love it now. Cheers didn't end up with the same happy ending.

[bmasters9]

Most of the ones that come to mind are comedies: Seinfield, Friends, Cheers, How I Met Your Mother. I guess I'll chalk that up to everyone laughs at different things. The funny thing is I hated Frasier for the longest time, but finally forced myself to try it out. It took almost two seasons worth of episodes, but I love it now. Cheers didn't end up with the same happy ending.

Per Frasier: I had not seen it in-depth before (meaning that I didn't get that involved in watching it before), but I may try it sometime in the future. Two of the first four you mentioned (Seinfeld and Friends specifically): I had seen episodes before and decided that they weren't for me, for reasons unknown. 

[amensisterfriend]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who remained strangely immune to Friends' charms! 

 

Speaking of sitcoms: the critically revered, cult favorite Arrested Development. There's stuff I like about it, but you're supposed to flat out LOVE it and think it's one of the very greatest things ever to grace our screens, and I just can't bring myself to adore it like I should. I tend to prefer clever, observational, dialogue-based wit, and AD has way too much ridiculous over-the-top silliness, slapstick, sexual innuendo about as subtle as a bulldozer, goofy puns, physical 'comedy' etc. for my personal taste. For all the talk about how it's too "smart" for most audiences to have appreciated, I actually think large portions of the show are embarrassingly dumb. The show also gets praised lavishly for its 'callbacks' and "continuity", and while some of that is deserved, it sometimes feels like that's an awfully positive way to spin the fact that the show self-indulgently repeats itself over and over. Some of the same storylines, "jokes", etc. get trotted out ad nauseam to the point where even the stuff that was mildly funny to begin with start to becomes deeply annoying. And some of it was NEVER funny IMO, just random and dumb. Good for the show for recalling its own previous scripts and everything, but that doesn't mean I want to actually watch and hear the same exact material again and again, you know?! And then there's the maddeningly frequent, intrusive, mostly superfluous narration, where Ron Howard feels compelled to explicitly spell out the stuff that even my five-year-old nephew can tell is happening on screen at that moment: "Michael walked in to find his sister Lindsay eating lunch..." Admittedly, I'm not a narration fan in general, but I don't think it ever irks me more than it does on AD. I feel like it somehow makes the show less funny for me (and more annoying) than it would have been otherwise. And to cap it off, AD is one of those shows you usually can't criticize to any degree without getting pounced on and accused of having no sense of humor or just "not getting it", which is always a pet peeve of mine :) 

[Shannon L.]

 

For all the talk about how it's too "smart" for most audiences to have appreciated, I actually think large portions of the show are embarrassingly dumb.

As a die hard fan of Arrested Development (until Netflix got hold of it. bleh), and one who loved RH's narrations, I cringed whenever someone said this because it was bull. I know very smart people who I would never recommend watch it because it simply wasn't their type of comedy. 

 

The show also gets praised lavishly for its 'callbacks' and "continuity", and while some of that is deserved, it sometimes feels like that's an awfully positive way to spin the fact that the show self-indulgently repeats itself over and over.

Personally, I think the call backs and continuity was part of its problem.  As a fan, I thought most of it was clever, but admit that It was so ripe with continuity, that newcomers couldn't really start mid season and catch on. 

 

 

And some of it was NEVER funny IMO, just random and dumb.

I liked a lot of the jokes (of course--I'm a fan), but a couple of them, like that damned chicken dance thing they did, really were downright stupid.

 

I rarely try to push someone into watching a comedy, anyway.  I tell them what I like and why and leave it at that. 

[Danny Franks]

Parks and Recreation - a show that looks pretty good on paper, but it never engaged me despite repeatedly trying.  It may be Amy Poehler - I don't hate her but maybe she's not the right person to build a show around for me.  I kinda like the rest of the cast.

 

I caught part of an episode of this show the other day. I watched the first season ages ago, and thought it was crap. I watched some of the second season, and thought it was no better. I'm tired of people telling me how amazing it will one day become, if I just stick with it for long enough. I watched about fifteen minutes of this episode with my girlfriend, where there's a three-legged dog and Rob Lowe is trying to encourage a guy with silly hair to stop being pathetic. Neither of us laughed once. It is painfully bad. The only way it could be worse would be if there was a laugh track. How was this show ever compared favourably to Community?

 

I managed a single episode of Fargo, before deciding not to bother with the rest. I have no time to waste on shows without any redeeming characters. I doubt I'll ever get why Martin Freeman is so popular either. He is the very definition of bland.

[amensisterfriend]

Parks and Recreation - a show that looks pretty good on paper, but it never engaged me despite repeatedly trying.  It may be Amy Poehler - I don't hate her but maybe she's not the right person to build a show around for me.  I kinda like the rest of the cast.

I caught part of an episode of this show the other day. I watched the first season ages ago, and thought it was crap. I watched some of the second season, and thought it was no better. I'm tired of people telling me how amazing it will one day become, if I just stick with it for long enough. I watched about fifteen minutes of this episode with my girlfriend, where there's a three-legged dog and Rob Lowe is trying to encourage a guy with silly hair to stop being pathetic. Neither of us laughed once. It is painfully bad. The only way it could be worse would be if there was a laugh track.

 

Ha! I think Parks is a sweet mood lifter and I grew to like many of the characters and the way the show is among the very few to depict such happy and healthy romantic relationships, but I have to admit that I find it one of the least funny "comedies" ever. The humor ranges from painfully dopey/goofy/silly to all but nonexistent. I get that the show prides itself on not being mean spirited, but that's no reason why it couldn't be witty.

 

Shannon L., I loved your post so much. I wish all AD fans had your amazing attitude! And, yes, humor really is so wildly subjective, which is why I try never to be offended when people don't find the same shows funny or unfunny :) 

[ChromaKelly]

Louie. And I'm a big fan of Louis CK. I've seen him live, I watch all his specials, I record every talk show he's on. But I really can't stand the show Louie. I tried. I thought maybe I wasn't in the mood for it, maybe I need to binge watch them. Nope. It feels like work. It's a little too cringe-inducing. The only part I like is the bit of stand up he does.

[bmasters9]

Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I don't know if it's just me or it's the way that first-season DVD release was set up (double-sided discs, no chapter stops within the episodes [each one being a solid 25-min. block or so]), but to me, this anthology series that was first on CBS and then went to NBC does not hold up for me and is incredibly boring. The minutes just seemed to crawl by.

 

M Squad holds up far better for me than Hitchcock did, not only because of what Lee Marvin did as Lt. Frank Ballinger, but because each half-hour episode (generally close to 25 min. w/o commercials, although one was just over 20) has far more action than talk, IME. In fact, that and Perry Mason are the only two 50s shows that hold up for me. 

[GreekGeek]

Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I don't know if it's just me or it's the way that first-season DVD release was set up (double-sided discs, no chapter stops within the episodes [each one being a solid 25-min. block or so]), but to me, this anthology series that was first on CBS and then went to NBC does not hold up for me and is incredibly boring. The minutes just seemed to crawl by.

 

 

I like the show OK, but it's probably better to pick and choose the episodes than to try watching them all. A surprising number deal with husbands killing/trying to kill wives, or wives doing likewise. It's a neat underside of 1950's domesticity, but it does get repetitious. The best part for me is seeing late great A-list stars, or people who later became A-list stars.