Party of One: Unpopular TV Opinions

[tearknee]

Buffy Davis should have remained the only Buffy.

Ditto Opie Taylor compared to Opie of WNEW-FM 20-odd years ago.

Anissa Jones was a far better person than SMG IMO in both character and admirability.

[Raja]

5 minutes ago, tearknee said:

Buffy Davis should have remained the only Buffy.

Ditto Opie Taylor compared to Opie of WNEW-FM 20-odd years ago.

 

Something in the back of my mind is saying Eddie Murphy tagged him as Opie Cunningham on SNL

[Spartan Girl]

46 minutes ago, JustHereForFood said:

Oh, yes. See also many shows/movies about the mob where people excuse them with "Oh, but they do it for their family", "They are such a close family", etc. Who cares? The people they hurt have families too.

 

IMO, Joyce was lowkey retconned into this supermom once they decided to kill her off. And apparently some sort of mother figure to the other kids, which just didn't work with the previous seasons. Sure, there was the Dawn retcon, so she might have been more involved in the new reality, but we remember the original one and she wasn't that.

 

 

I think it was very telling that in the new reality Buffy distinctly remembered Joyce never using any endearments for her as a child whereas Dawn was Joyce’s Little Pumpkin Belly. Clear case of playing favorites.

And right before she went into surgery, Joyce’s priority was asking Buffy to take care of Dawn and telling her how important Dawn was to herself, despite knowing by this point that Dawn wasn’t her real daughter. Which wouldn’t have bothered me if she spent equal time telling Buffy how important she was to herself: it was all just “you’re strong and you can do it.” Again, playing favorites. Maybe I’m nitpicking and being overly critical about Joyce, but it feels dishonest that the show pretended that Joyce was a perfect Scooby mother after she died when in reality she was much more flawed and made a lot of mistakes.

[tearknee]

Lots of things about you are forgotten after you take your final breath.

[scarynikki12]

I wonder where the Perfect Mom Joyce thing came from because the show did a good job of presenting her as very much not that in the first two seasons. She loved Buffy and wanted her to have a good life but she also left Buffy alone a lot due to her job. Leaving Buffy alone worked for dealing with demons and not having to worry about her mom (until the plot required it) but it also showed her not having a great support system for the non-Slayer parts of her life. Joyce cared about whether Buffy was doing well in school but also made no effort to make sure she was actually doing the work to get good grades (to be fair, this is a trait every tv parent shares). The biggest example of Joyce not being a Perfect Mom was her finally learning about demons and Buffy being the Slayer and reacting to it by throwing her out of the house. In the first two seasons the show was aware of Joyce's failings and used that for characterization and story progression but that went away starting in season 3. Season 3 is also when Buffy's dad, who was like Joyce in that he loved her but had his own parental failings, went from long distance father to full on doesn't care about his daughter abandoner so I wonder if there was a connection.

Anyway, Joyce throwing Buffy out of the house could have led to a really interesting story. How does a parent come back from that kind of action? Can they have a relationship again and what would that look like? The show loved playing with demons as metaphors (high school is Hell being the main one) so it's not like it wouldn't have fit the premise. Joyce finding out about Buffy and demons was intentionally presented as a Coming Out metaphor but the fallout was mainly about how Joyce Feels Bad and the Scoobies' anger at Buffy abandoning them. Buffy's feelings were mostly centered on her trauma and guilt over killing Angel and less on her guilt over Willow's attack, Giles' torture, and how completely alone she was when she struck that killing blow. Joyce was shown to regret her action but she also made no move to find Buffy and apologize. When she woke up the next morning and found Buffy had come back only to get some things she was upset but, again, just sat there upset rather than take action to find her. She was very passive in all of this and then it got swept under the rug.

My UO related to Buffy leaving Sunnydale and then returning is I'd rather the show not have done the episode where everyone confronts each other if they weren't going to do it right. If they weren't going to do a real fallout to the season 2 finale, which should have been over the course of the season, then that should have been it. In the house party episode Buffy hears Joyce say she wished she hadn't come back yet Buffy is the bad guy for taking her at her word. Joyce is never in a position to explain herself and instead is allowed to get angry at Buffy for running away and then intending to do it again. The Scoobies are allowed to get angry at Buffy for running away but not allowed to actually ask what she was going through emotionally. Everyone fixated on Xander's "kick his ass" line, which I understand, but the bigger question for me is: did any of the Scoobies find out Joyce had kicked Buffy out of the house after learning she was the Slayer? I think Giles knew but I don't think the others did and that's a big piece of information they're missing. I hate that episode so I don't rewatch unless absolutely necessary so they all may have known and just taken Joyce's side (which would be worse).

The episode where Giles keeps asking Buffy for every detail of fighting and killing Angel so he can do a binding spell only to reveal to Willow there was never a spell was exactly how the season should have handled the fallout from season 2 finale. He knew Buffy was leaving something out about killing Angel, knew that detail was the last straw for her emotionally, and knew she needed to unburden herself but wouldn't if directly asked so he found a way to get her to open up. Imagine a season 3 with little moments like this sprinkled throughout. Instead Buffy was the bad guy, Joyce got away with being a bad mom, and the only fallout was centered on Angel. Missed opportunities all over the place.

[Affogato]

8 hours ago, JustHereForFood said:

 

IMO, Joyce was lowkey retconned into this supermom once they decided to kill her off. And apparently some sort of mother figure to the other kids, which just didn't work with the previous seasons. Sure, there was the Dawn retcon, so she might have been more involved in the new reality, but we remember the original one and she wasn't that.

 

 

I don’t remember supermom. I remember her work was a focus for her, but I bet it needed to be. Buffy was partially remarkable because the characters were real people.  Flawed, and some times they overcame their flaws and sometimes their flawd defined them and sometimes that wasn’t bad. So of course she wasn’t perfect. 

Edited November 1 by Affogato

[Chaos Theory]

I might have said this before but my UO is the first season of any show  is never really a good litmus for the show.  It is the second season that determines what the show is going to be and if it has the potential to be a long running show or just a flash in the pan.    

[tribeca]

Modern family a lot fan’s hated Hailey’s ending storyline.   Alex ending storyline was my least favorite.   She constantly in her sister’s shadow and now she ends up dating her sister’s ex boyfriend and not even a good ex boyfriend.   

[scarynikki12]

I've been watching the earliest available seasons of Law & Order on Peacock* and I think the deeply hated Serena and Borgia are perfectly fine characters. L&O started dipping in quality around the ten year anniversary and that's my issue rather than the characters. It's also why I think the Claire Kincaid years are so beloved. Not because Claire herself was so far above the other second chair ADAs but because the material she had was far above what was given to the subsequent characters. 

*They finally got Homicide available to stream so we need NBC to get with the game and give us Ben Stone, Claire Kincaid, and Lenny's early years as well.

[kathyk2]

5 minutes ago, scarynikki12 said:

I've been watching the earliest available seasons of Law & Order on Peacock* and I think the deeply hated Serena and Borgia are perfectly fine characters. L&O started dipping in quality around the ten year anniversary and that's my issue rather than the characters. It's also why I think the Claire Kincaid years are so beloved. Not because Claire herself was so far above the other second chair ADAs but because the material she had was far above what was given to the subsequent characters. 

*They finally got Homicide available to stream so we need NBC to get with the game and give us Ben Stone, Claire Kincaid, and Lenny's early years as well.

I liked Serena I couldn't stand Authur Branch Fred Dalton Thompson played himself. I've never understood the hatred for the only female detective on Law and Order she wasn't given a chance to improve. Olvia Benson wasn't great when she debuted.

[Jaded]

19 hours ago, kathyk2 said:

I liked Serena I couldn't stand Authur Branch Fred Dalton Thompson played himself. I've never understood the hatred for the only female detective on Law and Order she wasn't given a chance to improve. Olvia Benson wasn't great when she debuted.

I loathed the "Beauty Queen" shit surrounding the first female detective. It was like they purposely made it to where the audience would hopefully get sick of her as a character.

[Raja]

2 hours ago, Jaded said:

I loathed the "Beauty Queen" shit surrounding the first female detective. It was like they purposely made it to where the audience would hopefully get sick of her as a character.

That the Lieutenant introduced her with hostility and the story that she got a golden ticket for winning a gunfight so without any experience to paraphrase another Lieutenant from Homicide: Life on the Street joined the elite investigators of the department left me asking what the point was. Was Dick Wolf pointing to absurdity  the old NYPD thing of promoting someone because they killed in the line of duty as something?

That 3 of the other 5 L&O franchise shows had mixed gender partners makes you wonder that why on the mothership, and the Los Angeles copy only had the gunfighter beauty queen in decades of seasons.

[DXD526]

Van Buren hated the Beauty Queen from the start, and never gave her a break. She never looked comfortable on the show. It was like she was put there as a love-to-hate-her character. It was weird. 

It can't be difficult to create a female detective for the Mothership who would be likable. I wonder why they haven't tried? 

[Raja]

1 hour ago, DXD526 said:

Van Buren hated the Beauty Queen from the start, and never gave her a break. She never looked comfortable on the show. It was like she was put there as a love-to-hate-her character. It was weird. 

It can't be difficult to create a female detective for the Mothership who would be likable. I wonder why they haven't tried? 

It's like they decided since the Lieutenant and ADA will always be women of two generations the men had to be left with something 

[scarynikki12]

I've gotten to the Cassidy episodes and the whole Detective Beauty Queen insult/nickname would make way more sense if she was shown to care about that stuff. The actor they hired is attractive but, other than keeping her hair down, looks like a normal woman cop. If they'd made her up to look like Carrie Underwood, Christina Aguilera, or Kim Kardashian (in other words: three feet of makeup, designer clothes, and not a hair out of place) then the nickname would make sense. Instead it seemed like the nickname, and subsequent derision, was purely because she was a woman. As there was no follow through about sexism in the NYPD I think it was just another reason the show wasn't very good after the first ten years.

[Raja]

3 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

I've gotten to the Cassidy episodes and the whole Detective Beauty Queen insult/nickname would make way more sense if she was shown to care about that stuff. The actor they hired is attractive but, other than keeping her hair down, looks like a normal woman cop. If they'd made her up to look like Carrie Underwood, Christina Aguilera, or Kim Kardashian (in other words: three feet of makeup, designer clothes, and not a hair out of place) then the nickname would make sense. Instead it seemed like the nickname, and subsequent derision, was purely because she was a woman. As there was no follow through about sexism in the NYPD I think it was just another reason the show wasn't very good after the first ten years.

In the story the reason given was that Officer Beauty Queen was what the news media dubbed her after her shooting incident. And most nicknames are not the cool Top Gun names you want, but the BOB's, something the recipient would not like but now has to put up with. Today even coming from a woman Lieutenant it might come off as sexual harassment and saw LT Van Buren disciplined for using it. 

The detective herself looked no different from all of the Special Victims and Major Case Squad detectives, maybe except Julianne Nicholson's Megan Wheeler who nobody believed could be made as a cop when she was undercover

Edited November 25 by Raja

[andromeda331]

On 11/23/2024 at 6:30 PM, Jaded said:

I loathed the "Beauty Queen" shit surrounding the first female detective. It was like they purposely made it to where the audience would hopefully get sick of her as a character.

That's what the character felt like. They were pressured to cast a woman as detective and that's exactly what it felt like. 

[DXD526]

I think the big bust that led to Det. Beauty Queen's promotion was made in a beauty parlor. That's how she got the name. 

[BlueSkies]

The 1st time I watched Sons of Anarchy I really hated Clay.  

 

But now I kind of like him re-watching it all these years later.  

[Blergh]

My Golden Girls UO:

I wish just once someone pointed out to Dorothy that she had zilch liking for her ex Stan (for good reason) so she should have been relieved rather than jealous and obsessive whenever someone else was interested in him.

Also, would have LOVED it in the series finale when they had their last interaction, Dorothy had said something along the lines of him 'My life has been better  than ever since we split . Thus, even though you cowardly left me holding the bag, I've become grateful you ended  it which I should have done decades before when our kids were grown since our marriage stunk from Day One!'

[Bastet]

5 hours ago, Blergh said:

I wish just once someone pointed out to Dorothy that she had zilch liking for her ex Stan (for good reason) so she should have been relieved rather than jealous and obsessive whenever someone else was interested in him.

Her distorted reality makes sense, though; she was a teenager when he knocked her up, and she spent nearly 40 years married to him resulting from a terrible decision based on that fact.  She sees him for who he is and was, as the show opens, so she resents the hell out of him, but she's still affected by that extensive period of being partners and raising kids together and that - being her only reference - warps her response so many years later.

(I mean, mostly it's that '80s sitcoms had no shits to give about continuity, so if they wanted to do a story about Dorothy flipping out that Stan was getting married again, that would stand alone, but such storytelling of the time is still one of the cases where it works as presented.)

[Blergh]

4 hours ago, Bastet said:

Her distorted reality makes sense, though; she was a teenager when he knocked her up, and she spent nearly 40 years married to him resulting from a terrible decision based on that fact.  She sees him for who he is and was, as the show opens, so she resents the hell out of him, but she's still affected by that extensive period of being partners and raising kids together and that - being her only reference - warps her response so many years later.

(I mean, mostly it's that '80s sitcoms had no shits to give about continuity, so if they wanted to do a story about Dorothy flipping out that Stan was getting married again, that would stand alone, but such storytelling of the time is still one of the cases where it works as presented.)

Not an invalid possible MO on Dorothy's part by any means- and along with that I'm wondering if at least part of her resentment may have been that Stan actually DID what she had secretly wanted to have done herself for many years beforehand.

FWIW, I found it a bit telling that the length of their dysfunctional union (38 years) was the one bio detail for any of the Girls that NEVER changed in all the tellings.

[proserpina65]

On 11/23/2024 at 12:33 AM, scarynikki12 said:

It's also why I think the Claire Kincaid years are so beloved.

They are?  I didn't particularly like Claire.  I liked Paul Robinette the best.

On 11/23/2024 at 12:48 AM, kathyk2 said:

Olvia Benson wasn't great when she debuted.

And she only got worse as the seasons went by.  But the actress playing Detective Beauty Queen was horrible and never improved at all.  I am so glad they dumped her so quickly.

 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

6 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

But the actress playing Detective Beauty Queen was horrible and never improved at all.  I am so glad they dumped her so quickly.

For an actress, she's a pretty good director, though.

[GHScorpiosRule]

12 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

But the actress playing Detective Beauty Queen was horrible and never improved at all.  I am so glad they dumped her so quickly.

She really was. Milena Govich was just as bad/flat when she appeared as an arson investigator on Psych. James and Dulé  did all the lifting there.

8 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

For an actress, she's a pretty good director, though.

Just as Sophia Coppola SUCKS as an actress, but I hear she's a pretty good director. Well, her first appearance as Connie's second baby BOY was good during the christening scene in Godfather I.

Whaaat?

[Danny Franks]

My girlfriend is watching Rivals, the adaptation of a crappy, 80s smut novel. And... ew.

It seems the main romance is between a woman in her early 20s and a slimy womaniser who looks older than her dad, and one of their first "tender" moments is him tucking her into bed like a child, after apparently proving he's a good man by not groping her while they danced together.

It's the worst kind of "I can fix him" fantasising about bad boy "cads" who secretly have hearts of gold. 

Also, he's a Thatcherite politician who tells another woman "good girl" for saying she voted for Reagan. And there's a theme of lefties in the media needing to be put in their place by him. Of course, it was written in the 80s by a woman who grew up rich. Who else could be the hero?