Overrated/Underraated Live action TV

Holy necro thread, Batman!

OVERRATED: Glee (I guess I never was a huge fan of musicals in general unless they actually progress the story), The Big Bang Theory (there were some episodes I enjoyed, but I do think that it's praised too much), American Idol (It was okay for the first few seasons, but then it just got too repetitive for me) and Two and a half men (I just never got into that show).

UNDERRATED: The Journey of Allen Strange (Sadly, this show was always overlooked on Nickelodeon), Animorphs (another show that was heavily overlooked on Nickelodeon) and Strange Days at Blake Holsey High (unless you've seen the Discovery Kids Channel, chances are you probably wouldn't know what this show is all about).

edited 3rd Jun '14 1:09:50 AM by Rabbitearsblog

The Animorphs TV show was awful. Cheap, waaaaaaaaay watered down from the books (There's not a book that goes by where someone isn't disemboweled, decapitated, or otherwise mutilated), and much lighter in tone in a bad way.

I second the mention of Sex and the City on the previous page. I think the movies tainted the opinion of the show somewhat, but the show is still fantastic. And I've never gotten the hate from men that this show gets, because it seems like most of it has been flung at the show without even having watched the show before. Seriously, it's four women doing pretty much nothing but talking about sex, writing about sex, and all well done and well written (as per HBO standards). By my accounts, men should love it, but they don't because they think it's nothing but "girly stuff" which is far from the truth in my opinion.

Also, overrated : Game of Thrones. And I get a lot of flak for that but I just can't get into this show. Despite the few good characters, despite the production values, despite the decent writing, all of it is boring to hell to me anyway. But I know I'm a very small minority on this.

The Journey of Allen Strange is so underrated that I can't find it at all on the internet, legally or otherwise. Not even used releases for sale secondhand. I am really disappointed.

edited 3rd Jun '14 7:28:09 PM by Ayasugi

I find it disappointing also. It's like Nickelodeon doesn't even think that The Journey of Allen Strange exists anymore, even though it was a pretty good show in its own right.

Never got the appeal of Dollhouse.

Agents of Shield is underrated. It goes from kind of generic to pretty good, but everyone calls it awful. It's more than the sum of its parts.

Hannibal is way underrated. For its quality and all the acclaim the critics gave it, it really should have a bigger audience than it does.

edited 5th Jun '14 7:39:28 AM by Sisi

Never cottoned to Allen Strage but yeah ''Blake Holsey High was seriously underrated.

Haven't decided if Faking It is underrated or not. Will depend on whether or not it gets a second season.

im with laura in agent of shield being underated, while a little slow i think they deserved a lot much

also the blacklist in underated, even here in tv tropes i barely get atenttion, is a big shame

Overrated: Firefly,It has a rapid cult fanbase and is considered to be THE example of Too Good to Last and it's unbelievably mediocre.

Underrated:Happy Endings. 3 seasons and people don't seem to know that it exist.

I'll back you up on Firefly. I don't know how bad of an intro to the series Serenity is, but it turned me off of all these characters.

Hmm. I always said I was gonna watch Firefly because people still want it to be uncanceled after over a decade so it must be good. I'll have to keep this in mind.

Firefly's actually pretty OK, but yeah it's not the second coming of Christ like its fans would have you believe. Serenity, oh the other hand, is total shit and a really terrible entry point to the series. So if you didn't like Serenity, you still might like Firefly.

I don't agree that Agents Of Shield is underrated - people say it's terrible because it is terrible. In contrast to Firefly, most of the characters only have one significant trait - there's the science people who talk too fast and use technobabble and are hopeless in a fight; the Big Guy who doesn't work well with others okay, there's a twist with that one, the Asian woman who's good at martial arts; the friendly hacker with a Mysterious Past; and the Team Dad leader guy. (And don't get me started about them turning Coulson into a rebellious type; his appeal in the movies was that he was the consummate bureaucrat, a guy who would complete his mission and have the correct forms filed on time and in triplicate.) And that's about it. Towards the end of the series the show starts maybe trying to give them more characteristics than those base-level ones, but not very much. The dialogue is dull and forced, the relationships are unconvincing, the plots of many episodes are nonsensical, and the team is all-too-often completely incompetent despite the show being about the supposedly top members of an elite-level organization.

Firefly is a good show - the characters, dialogue, and world (Space Western style) are all engaging, and it's great fun to watch. In contrast with, say, Agents Of Shield, the characters have multiple facets to their personality right from the start - Kaylee is a mechanic who's typically covered in grease, but also likes to dress up in pretty things when she has the chance; is extremely friendly, cheerful, optimistic, and trusting; and has a crush on the ship's doctor. In a typical sci-fi show, the characterization for the mechanic often consists of "is the mechanic" and little else (e.g., Scotty). And all of the characters are similarly three-dimensional. Each of them comes across as a person, not a character archetype.

Oh, and at least a quarter of the show's dialogue is intensely quotable. That's got to be a major reason for its popularity and ubiquity online.

Serenity was OK as movies go, but I didn't like it as much as the show; you can't judge the show based solely on the film.

edited 28th Jun '14 1:58:09 PM by WarriorEowyn

sorry but i disagree in that one, fireflay was good but is at most wastd potencial because it end so short it after, there chararter are right but still very tipical: a priest witha dark past, the quirky mechanic,over protectic brother and the old veteran, the wife of the pilot pretty mucha have that JW action girl writer all over her and the prostitue is a good chararter but almost useless

sorry, coulson been a burecraft? he is a beliver of what shield should be, not what it is, even after bit a contrarian and a pain in the ass for tony and thor he take the shot of loki, because he was part of something bigger even at cost of his live

the thing with serenty is that it drop almost everything the series build(the mistery of the reapers,the ambiguity of the bronwcoat vs the aliance, the blue hands mistery) hell is funny when the bad guy say "your are not a heroe and this is not a evil empire" just to show that he was wrong, even when the show averted that tropes

now overated: comunity, well not much for me but im sick of people thorwing shit against big bang theory everytime they praise the show, it get to a point they are not gushing about comunity but the not-Big bang theory

underated: the blacklist, again because james speader is so much fun, the fact that here in sony just happen to air after agent of shield maybe have a point about it

Coulson was an endearing character because he was the little guy hanging around giants like Tony Stark and Captain America.

Making him the head of this super-elite badass team with a flying car and a cool hoverplane and all of that stuff completely gutted that.

Big shock coming from me:

Overrated: Anything that Joss Whedon has done. Including Agents of Shield, which, after a season of watching, I've come to feel is best described as just plain being poorly written. I mean, you can point out the big systematic flaws, the problems with its premise. It has plenty of those. But the real problem is that it's just badly written and directed on an episode-to-episode, scene-to-scene basis.

Underrated: Frisky Dingo.

Overrated: Breaking Bad

Underrated: Treme

edited 6th Jul '14 7:43:15 PM by Tyler

That's why it's so venerated. What could have been.

The Big Bang Theory is overrated and underrated at the same time. The writing aesthetic of the show is overrated by its mainstream fandom, but the moments of character growth made all the more relevant by their rarity are completely dismissed by those who see it as a nerd minstrel act.