yeah, i get you with that one. the thing that always bugged me was how every season started incredibly slow. but the pay-offs were incredibly awesome so I never really stopped watching (but considered it at various times) the thing is, that the wire is more Love It or Hate It than the fanbase cares to admit
It's not exactly naive. And it can happen. But it's tough. And definetly worthwhile.Just remembered another game show which falls in this category for me: The Million Pound Drop.
I originally loved the concept back when I first heard of it (before they even filmed the first episode). The set was also nicely done as well. But in execution, well, first it tripped over a gigantic pile of Padding to completely fall flat on its face.
Then a couple episodes in, there was a team who got to the final question, with £525,000 boot. And it turned out that the final question was All or Nothing - the last question (and only the last question) of each game would have only two choices, and the players must put everything on one choice. This threw all the strategy of the game out the window in one fell swoop. Plus if they pick the wrong answer here, everything up to that point was for naught.
And it got worse when the question itself came. "Which of these famous couples married first? Prince Charles and Diana Spencer / Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne". In the immortal words of James May, "Oh, cock." Celebrity gossip always makes for lame trivia questions. And as the host would reveal after the team lost their £525K, the two were less than a year apart, and in the early 80's. That's right, an Unexpectedly Obscure Answer on 28-year-old celebrity frakkin' gossip. It was so much of a Wall Banger that you could hear it smacking the wall in the UK all the way from California.
And that killed off any and all interest I ever had in the show, because it was quite clear that very few people would win a single quid because of Fake Difficulty turning the last question into a Luck-Based Mission. I still like the concept (and the set is also nice), but the show is one gigantic Missed Moment of Awesome.
I actually only remembered this because I stumbled across a You Tube clip from a recent episode of the show, which showed a celebrity team on that last question playing for charity and losing £50K, again on a trashy Unexpectedly Obscure Answer (although the show gave them £5K for their charity anyway). That's right, the show's so frakkin' cheap that they don't even let up on the Fake Difficulty for charity.
The possible upside is that the show's getting a US version, titled Million Dollar Money Drop, which will apparently have 7 questions in a game instead of 8. Hopefully that means they threw out that last 2-choice question. (Edit: Nope, they took out the first question, not the last.) But it's also being done by FOX, which has an uncanny ability to screw up any show you throw at them.
edited 17th Dec '10 7:11:03 PM by Poochy.EXE
Extra 1: Poochy Ain't StupidWarehouse 13 for me. I like the concept, but it just wasn't really strong enough to keep me watching beyond a couple episodes.
edited 20th Dec '10 4:43:02 AM by Nabi
True Blood - I think its just the fact that some things have ruined the idea for me of vampires in general and this seems too close. I never got into it enough to go deeper.
Supernatural - *Shrugs* not interesting?
Angel - Considering i liked Buffy, i just disliked Angel for the most part. A few episodes are good but....nothing grabbed me. :/ Am i wrong for that?
No matter how fast the tech evolves, how wonderful the graphics change. Sometimes its the IDEA that makes the game better, not money.Ware House 13, same here, good concept, bad execution.
Stargate Universe, loved Stargate SG 1, liked some of Atlantis. Universe was just boring. Not bad, offensive, just boring.
Damn, Warehouse 13. There's something about the tone, which is just on the wrong side of the classic buffy joke/angst balance. So it ends up that I can't quite take anything seriously because everything lacks the necessairy urgency. Plus, a lot of people seem really dumb.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.The first season of Blackadder. Some pretty funny jokes here and there, but nowhere nearly as brilliant as the later seasons.
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.I want to like the new Dr Who episodes, I do, but... I just can't. I find Amy Pond extremely dull, the science fails grate on me, there is an awful lot of Doctor-worship (which is at least more tolerable than Rose-worship, but still irritates me), and the christmas special annoyed me.
I loved the old series, so maybe it's just nostalgia that makes me thing newwho isn't as good as the old stuff. But I really do think the new series is going downhill.
edited 27th Dec '10 1:17:57 AM by LoniJay
Be not afraid...I wanted to like The Big Bang Theory because Moist was in it. And it's not a BAD show, but like others said, it holds the "LOL NERDS ARE SOCIALLY RETARDED" shtick just as much as anyone else. It's just that the geeks are the main characters now.
Which just makes it worse.
@Starship Maxima: My feelings towards SGU, exactly. Except I liked most of SG:A.
V, and Flash Forward, both because I just can't get into the characters.
Oddly, I couldn't stand the first episode of Burn Notice the first time I watched it, but after seeing a pair of season 3 episodes, I tried watching the show from the start, and now love it.
True Blood, but then, I'm rather Meh on the books, so the show didn't improve on anything for me.
Warehouse 13, I confess I watch it for the sole purpose of laughing at the characters.
I like Doctor Who. (Alright, Amy Pond is rather Meh also, but I'll give them another season to try and impress me the way Martha and Donna both did.) But then there's the spin-offs of Sarah Jane and K-9. Really? K-9 needed its own show? And yee gods, was *that* horrible.
I did watch the first season of Big Bang Theory, and found it amusing. Just ... not amusing enough to watch the rest of it.
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswDexter: The squick factor is just too high for me.
The Office(British original): Too black and soul-crushing, too reliant on awkwardness-based humour. The American version, through later character development and increased focus on background characters, manages to be something I can enjoy.
Mad Men: I just don't care about the characters and therefore get bored quickly.
Lost: I have no idea why. On paper I should like it. I can't name any specific flaws, but I just don't care for it.
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I'm pretty sure that's a pretty common opinion.
I kind of like The Cape, mostly because it's dumb and stupid, and I'm okay with turning my brain off for periods of time.
30 Rock: I love Tina Fey, and I also love the Cloudcuckoolander that is Tracy Jordan/Morgan...and yet, for some reason, this show has never quite clicked with me. Part of it is the grating presence of Alec Baldwin—I've never cared for the guy, either as an actor or as a person. And I feel like the show often tries a little too hard to appeal to the so-called "Minivan Majority" (i.e. suburban American values), what with Liz Lemon's constant fears about her "biological clock," the high-profile celebrity appearances, and the overall dumbing down of the show that has occurred since about the third season.
I'm a Real Life Cloud Cuckoolander, you might say.Andromeda. I mean yeah the first 2 seasons wer ok but I dunno it's got to much Hercules music and sometimes it just doesn't take itself seriously enough when in actuality Andromeda was supposed to have a lot more sound science stuff like kinetic missiles and short range cannons. I think they should have realised there was a time to act seriousish and when there wasn't.
A wish is never free.I'm gonna get shot at for this, but... Arrested Development.
Everything about this show should make me love it. The cast, the creators, the characters, the writing that I freely admit is really strong. But for whatever reason, I just can't make myself care about any of these people. I've tried it a couple of times, and I intend to give it another shot soon enough, but up to now, it just hasn't clicked into place for me.
Dexter, kind of...
I enjoyed the first 2 seasons, but I only liked Dexter himself and couldn't care about anyone else, I also hated the way they got rid of Dexter's brother rather than have him disappear and come back later as a sort of rival/recurring villain and then did the same to the british chick. The fact way they wrapped up the entire 2nd season with tieing up all the loose ends aswell as killing off Doakes, getting rid of yet another good antagonist left me feeling as though I had absolutely no reason to continue watching.
Mad Men. I find the whole thing boring. It just comes off as a bunch of sexist assholes sitting being sexist assholes in the 60s. And not the good 60s, the boring 60s. I don't care how authentic it is, that novelty wears off fast. And I find Don Draper to be wooden and phony. The only time I found him interesting was when he was trying to blow off his brother.
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.Dollhouse - god, how I tried to like that show. I loved Firefly and Buffy, and Faith was one of my favorite characters. I stuck it out for most of the first season waiting for it to stop sucking quite so hard. I remember reading Whedon fan sites during that time and Whedon himself was saying something to effect of, "Sorry guys, it's gets better after episode 6, really."
But it didn't. I'd still watch Whedon, but Dollhouse was a huge disappointment.

Talby: i can see what you mean with the wire it's very hard to emphatize with a show which basis is another culture and the slang it's really hard (i had to watch with subtittles and i always scratch my head at some of the words and grammar) but at the end I enjoyed it and thought it was pretty cool. where are you from, anyway?
edited 5th Dec '10 12:18:58 PM by juancarlos11
It's not exactly naive. And it can happen. But it's tough. And definetly worthwhile.