Do you ever skip over characters?

[Mr. Scott]

Everybody Loves Raymond-Although I find Patricia Heaton very attractive, I thought she was a very annoying, really bitchy type of person. Ugh. I would of divorced her in a minute. Ray was kind of annoying to because he was such an immature guy in many respects. Most any scene with just them and the kids, I'll fast forward a bit. My favorite characters are the brother Robert (Brad Garett), and Ray's parents, Frank and Marie (Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts. Basically all the side characters were also entertaining.

The Sopranos-I almost always skip the part where Tony sees Dr. Melfi. I personally find Lorraine Bracco to be beyond annoying, her responses, everything. Any storyline that has her in it, I'll breeze through. Carmela and especially the kids were also something I'd Fast Forward.

Basically, the parts I like concern the mafia organization. Tony kicking someone's ass, the politics, the scumbags, the fights, the violence, the one liners (it is a humerous show at times.)

Star Trek in general- When there is any kind of romantic scene. The Holodeck. Actually with every Star Trek series ever made, there have been excellent episodes, and some that are unwatchable. Feast or famine. Even Voyager and Enterprise had good episodes.

DS9-Basically anything to do with the O'Brien family, not O'Brien himself. I more or less disliked Keiko and their daughter was a brat. The episode where Keiko is possessed by some evil alien being is one that I totally skip on the rotation.

I did not used to like Dr. Bashier, but he seems to more or less grow on me, except for the weird augments, the old man, the crazy guy, the horny woman and the comotose teenage waif girl. I would sometimes skip over Jake unless he is doing something with Nog or with his father.

Kai Wenn? Nurse Ratched? Cookoo's Nest and DS9 are the only things I have seen her in.

 

[Michael Chris]

I'm not sure if I understand the question. Do you mean what characters do we avoid? If so, I can't think of any.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Since I tape everything I watch, I do have the option to zap characters.

Heroes - Hiro and Nikki are getting increasingly worthless and zapable. Watch out Claire, you're next. Zap-proof: Peter, Nathan, Angela and Matt. And Sylar, assuming the writers don't keep testing our limits of tolerance for bad writing with that poor guy. I suppose there's a level of writing so intolerable that it will render Zachary Quinto zappable, but I shudder to imagine such an atrocity.

Reaper - I got so I zapped anything without Sam and/or Satan. Yeah, Sock's antics were wearing out their welcome.

Harper's Island - I liked Abby, Henry and the Sherrif immediately, but the vast majority of the cast were so zappable that I had to bail on the show and come back later on after the herd had been thinned. They did a good job hanging onto the less zappable characters.

 

[sidious618]

The Sopranos-I almost always skip the part where Tony sees Dr. Melfi. I personally find Lorraine Bracco to be beyond annoying, her responses, everything. Any storyline that has her in it, I'll breeze through.

Wow. That was the heart of the show, though.

 

[Starbreaker]

I don't skip anything. You never know what you're going to miss.

 

[Kirk's_Tights]

The Sopranos-I almost always skip the part where Tony sees Dr. Melfi. I personally find Lorraine Bracco to be beyond annoying, her responses, everything. Any storyline that has her in it, I'll breeze through.

Wow. That was the heart of the show, though.

Exactly, If you skip those parts, you miss a lot.....

The only thing I ever skip are wrestling matches that bore me but when it comes to other shows, I don't skip.

 

[Jax]

I don't skip anything. You never know what you're going to miss.

Spot on though Claire in HEROES is fucking annoying as hell

 

[Rii]

Kai Winn and Gul Dukat in DS9 S7.

 

[Shatmandu]

If I find myself zapping forward through scenes, then I delete the entire thing and stop recording it.

I did that with ... Southland, was it called? Cop show, on NBC?

Joe, ahead 30 seconds

 

[nx1701g]

I don't tend to do that. I can't recall if I have in the past either.

 

[Kelthaz]

Of course not. You might miss important scenes. Although I will tune out and do something else if an episode is really boring, such as play my PSP or go online. Given how serialized TV is nowadays you can't risk skipping a boring episode. A dull clip show could end with an alien invasion or death of a main character.

 

[Jono]

Claire in the most recent series of Heroes.

Kate in the most recent season of Lost

Starbuck in BSG then coupled with whinny Lee Adami I abandoned the show after the 1st season.

When I was younger I'd skip over Data when watching TNG episodes.

 

[FalTorPan]

Kai Winn and Gul Dukat in DS9 S7.

I only watched the seventh season of DS9 when it originally aired, but I can imagine wanting to skip through that arc. I hated the final episodes of DS9, and I attribute most of that to the Dukat/Winn arc.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If I find myself zapping forward through scenes, then I delete the entire thing and stop recording it.

I did that with ... Southland, was it called? Cop show, on NBC?

Joe, ahead 30 seconds

Yep. Zap-quotient is a good indicator that a show is becoming no longer worth bothering with overall.

But even on fast-forward, you can generally tell that "oops, something important just happened" and you can rewind. Generally the worthless characters also have worthless scenes. I skipped about four episodes of Harper's Island towards the beginning yet the ending still made sense or should I say, it would have made no more sense if I had bothered to watch those episodes.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Somewhat related but I'm reading State of Fear and I've started skipping the global warming is a hoax chapters. It's just the characters giving summaries of scientific papers that are against global warming, complete with charts, to global warming believers who only know enough to say "but global warming is real". So boring, brings the book to a halt every time.

When I paid fifty cents for this book at a used book sale I didn't expect Michael Crichton's boring response to an Inconvenient Truth. At least the rest of the book is decent, though not the best he's written.

 

[Trubinator]

I used to skip through the romantic scenes in Spiderman, but now I actually watch them. However, I have and will always skip through anything with Starbuck in nuBSG after Kobol's Last Gleaming Pt. 2. Then again, I guess I skip the whole show ... hahaha.

 

[Ruaidhri]

If I find myself zapping forward through scenes, then I delete the entire thing and stop recording it.

I did that with ... Southland, was it called? Cop show, on NBC?

Joe, ahead 30 seconds

Yep. Zap-quotient is a good indicator that a show is becoming no longer worth bothering with overall.

This is pretty much what I was thinking. If I get to a point where I'm choosing not to watch scenes because I don't like certain characters, then why am I watching it at all? There are always characters that I enjoy more/less than others. However, if I like the show then I can put up with the handful of minutes the less enjoyable characters are on screen.

 

[DevilEyes]

Since I tape everything I watch, I do have the option to zap characters.

Heroes - Hiro and Nikki are getting increasingly worthless and zapable. Watch out Claire, you're next. Zap-proof: Peter, Nathan, Angela and Matt. And Sylar, assuming the writers don't keep testing our limits of tolerance for bad writing with that poor guy. I suppose there's a level of writing so intolerable that it will render Zachary Quinto zappable, but I shudder to imagine such an atrocity.

Peter?! Peter is one of the worst written characters on the show, always has been, plus he's played by one of the weakest actors on the show.

Although at least he's been doing something worthwhile in volume 4 (rather than being stranded in Ireland and having pointless boring romances), and hasn't been a complete idiot for a change, which certainly makes him more tolerable than Hiro or Mohinder.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Really surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet.

Lana Lang - Smallville

I am not caught up on this show - watched the first 4.5 seasons back at the beginning of 2008 and finally could no longer take Lana, so shut it off for a while.

I'm working my way up to turning it back on again as I mostly like the rest of the characters and want to find out what happens. But this time? All scenes with Lana and her angst will be zapped.

Fast Forward is a wonderful thing.

Kinda surprised to read about anyone zapping the scenes with Tony and the Doc in The Sopranos, though - that's really the only one I was surprised to read in this thread. That is sorta the point of the show - Tony working out and reconciling himself to what he is in those scenes with the Doc.

Without that relationship, that show is basically pretty brutal, with no point whatever except gratuitous violence.

The relationship and conversations with the Doc are what make Tony into something other than just a brutal monster. They give him humanity and make us sympathetic to him, in a way...Or, as much as you could be sympathetic to a mob boss.