Giving it a try, when is it enough?

[Jonas Grumby]

I think a lot of shows start in sort of a probation period where there's a lot of meddling from the network holding it back from achieving its potential.

I expect you're absolutely right about that. But I still don't see it as a convincing argument that I should waste my time propping up a mediocre show to give the creatives and the network time to work out their differences. Whatever problems they have to contend with really isn't my problem. All I'm really concerned about is whether I find the show entertaining.

It's unrealistic to expect every show to be able to grab your attention right from the beginning...

I don't expect every show to do it, only the best ones. And I've encountered quite a few over the years that have done exactly that.

I love checking out a show long after it was originally broadcast so I can research what the general consensus is about what's the best the show has to offer and rely on what I find out to guide me through it.

Now that makes a lot more sense to me than watching multiple episodes of a boring show in the hopes that it might get better down the road.

 

[DevilEyes]

^^ And seriously what are the odds that everything I'd seen was a dud episode? Doesn't wash.

I don't know, I'm not really interested in calculating odds, when there is an opportunity to find out a lot more easily what you watched, by asking you.

For example I saw the Mirror episodes which so many raved about. I also saw some of the Vulcan and Andor episodes. Yeesh!

Then the show is really not for you. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Anji]

To be honest, a series only has one episode to catch me as a regular viewer. I won't go to a second or third episode unless that first one didn't touch me in some way.

I only stayed with TNG because Roddenberry had said it was the Star Trek he wanted to do. I figured the man had something to say and I wanted to hear it, this time without interference from NBC.

I couldn't stomach either DS9 or VOY because they were too radically different from TOS and TNG. (Not that DS9 and VOY are bad, they are just not my thing). And as for ENT, I had to stay with it because I was a member of this BBS where we discussed episodes every week.

 

[Warped9]

TNG's "Encounter At Farpoint" had me constantly rolling my eyes. I tried a couple of episodes sporadically throughout the first season, but it just wasn't there. I have to add, though, that I also had a lot going on in my life at that time so TV wasn't something I could always get to.

In TNG's second season I happen to catch a couple of the better episodes and I thought, hmm, there just might be something here. But I will also say that part of the reason I came back was because it was Star Trek.

I started watching DS9 from the beginning. At first it was mainly because I liked it better than fifth and sixth season TNG. I held in for a little more than two seasons then discovered Babylon 5 which pulled me right out of DS9 about a third of the way through DS9's third season. And whenever I tried to look at DS9 again I just thought it was stiff and shallow compared to B5.

I thought VOY and ENT were crap from the get go. I absolutely hated both pilots although I thought ENT's pilot was marginally better.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

They've got a week, maybe two to get me interested.

 

[Elzie]

I don't think that there's an exact number of episodes you have to watch. Wheter you like it or not.

When I saw my first bits of DS9 I didn't care much for every bit of it, but I was still intrested about some parts of it, so I watched more, and keep watching. Simply because I figured there's something in there. And it's alright, actually.

Then I wanted to know what ENT was like, and watched...hmm...probably five minutes of it. And I was like Not my show.

And then, of course, there are the ones you just fall in love with straight on.

My first look on TNG was something from season...2 or 3 maybe. Only while ago I watched Encounter At Farpoint and I have to say - if I would've seen it first, I probably wouldn't have bothered to watch TNG at all.

 

[Sector 7]

Warped9
It's safe to say you don't like Enterprise.

As for the rest - did you start this thread just to bash Ent/Voy? Or do you have other questions?

Did you post your reply just to bash someone's opinion? Or do you have something to contribute?

I am known to disagree with Warped 9 most of the time, but I like this thread. I agree with his point: most people either tell me "You never gave DS9 a fair chance!" or they just bash me for not being a fan. After being pushed by posters here, I tried watching it with an open mind. The result is, I still do not like soap operas so I just do not like DS9 (with the exception of "Little Green Men" and "Trials and Tribble-ations"). I much prefer episodic television, with the exception of Fringe. I am afraid it has me hooked!

 

[Lord Garth]

Problem for me was that I fell into the "TNG trap" thinking any show that starts bad would improve after a few years. This has to do with discovering Star Trek in 1991 when TNG was already half-way done.

As a result, I watched VOY longer than I would've otherwise. I watched it from January 1995 to September 1999. Over four years, until I finally decided "The Hell with it!" and then didn't watch the rest of the series until 2008.

Then came Andromeda. I learned from the Voyager experience, and only watched for four months.

Next came Enterprise. I wasn't for a series set in the 22nd Century, I wasn't for more B&B Trek, and I was working at night while going to college during the day. I was able to watch the first two weeks of ENT and set the VCR to record the next two but after that I decided, "The Hell with it!" and stopped watching altogether. The only reason I was recording it was because it was Star Trek and I decided that wasn't reason enough.

So the window of opportunity I was giving the series kept decreasing: four years, four months, four weeks.

Now, if I don't get hooked with the first episode, that's it. I don't have the time or desire to wait for something to "get good". Something is either to my tastes or it isn't. If I hear it gets better then I might watch it again but I'll only give it one episode the second time around as well.

I don't subscribe to the idea of forcing someone to watching something they don't like or to keep suggesting it, or to keep pushing them. These people don't understand human psychology. If I don't want to do something, then the more you keep pushing me, the more resistant I'll get and the more likely I'll be to go in the other direction. Persistence is good but only to a point.

If I like something, I'll recommend it to someone else, but I'm not to going to shove it down their throats and keep telling them "Give it a chance!" "Give it a chance" "Why do you have a closed mind?" Why should I care about what someone else watches or doesn't watch? It has no effect on me whatsoever.

 

[plynch]

I thought it was a fine thread. A few eps is fine, to judge by. Certainly a quarter of a series. I stopped watching in s. 1 -- not consciously, just drifted off. There are so many things to do besides watching something you don't like out of some sense of duty to its producers or fans who don't know or care about you.

 

[Santa Kang]

I bailed on B5 and Buffy in their first seasons. Never went back to Buffy. B5 I dropped into once in a while but it was never must see. I suffered through TNGs early seasons and stuck it out till the end. Mostly because it was Star Trek. DS9 grabbed me from the start so it was easy to keep watching. VOY lost me and it was the only Trek show I gave up on. ENT also had me from the start and I think the first two seasons are under rated and remind me of TOS. I missed the first season of Lost but caught up over the summer and have watched ever since.

I guess watch till it just doesnt work anymore is my method. Could be an episode, a season or several seasons. Only you know when its enough.

 

[RandyS]

Here's a thought. Watch every episode of every series twenty times each. If you're not interested by then, at least you gave them a fair shot.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Warped9
It's safe to say you don't like Enterprise.

As for the rest - did you start this thread just to bash Ent/Voy? Or do you have other questions?

Did you post your reply just to bash someone's opinion? Or do you have something to contribute?

I am known to disagree with Warped 9 most of the time, but I like this thread. I agree with his point: most people either tell me "You never gave DS9 a fair chance!" or they just bash me for not being a fan.

I posted my reply because ALL Warped9's posts only repeated the same information regarding 'how much is a fair chance' (indicating he had clear criteria for this from the beginning) and bashed 'Enterprise' and 'VOY'.

 

[Deckerd]

If something doesn't hold me in the first 10 minutes I probably won't watch it again. With Heroes it took 2 episodes before it lost me forever. I've never been so disappointed since Beeb 2 really went to town advertising it for once. I didn't make it beyond the first episode of Flash Forward either.

 

[C.E. Evans]

For me, it's thirty minutes. If something doesn't have anything that remotely grabs me--either in its premise or its characters or even just how it looks--then it's lost me forever. Sure, I know I've probably missed out on a lot of "cool" shows, but they weren't cool to me at the time.

To be fair, I gave ENT two seasons to win me over because I honestly couldn't believe I had actually stumbled across a Star Trek series that I didn't like. But after the second episode of season three, I realized that was truly the case.

 

[Warped9]

Warped9
It's safe to say you don't like Enterprise.

As for the rest - did you start this thread just to bash Ent/Voy? Or do you have other questions?

Did you post your reply just to bash someone's opinion? Or do you have something to contribute?

I am known to disagree with Warped 9 most of the time, but I like this thread. I agree with his point: most people either tell me "You never gave DS9 a fair chance!" or they just bash me for not being a fan.

I posted my reply because ALL Warped9's posts only repeated the same information regarding 'how much is a fair chance' (indicating he had clear criteria for this from the beginning) and bashed 'Enterprise' and 'VOY'.

Where in my original post did bash the shows? I didn't. I said they didn't work for me.

Did I have an agenda? Yes, in that I (and others) get fed up with people bitching we're unfair somehow because we don't like a show they like.

The idea that shows take time to mature and/or for you to an acquire a taste for them is bullshit. If the producers aren't grabbing you early on then that's their failing and not the viewer's.

 

[SFRabid]

I didn't like Enterprise the first time I saw it. I was viewing scattered episodes and didn't care for any of them. Once I got it on DVD and watched it in order at my own pace I liked it a lot. It is a character driven show and you have to go through the development of those characters. That is why I don't agree with people that say "Watch season 3 and 4 first." If you do that you are missing a lot of the foundation that makes the show work. It would be like watching random DS9 Cardassian episodes, out of order, and trying to follow Dukat's character development.

But, if you don't like it, you don't like it. Nothing wrong with that. I never got into Lost, Seinfeld, CSI, etc... But I do like NCIS. That's why we have more than one channel on the TV.

 

[DevilEyes]

I didn't like Enterprise the first time I saw it. I was viewing scattered episodes and didn't care for any of them. Once I got it on DVD and watched it in order at my own pace I liked it a lot.

My experience with ENT was really weird. When I first tried watching "Broken Bow", I disliked it so much that I stopped halfway and didn't even make it to the end of the pilot. I think I was already somewhat prejudiced against the show because of its horrible theme song, there were smaller things that annoyed me, like the silly decon scene, and most of all, I disliked most of the characters - I thought all the human males on the show were were jerks, particularly Archer and Trip, and I thought Phlox would be a silly goofy comic relief alien like Neelix. Somehow it all contributed to a feeling of an action/SF B-movie.

Then I decided to give it another chance a few months later, prompted by the recommendations of a few people whose taste seems similar to mine in other respects. I wonder if the fact that I had been watching VOY on TV every day in the meantime affected me, but that time I had a completely different reaction. That time I really enjoyed the pilot and liked the characters. Suddenly the fact that Trip, Archer and the others seemed more flawed and less enlightened, and more human, i.e. more like 20th/21st century humans than the humans on the other shows, especially TNG and VOY, felt incredibly refreshing - as was the conflict between them adn T'Pol early on, after watching a few seasons' worth of VOY's crew-as-one-big-happy-family. And when I actually paid attention, I soon realized that Phlox was smart and funny and convincing as a doctor, and absolutely nothing like Neelix. Once I warmed up to the characters, I enjoyed watching the show even through its weaker episodes. It also helped that I knew that it gets better in the last 2 seasons, so I thought "if I am finding it entertaining and enjoyable enough in season 1, I'm certainly going to love seasons 3 and 4".

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Did you post your reply just to bash someone's opinion? Or do you have something to contribute?

I am known to disagree with Warped 9 most of the time, but I like this thread. I agree with his point: most people either tell me "You never gave DS9 a fair chance!" or they just bash me for not being a fan.

I posted my reply because ALL Warped9's posts only repeated the same information regarding 'how much is a fair chance' (indicating he had clear criteria for this from the beginning) and bashed 'Enterprise' and 'VOY'.

Where in my original post did bash the shows? I didn't. I said they didn't work for me.

Did I have an agenda? Yes, in that I (and others) get fed up with people bitching we're unfair somehow because we don't like a show they like.

The idea that shows take time to mature and/or for you to an acquire a taste for them is bullshit. If the producers aren't grabbing you early on then that's their failing and not the viewer's.

Then what's up with:
"That said first season TNG turned me right off in the beginning. It was the occasional second and third season episode that piqued my interest to see more."
It seems you don't have a problem with series having a slow start.

And your problem with Ent and Voy is not the slow start, but that they're "crap" from A to Z:
"But both ENT and VOY left a bad taste very early on and nothing was different whenever I tried again."

During this thread, you only repeated that you're willing to watch even 'slow start' series such as TNG and that Ent and VOY are weak.

PS - "Where in my original post did bash the shows?"
Warped9, you sell yourself too short. I'm sure that, if you look close enough, you'll find 1-2 posts beyond the original one that don't bash Ent.

 

[barnaclelapse]

Over the years I've heard the same response (in varying degree) to criticism of any given series: if you just give it a chance you'll change your mind and start liking it.

But with any given series how much is a fair enough sample?

Case in point: I've seen easily at least a quarter or so of ENT over its four year run. And by this I mean entire episodes. In addition every now and then I've dropped in for five to ten minutes or so. And throughout all of that the series could never hold me. I tried, but it just wasn't working for me.

Now I've been criticized that I didn't give the series a fair chance. But, come on, a quarter of the series? A season's worth of materiel and that's still not giving the series a fair chance?

I'd say it's more than fair and far more than I usually give a series. Usually if a series doesn't grab me within the first half dozen episodes (if even that) I just bail and never look back. VOY lost me within the first four or five episodes. I love the first season of Earth Final Conflict, but after less than half of the second season I bailed. After a couple of episodes I never again looked at Andromeda or Firefly or nuBSG. Smallville is a show I wish I could like (and I do in some respects), but it always puts me to sleep with its soap opera aspects.

If you don't develop a taste for a particular food you are certainly not going to keep trying it just to keep spitting it out.

So how much is a reasonable sample before it's fair enough to see if you're wasting your time?

I'd say that's a reasonable enough sample. If you don't like it you don't like it.

I'm the same way with Voyager.

 

[SFRabid]

Any time you feel forced to try something you are not going to enjoy it as much. Wait until you have the desire to see some new Trek episodes, then give it another try. I think that is something else that helped me. I saw very little Trek after DS9 because the TV stations in my area did not carry Voyager or Enterprise. By 2007 I was ready for some Trek. Any Trek.