^And yet, his actor really did end that way. Now, that's weird. Would you say the British version is better?
What are some tv shows you want to like but don't?
- Thread starter Jayson1
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I know. It's just a fun line to repeat.
In terms of conclusion, undeniably. It had a story to tell from beginning to end. It was set up more like a 6-part (or maybe I'm misremembering the number of parts) miniseries. In that version, his wife who's disgusted and fed up with all his shenanigans ends up killing him.
I just found the first few episodes pretty ridiculous. The ease with which Kevin Spacey’s character manipulated top government figures without them seeming to get what was happening felt kinda ridiculous.
Have you never heard of Donald Trump?
Well, I did go on in the next line to say that they could’ve done some interesting stuff (once he became president) but didn’t. I just mean that this particular iteration of the show didn’t seem to go anywhere once he became POTUS.
I’ve seen all of the original; IIRC, season 3 had a constitutional crisis with Francis Urqhart in conflict with the new king (a thinly-disguised Prince Charles, played by Michael Kitchen, back when Charles was believed to be something of a liberal). Obviously that storyline couldn’t have worked in America’s republic. I don’t know if Andrew Davies had plotted out all of the series in advance but it definitely seemed to have an overarching arc and to all tie in at the end. Whereas, for me, the American one lost its way once Frank got his ass seated in the Oval Office.
Difference between voters and top staff. The people who Kevin’s character was tricking just seemed way too oblivious for their level of political experience. He was portrayed as being unrealistically smarter than everyone else. Maybe it changes, but it seemed like a show that wasn’t quite as smart as it wanted to be.
Ok, fair enough. We can agree on that
But yes, once he got in office and once they realized the show was popular, they decided to ride it out for as long as they could, when is when the plot threads from the original started disappearing.From then on, I felt the show lacked motivational substance and further seasons just seemed kind of random slice of life stuff.
I always found something a bit visually unsettling about the show. Like, at first glance, it was very bright & inviting, in fact much brighter than the usual sitcoms of the era. But almost too bright somehow. Like, it got my attention easily but I also couldn't look at it for very long.
Yeah. I like Firefly quite a bit but it's got one of the most obnoxious fanbases of all time. And the way that they wail on & on about how cruel it was that the show was canceled after only 1 season!
(I'm a Wonderfalls fan. Get back to me once you've had your heart ripped out after only 4 episodes!)The grizzled men stalking around a desaturated snowscape is probably a lot cheaper to make than the King's Landing stuff.
Agreed. I call it "nerdface." Community was a much better show when it came to doing nerdy references but doing them sincerely. A lot of the nerd stereotypes that I see on TV don't really fit with the kinds that I tend to meet IRL. Where's the big burly guy that's always wearing a kilt and carrying lots of knives?
"Fury" was so stupid, contrived, & arbitrary that I can't even be mad at it. I just ignore it as if it didn't happen. The writers clearly didn't care, so why should I?
My best friend is a big fan of Charmed. I just can't manage to get into it because the male characters are all so badly written. I wouldn't mind if there were no men on the show at all but they're written so thinly that I can't take them seriously and I can't take the women seriously for falling for these shallow fantasies.
Supernatural seems like a fun premise and it's long enough to keep me occupied for a long time. But after trying it for a whole season, I just couldn't get into it. Sam is boring. Dean is kinda fun but not enough to make me watch a whole show. And I keep waiting for a wacky sidekick to show up and hold my attention but that never happens.
I've got a lot of friends who are into Gravity Falls. It makes me laugh sometimes. ("A new crime that he invented called 'burglebezzelment.'") And I guess that there's some dense lore that keeps things interesting in later seasons. But I just can't bring myself to care.
I love Doctor Who but I really can't get into this current Whittaker/Chibnall era. Whittaker is doing her best but I don't care about any of the companions. And while the writing isn't awful, every episode feels like it would have been a mediocre filler episode during any of the previous eras. I wish Moffat would come back if only to add a joke every now & again.
Saturday Night Live used to be my go-to for insightful political satire until every joke devolved into some variation of, "We all hate this guy, don't we?" Michael Che could still occasionally cut through the BS but it wasn't enough.
Which version of Charmed are you talking about, because in the original the female characters were written just as bad as the men (after season 3, anyway, when the sisters became self-obsessed screech harpies)
And with the new one...it started out better with the sisters, but by now they are also pretty badly written.
So, in my opinion you're not really missing anything. You could try watching it as a "so bad it's funny" show.
I'm not sure a King's Landing knockoff would be that expensive, since it would be mostly dialogue and character driven and wouldn't call for big battles and such.
It's basically putting people into nice costumes and have them sit around the Mediterranean while they scheme against each other.
Bridgerton and the Starz Phillipa Gregory adaptions basically are that, they just aren't written well enough for me.
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I've given The Office several chances, even shifting to later seasons, just to see if they land better with me, & while I think they look to be having a lot of fun with the characters, the concept of the show seems to be "How uncomfortable can we make the audience?" They seem to revel in creating the most awkward moments ever televised, & while that is certainly a bold feat... I've yet to figure out why TF I'd want to subject myself to that.
US or UK?
U.S. I haven't watched much of the UK one... but honestly? what I've seen didn't rub me as bad... well... mostly because I expect most British comedy to feel awkward lol
I liked The Office US, but good lord is it overrated. Always thought of it as the king of B-tier sitcoms, and it always makes me a little sad when people say that it got better than the original. I wouldn't go in expecting incredible comedy, but it's a comfortable watch with plenty of good moments.
@The Borgified Corpse Seasons 2-5 of Supernatural are vastly better than Season 1. I wasn't planning on watching Season 2 at all until the cliffhanger.
Thought of another one:
Babylon 5.
Now don't get me wrong, there are episodes I like very much (like the whole Babylon 4 arc) but all in all, it was just too serious and political for my tastes. And God help me, they can stand to cut down on the speeches.
Also some things happened that did not, IMHO, make a ton of sense.
Babylon 5.
Now don't get me wrong, there are episodes I like very much (like the whole Babylon 4 arc) but all in all, it was just too serious and political for my tastes. And God help me, they can stand to cut down on the speeches.
Also some things happened that did not, IMHO, make a ton of sense.
The war between the Shadows and the Vorlons is stopped when Sheridan says "Get the hell out of our galaxy"...AND THEY DO IT? Two massive space fleets just pack it in and go home because some pissant human tells them to? I'm not really seeing a reason why they don't both just decide to blast him to atoms right then and there.
That one's interesting because he's theoretically not even really "bad" in that sense until halfway through the series, where he's in so deep that he can't get out, where once he was doing it just to make money to pay for his treatments which were seriously expensive, down to where he was simply making money for money's sake. The initial motivation is what drew me to the series, and it's quite a compelling watch if you give it a chance.
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