Unfairly maligned TV shows and movies

That's a good way to put it.

"Hall Pass"? Did not feel compelled to run out and talk about it.

"Sound of My Voice"? Immediately started searching for any podcast or review I could find.

"Black Swan"? Same.

"Take Shelter"? Same.

"Mad Men"? Same.

 

My wife and I watch Scandal and when we watch it on the DVR, we usually get the last minute or two of of Grey's and we mock it like it's the worst show of all-time. We watched it for the first 3-4 years and then just stopped because it was so bad...

Obviously, somebody is still watching it.

 

That's a fairly maligned TV show.
And I agree with you. I am shocked that I know people of average to above average intelligence who like that show.
Why was/is it so successful?
In a format noted for bad product, it's painfully bad.

 

Its fans would say folks like me are unfairly maligning it.

 

One of my best friends is what I would politely call an easy laugh. He was second in our high school class and went to an Ivy League school and now is a doctor. But he watches Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory because they give him mindless laughter. That's what he looks for in pop culture, in general. Steve Spielberg is his favorite director without question. He likes Michael Bay a lot, too. He doesn't like challenging TV shows or movies or music, and I think it's because he is using his brain in more proactive ways than someone like me. So good on him, I guess. But I still make fun of him for his crappy taste.

 

I will offer a full-throated defense of my Friends comments later this evening.

But currently: The Newsroom.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to start a website or even a thread saying "Why don't people appreciate 2 1/2 Men?" But since that was the question posed, that's what I came up with.

I wouldn't recommend anything in that show from the last four years. But that still gives it a good four or five years where it was pretty good. Probably the turning point was when Charlie was with a ballet dancer named Mia -- classy woman and he was trying to move toward being a stand-up family man, and the storylines were around that. Then she left, and since then it has been lowest common denominator humor ever since as Charlie Harper, at about the exact same time as Charlie Sheen, let his life fall apart in a hailstorm of booze and sleazy women.

If you're checking on cable, look at the kid. If he's still young and it doesn't seem like his voice has dropped, the show is from the era I'd consider good. If he's older, pass.

 

Unfairly maligned: The high school seasons of The Wonder Years. The Wonder Years was fully committed to portraying real life for a completely average teenage boy, and if it could be a little boring at times, I thought it was admirable for never doing anything even close to jumping the shark. Kevin Arnold blended in. That's what most of us did in high school.

 

DD mentioned The Newsroom. The opening monologue made me perk up quite fast.

This is TV excellence:

The rest of the episode was ... eh. But I was going to watch the next episode or 2 to see if it was for real.

It's not. Just faux-drama with the requisite faux-love drama, and the newsrooms I've been in make that newsroom look like kindergarten nap hour.

 

Are you struggling with the point of this thread?

 

The Newsroom definitely deserves to be somewhat maligned. The level of vitriol, however, far exceeds the level of suck.

 

No, sweetie, I'm just preceding whatever defense DD plans to give about The Newsroom with my view that it's fairly maligned.