In my last post, I talked about a few TV shows I’ve liked in the past. There is none that I’ve thought, “This is amazing. I must see what happens next!” I don’t watch any TV now except what I crall ‘gentle competition’ shows such as the original GBBO with Sue and Mel. I don’t expect those to be realistic, obviously, so that’s not an issue when I watch.
Oh! I did enjoy the Poirot series, despite it being problematic in several ways. One was using white British actors for all the roles, no matter what ethnicity the character was supposed to be. That was cringe-inducing. In addition, the later seasons tried to be more action-heavy than the novels–which was ludicrous and didn’t add anything to the stories. There was one in particular in which they added a gun where there absolutely didn’t need to be one. Like a doctor in a rural English town would have a gun in his home? In that day and age. Sigh.
David Suchet was sublime as Poirot, though. I have such respect for him. In addition, Pauline Moran, Hugh Fraser, and Philip Jackson were terrific as the back-up trio, and I was really sad that they got either cut out completely or drastically curtailed. I know it was supposedly for cost-saving measures, but it’s horseshit. They made the show along with Suchet, and there was something missing when they were done dirty like that.
In addition, if I wanted to watch it on Amazon Prime, I had to have two different subs in order to do so. Why? Because the series changed hands at some point. The first number of series is on, say, Acorn. The last half is on, say, BritBox. I’m not saynig it’s those two companies specifically, but it’s something like that. Which is fucking ridiculous. Hm. Now it’s just BritBox. I wonder what happened on that front. Anyway, what I did was sign up for the free trials, inhale the series (for the fourth or fifth time) in a week or so, then canceled my trial.
I should not have to do that. If I have a subscription to Prime, then I should actually be able to watch shit with my Prime membership. Otherwise, what’s the fucking point? Well, the point is free shipping–at least for me. It’s certainly not for the movie/TV seciton. I have been able to watch maybe one or two movies/TV shows for free that way, and I’ve basically given up.
That was a tangent!
Back to TV shows. There is not a one that I’ve watched and been lost in the show. Oh, another show that I thought was really good. The Wire. I watched it much after it was released. I really got into it, and I especially love the scene I included above. It’s basically McNaulty and Bunk saying variations of fuck and motherfucker for nearly four minutes.
I did not finish the last season (sixth, I think?) because, well, my interest plummeted. That was not an interesting season, and it was clear that it was rushed and not what David Simon had in mind. But the first five seasons were amazing. At the same time, it’s not a show I would watch again. It’s too heavy for me to want to go through it for a second time.
I also watched Family Ties when I was younger. That was a decent sit-com, but I’m not a sit-com person in general. Oh, and I liked BoJack Horseman for the first two seasons, but I really didn’t like that Diane Nguyen wasn’t played by an Asian American woman. The last episode of the second season disappointed me severely and I did not bother watching the third season onwards. But there was an episode about Diane and her family (how she’s such an outcast in her own family) that had me sobbing in recognition and pain.
That was a weird one because I didn’t intend to watch it, but Ian suggested it to me. I reluctantly started watching, and he said I had to give it two or three episodes before it really started gelling. He was right. The first few episodes were disjointed and weird (and not in a good way), but it did click–and I could not get enough. The first season was great overall. The second season was good overall. Except that last episode. And it turned me off enough that I didn’t want to watch another season.
Here’s the thing. Watching a show all in one gulp is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing beacuse you cn see the whole arc and respond to it as a complete whole. It’s a curse because all the flaws are maginified, and you can’t hide the plot holes and other things that get smoothed over with weekly viewing. I watched True Detective in something like three days. The first season. I thought it was brilliant until the last episode or two when it all fell apart. And it undid all the good work it had done with the previous twenty hours or however long it had been up to that point.
Then there was Hannibal. Oh lordy. I have to fan myself over Mads Mikkelsen. He is so fine. And his suits are so on point in that show. Plus, of course, the meals he made (if you ignore what he makes them out of). The show was wonderfully shot and so gorgeous in the environments. Plus, one of the episodes was set in Minnesota. Maybe even the first one? Yup! It was the first one. Anyway, I thought it was really well done–until the last episode. The whole show crumbled in that episode. I saw so many problems with it, and I could not understand why they finished an epic season in such a way.
Again, I lost all interest. I did not watch the next season. Trust is a fragile thing, and once it’s broken, it’s nearly impossible for someone to regain it. Yes, including TV shows.
Side note: When I was younger, I felt like if I started a book, I had to finish it. Then, I went to grad school for writing, and I was assigned A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. And I hated it from the first page. I thought he was such a whiny, sniveling, self-absorbed man (and no, I did not understand the nuances of Irish culture), and I had to grit my teeth to get through the book. Once I was done, I hurled it across the room and called it utter horseshit. And immeditaely decided that if I didn’t like a book, I could stop reading it (if it wasn’t required).
It was liberating. I feel the same about movies and TV shows. I’ll write more about that in the next post.