30 days of TV: Day 11(ish)
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Yiiiikes. We could be here a while. Sometimes it's hard for me to be a fan. I fall in love fast, I fall hard, and I have high standards. I get disappointed a lot.
Sometimes a show has an excellent pilot, but then the series fails to deliver on the promises made. That's what happened with New Amsterdam. The pilot was riveting, with a charming lead and an interesting premise, not tomention some beautiful filming. And the rest of the episodes had their enjoyable bits, and they made John into an appealing character who I liked watching, but they also insisted on focusing on his non-relationship with the bland, poorly-written, chemistry-free woman he thought might be his soulmate. That arc ended up dragging the rest of the show down, and it made it harder for me to care about John as a character because he was obsessing so hard over something that the show couldn't make me as a viewer care about. I ended up watching every episode as it limped its way to the inevitable first-season cancellation, but by the end it was more out of a sense of duty than anything else.
Sometimes a show slides gradually. White Collar had one of the best pilots I've ever seen, and by the second episode I felt like I'd known these characters for a lifetime and wanted to continue knowing them forever. It was, I felt, a show that found its groove early on and knew how to keep the beat. Even if it was never quite as jawdropping as the pilot, it was still damn good appointment television. And then the hiatus happened and the spark died as quickly as it had kindled. Same characters, yeah, but their interactions felt off, and forced. The writing wasn't quite as smart, and they completely abandoned a character they'd gone out of their way to add, leading me to think the showrunners had no real idea where they were going. There were a couple episodes right near the end of the season where everything felt all right again, but then the season finale was crap. Weak writing, weak acting of the kind where you can tell they're doing the best with what the script is giving them, and even the cinematography was amateurish. I watched the first episode of the scond season just to see if things will improve from here, but it didn't do much to raise my hopes.
And sometimes, completely out of the blue, a show punches you in the face. Yes, Bones, I'm talking about you. Starting an arc when you don't know how it's going to end is bad form enough. Deciding to make one of your main characters a serial killer's apprentice -- despite the fact that it contradicts both everything we know about said character and several scenes you've already shown -- because you can't think of a more interesting way to end the arc is quite possibly the most spectacular failing you can do without actually writing "Rocks fall, everyone dies." Not gonna lie, I get vicious pleasure out of hearing how much further that show has gone off the rails since I declared it dead to me, and how bewildered and dismayed peple who kept watching it are getting.
"Disappointed" may be the wrong word.
Yiiiikes. We could be here a while. Sometimes it's hard for me to be a fan. I fall in love fast, I fall hard, and I have high standards. I get disappointed a lot.
Sometimes a show has an excellent pilot, but then the series fails to deliver on the promises made. That's what happened with New Amsterdam. The pilot was riveting, with a charming lead and an interesting premise, not tomention some beautiful filming. And the rest of the episodes had their enjoyable bits, and they made John into an appealing character who I liked watching, but they also insisted on focusing on his non-relationship with the bland, poorly-written, chemistry-free woman he thought might be his soulmate. That arc ended up dragging the rest of the show down, and it made it harder for me to care about John as a character because he was obsessing so hard over something that the show couldn't make me as a viewer care about. I ended up watching every episode as it limped its way to the inevitable first-season cancellation, but by the end it was more out of a sense of duty than anything else.
Sometimes a show slides gradually. White Collar had one of the best pilots I've ever seen, and by the second episode I felt like I'd known these characters for a lifetime and wanted to continue knowing them forever. It was, I felt, a show that found its groove early on and knew how to keep the beat. Even if it was never quite as jawdropping as the pilot, it was still damn good appointment television. And then the hiatus happened and the spark died as quickly as it had kindled. Same characters, yeah, but their interactions felt off, and forced. The writing wasn't quite as smart, and they completely abandoned a character they'd gone out of their way to add, leading me to think the showrunners had no real idea where they were going. There were a couple episodes right near the end of the season where everything felt all right again, but then the season finale was crap. Weak writing, weak acting of the kind where you can tell they're doing the best with what the script is giving them, and even the cinematography was amateurish. I watched the first episode of the scond season just to see if things will improve from here, but it didn't do much to raise my hopes.
And sometimes, completely out of the blue, a show punches you in the face. Yes, Bones, I'm talking about you. Starting an arc when you don't know how it's going to end is bad form enough. Deciding to make one of your main characters a serial killer's apprentice -- despite the fact that it contradicts both everything we know about said character and several scenes you've already shown -- because you can't think of a more interesting way to end the arc is quite possibly the most spectacular failing you can do without actually writing "Rocks fall, everyone dies." Not gonna lie, I get vicious pleasure out of hearing how much further that show has gone off the rails since I declared it dead to me, and how bewildered and dismayed peple who kept watching it are getting.
"Disappointed" may be the wrong word.