Top five TV shows most people seem to love but you hate

Scrubs
Family Guy
Eastenders
The West Wing
Match of the Day

Friends X 5

Scrubs
Family Guy
The West Wing

OTMx3

seinfeld
curb your enthusiasm

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Lost
The Sopranos
American Idol
Weeds
and lately I'm tempted to say Mad Men

American Idol
Curb Your Enthusiasm

Hate's is too strong a word, but I really don't get the love for:

The Wire
The Sopranos
Coronation Street

(all very similar you notice)

Oh yeah and:

Lost

And I've really tried with all those.

oh yeah!

Lost
the West Wing
the Sopranos
The Wire
The Office

(not hate, just not interested)

west wing is a big one for me. show made me want to barf.

Friends
Family Guy
American Idol
Jon & Kate
any number of reality TV shows

Family Guy
Anything shown on BBC3 ever (that isn't Monkey Dust): Mighty Boosh, Little Britain, Gavin & Stacy, other things.

Oh yeah, Lost! And Heroes!

i don't really hate any current show (except Family Guy & American Dad), but I was rooting for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to fail

I was rooting for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to fail

oh me too, as hard as I possibly could

i felt like such a troll on that studio 60 thread. hated it so bad. i guess i just hate that guy.

i actually watch family guy and american dad even though i don't like them much. sunday is a slow night for me.

you can't HANDLE the Sorkin

^^ NB if I were Aaron Sorkin I think every minor dispute I had with anyone would end with me saying "you can't HANDLE the truth -- I WROTE THAT, BITCH"

Sopranos
The Office (US)
Law & Order
Mr. Show
Buffy The Vampire Slayer

may fave show right now is the one where people run an obstacle course and fall in the water and john henson makes fun of how fat they are so of course take everything i say with a grain of salt.

kinda surprised by all the sopranos hate! i bailed before the last two seasons, but i liked it fine up until then. i just got tired of waiting three years for a new season.

yeah i don't get aaron sorkin either, def rooted for studio 60 to die. i watched the west wing for a while though b/c my high school government teacher would show us taped episodes whenever it was too hot out to teach

good to see people finally have a venue to say they don't like friends! that show needs to be knocked down of its pedestal IMO

"hate" a strong word, but definitely not feeling "Fringe".
i'm thinking "House" is a bit overrated
i've never made it through a single reality show ever.

i'm willing to admit i never really gave "Buffy" a chance, but what i saw was pretty unwatchable that one time.
"Studio 60" was a huge pos, but you "West Wing" haters are breaking my heart. (i'll admit it gets real dicey after season 3)

may fave show right now is the one where people run an obstacle course and fall in the water and john henson makes fun of how fat they are so of course take everything i say with a grain of salt.

― scott seward, Thursday, June 25, 2009 6:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait...john henson aka The Skunk! i had no idea he was back!

i'm getting into the West Wing now after being slightly put off by it before, but it helped that the first Sorkin thing i saw was Sports Night, which i think is a lot easier to take.

oh yeah, that "Sports Night" ssucked , too

Sorkin's def a gamble

lol xpost

Why I like The West Wing: More4 showing the episodes where they discuss how politics should be about aspiring to be the smartest man on the room just as Sarah Palin became the Republican VP choice and just thinking lol, sorkin never thought it would be that bad, he was just zinging bush.

i want to say i hate joss whedon but maybe i just hated the girl in my 2-D design class who wore tshirts from the television without pity store

Toby = personal hero

yeah totally my fav character a lot of the time

buffy
true blood
friends
entourage (why would i want to watch a show about a bunch of douchebags when i can go to any bar in my town and see similar douchebags IRL?)
family guy

the obstacle course show is wipeout and my son loves it

I thought about saying Entourage, but I don't actually know that many people who care about it

and lately I'm tempted to say Mad Men

me too. Not "hate," by any means. I really love the set & costume design, acting, writing & general attention to detail. Probably one of the all-time best "period" depictions in television, really. But I got about eight episodes into the first season & decided that all those great things weren't enough to make me care about the characters enough to commit to the whole, big serial-drama experience. I appreciate subtlety & nuance, but this is an extended dramatic series & so I would also like some conflict, mystery & intrigue mixed in. Do those elements escalate as the series progresses, or should I just move on?

entourage (why would i want to watch a show about a bunch of douchebags

OTM

i think i move in douchey circles, b/c lots of friends of mine love "entourage" (the honest ones admitting that, yes, the characters are a bunch of douchey twats).

wipeout reminds me a little of Battle of the Network Stars which I loved as a kid

the challops! they do nothing!

Wipeout is somewhat fun but totally makes me cringe. That bit where people stand on platforms and have to jump over the revolving bar -- yeah everything's padded and helmeted but I still sit there awaiting the inevitable broken arm or concussion

their bodies get twisted in very unnatural ways when they fall off those huge red bouncing balls!

Wow, I did not realize how many people hated Sorkin as much as I do. I can't think of many shows I hate outside of his, usually I just don't watch. But West Wing etc. are so overbearing and overpraised.

^^^OTM

Never saw "Sports Night"
Hated "The West Wing" after the first season
Hated "Studio 60" after the first episode

it's liberal porn. which is, like, the worst kind of porn.

guys, a LOT of people hate sorkin

I watch Entourage for the women, does that make me shallow?

Wait, there are women on "Entourage"? Everything I've read about it makes it seem like it's nonstop dudedouches.

west wing
sports night
family guy
reality tv (nb: i would not include awesome shit like ice road truckers in this category, that's not quite the same)
buffy

the tone of sorkin shows is so grating to me, they seem to be really lazy and slick and smug

xp

Watching Entourage for the story is like buying Playboy for the articles. And, just like Playboy, there's way too many articles.

i'm thinking "House" is a bit overrated

Especially by Hugh Laurie.

xxp

for real, Ice Road Truckers and (even more so) Deadliest Catch are solid gold.

Deadliest Catch is incredible.

is there a thread for tv shows people seem to hate but you love?

nb: i would not include awesome shit like ice road truckers in this category, that's not quite the same

word

Family Guy
Seinfeld
The Office
Lost
Sopranos

lol I am sensing a pattern

family guy - my kid's favorite I wish it was never created
seinfeld
reality tv
american idol
andreson cooper 360 & all CNN political coverage

count me in on the "ice road truckers" love.

man i just love shows like that, they're just documentaries kinda elevating these amazing everyday jobs to epic stature and these crazy motherfuckers into warriors

not "most people" but in terms of genre whore/fandom magnets:

Battlestar Galactica
Veronica Mars
Angel
Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job!

...can't think of a fifth one right now, but probably one of the horrible Adult Swim shows

rather than a bunch of aspiring actors/successful sociopaths fingerblasting each other in hot tubs or whatever's on the real world these days

The Office (US)
The Office (UK)
Lost
The entire Adult Swim lineup
The X-Files

rather than a bunch of aspiring actors/successful sociopaths fingerblasting each other in hot tubs or whatever's on the real world these days

couldn't say it better myself.

also, while i love "battlestar galactica," i can totally understand why anyone would not. it is a little too po-faced for its own good sometimes (especially since, frankly, the last season was pretty retarded).

also i can understand folks hating on adult swim fare (esp. "tim and eric" and "xavier renegade angel," both of which i love).

"Xavier: Renegade Angel" is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on television, and I've seen "Manimal".

"Manimal"

a Glen Larson production, might i add.

the tone of sorkin shows is so grating to me, they seem to be really lazy and slick and smug

― spiritual giant Cubby Culbertson (omar little), Thursday, June 25, 2009 3:25 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't disagree with this, actually, i'm just a sucker for ostentatious "BANTER!"-y dialogue

then you should watch moonlighting reruns instead.

actually what i hate much worse than this is every single abc family or medical drama that's on the air right now. i think they all use the same "quirky" music under most scenes.

actually i don't know if i hate them worse than sorkin. but it's close.

My wife and I were lolling hardcore at "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" (although in fairness oftentimes the show was laughing at itself, too).

i've never been a fan of medical/doctor shows (w/ the exception of "house," which i don't really think of as a doctor show anyway, or "saint elsewhere" back in the day [which i also haven't seen in over a decade and may not be as good as i remember it being]).

I am not a very big fan of "House".

i like house okay.

i was watching some scary-ass corporate medical women drama on abc with the dude from wings the other night. brian benben was in it! thing sucked.

oh yeah, i bet it's the grey's anatomy spinoff.

Okay nobody can say Sports Night on this -- that show was barely on and hardly anyone's even seen it

Also thank you Aaron Sorkin for writing stylized dialogue that actually believes television viewers have the capacity to absorb and process more than 30 words per minute, and for believing that if people on television can be better looking than people in real life, then surely they can speak more attractively too

i thought i might actually like that weirdo sally field brothers and sisters show for one hot minute but it's pretty unbearable. thought it might be a good fix for my 30something/mysocalledlife/onceandagain jones. i know, i'm sad.

"oh yeah, i bet it's the grey's anatomy spinoff."

yeah, that's the one. at first i thought they were lawyers or in advertising, but they are just fancy doctors. beautiful women complaining that they can't get laid for an entire hour.

I loved Wonder Shozen, but Xavier is just so awful and lazy to me.

didn't know nabisco would be the one to join me in defense of sorkin but am not surprised. WE'RE HERE! WE'RE WORDY!

who's gonna have the brass balls and complete lack of joy in their life to suggest Arrested Development, i wonder

also most people seem to hate Family Guy, what happened, i am confused

i really don't watch much television so i'll stop there

also, while i love "battlestar galactica," i can totally understand why anyone would not. it is a little too po-faced for its own good sometimes (especially since, frankly, the last season was pretty retarded).

I'm with you on this. I'm a fan, but I have to admit it's a curate's egg of a show, and often quite odd and unfocused.

I suspect maybe part of what's problematic about the West Wing for people is that it has these two sorta different layers, one that's sort of high-flown and thinky and wordy, and another where some of the relationships work in a more conventional network-TV way (like Josh/Donna or some of the "event" stuff like assassination attempts or kidnappings) -- I think they're really nicely balanced, but when Sorkin left after whatever season that was (3?), that balance just TOPPLED

all mcfamous hills spencer heidi type shit
to catch a predator, omg pedophiles are so evil aren't they?!? i hate them!!
game shows in prime time, millionaire? this show has like 8 questions and hour, so tedious
ER gtfo this is a soap, somebody is getting married? or dying? fuck you
gray's anatomy, at least more honest about its soapiness compared to the above but similarly, fuck you
honorary: tyra banks, your personality disorder is not entertaining to me, but horrifying

xxxpost - most people on ILX seem to hate Family Guy. Most of my friends and acquaintances really like it.

i don't think it should be possible to hate family guy! it isn't really the kind of show you can either love deeply nor hate deeply, to my eyes anyway. ach, i don't go out of my way to see it, but it always amuses me (albeit in an entirely shallow, transient, if audible way) when i stumble across it

ok, a la wheel of fortuen with RSTNL E, can we just assume none of you like Family Guy?

i can't get past the manner in which every character delivers their lines. with jaded exhausted dryness, everyone and every line with the same cadence.

who's gonna have the brass balls and complete lack of joy in their life to suggest Arrested Development, i wonder

it would've been on my list, but i bumped it off to make room for something else since i watched a few episodes recently and didn't dislike it as much as i had in the past.

whoops every character in The West Wing, not Family Guy.
xp damn you

i've seen some funny stuff on "family guy" (like the chicken fight), but the problem i have w/ that show is that you have to wade through a lot of unfunny or kinda-funny stuff in order to get to the really funny stuff. and i just don't have the patience for it -- i think that "south park"'s parody of the show was 1,000% OTM.

I fucking love Family Guy, especially the pre-cancellation episodes.

yeah...i've laughed at FG too many times to put it in my top 5 in this thread, but it can be kind of dispicable when you get down to it. (xpost)

the key with family guy is that it is designed as wisecrack-heavy light entertainment...the opening credit montage is a big clue. it's not a tv show in the conventional sense, more a half-hour of well-scripted multi-character stand-up

thing is west wing kinda works that way too

I get that but I don't think it's well-scripted AT ALL and there's a really nasty strain of misanthropy under the surface. I will concede it does have the odd good gag.

xpost

I have to wade through 99% of tv in general to find funny things. Knowing that there's one specific show where I can find a few funy things amongst the chaff is why I'll watch FG.

"jaded exhausted dryness"
there are many faults to family guy but the voices on that show are the exact opposite of that. pretty energetic, wet voices. are you thinking of Daria?

record of lodoss war (treasure hunter miniseries not the ova)
fraggle rock
neon genesis evangelion
fawlty towers
ghost whisperer

okay who is bigging-up "The Ghost Whisperer"

I hate the whole tone and look of Family Guy, can't stand to even look at it

I suspect maybe part of what's problematic about the West Wing for people is that it has these two sorta different layers, one that's sort of high-flown and thinky and wordy, and another where some of the relationships work in a more conventional network-TV way (like Josh/Donna or some of the "event" stuff like assassination attempts or kidnappings) -- I think they're really nicely balanced, but when Sorkin left after whatever season that was (3?), that balance just TOPPLED

yah basically the one show w/ dire straits was the shows peak imo but i think the other problem is that the 1st layer its like the show tht the show was clever and that gets the audience's back up gets ppl watching and waiting 54 u to screq up makes the show strangely adversarial

I don't like Family Guy but the hideousness of it is pretty (intentionally) funny imo!!

i don't hate on these exactly but if someone gave me a delicious hamburger to hate on them, i'd do it:

fawlty towers
mash
cheers
3rd rock from the sun
futurama

^^^yeah this, it's not there to be your friend, the humour is pretty crude and confrontational at the best of times, and often sophisticated *enough* to pull through

xp

I get that the basic premise for Family Guy (mashup of a cliche-laden sitcom with a cliche-laden variety show doused in heavy misanthropy and pop culture references) is going to be repellent to a lot of people. That doesn't keep me from finding it funny; really the only place where the show starts to fall over is when later season episodes reference/recycle gags from earlier season episodes (like the fighting chicken; hilarious the first time, sad and pathetic the second).

fraggle rock

WHAT?

are you thinking of Daria?

No, West Wing.

CSI
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Law and Order
My Mother The Car

"the key with family guy is that it is designed as wisecrack-heavy light entertainment"

the key with the family guy is that it's made for 14 year old boys!

and dan perry.

really i could just name anything on tv that isn't on food network or discovery/natl geo besides simpsons, family guy, and house.

How many 14-year-old boys are going to get "Who's The Boss" references? It is absolutely made for sarcastic bastards in their 30s.

i am realizing that there is almost nothing on tv that i will not watch + eventually like.

i like when family guy turns what seems like a rape joke into a tina yothers + rape joke

the one joke that will always make me love Family Guy is the one where all the vowels are having a serious meeting and Y shows up late yakking on his cell phone

is there a TV equivalent to a prarie home companion? because that is the only thing that can inspire genuine hate in me.

okay i will probably never like family guy

i will go to the mat for sorkin as well, sports night and west wing in particular, but studio 60 was bad, and prevents me from being a full fledged stan

west wing is poison

i love sports night but sorkin makes me crazy and watching his shows is never not a squirmy experience. he's so embarrassing! i do love toby ziegler even though i kind of hate the west wing. nb: i have also seen every episode of the west wing.

by the way i just want to say because this seems to be as good a thread as any--there are like half a dozen people on this board who are just, like, fantastic tv critics, seriously, and i wish i had the kind of money to create some kind of startup TV news/review site to employ shipley and bisco and horseshoe and slocki & a few others cuz ddamn you guys have great taste

there was a half episode of family guy going on in the background while I was cooking the other day. Usually I just turn it off because its so dumb and contemptible, but I decided to give it another shot for some reason. It was even dumber and more contemptible than I remembered. I hate to get on that puritanical 'the vulgarity of our popular culture degrades us all' tip, but I turned forty a month ago so I guess I'm entitled now.

And on that note of 'the vulgarity of our popular culture degrades us all' I should point out that I'm probably the biggest UFC fan on the board anymore.

Which episode?

i think the thing about sorkin, if you can stand him, is that you really start to feel like you know him as a dude once you start watching one of his shows...this is the only way i can account for how long i stuck with the west wing even in the post-9/11-Sorkin-trauma every episode some formerly admirable character makes a racial slur about Arabs era. i feel like it's rare for TV writing to bear so forcefully the mark of individual personality and even though i don't really like Sorkin or there are a lot of things I don't like about him, I just feel like he is a dude that i know. like a favorite novelist.

stewie meets future stewie

xp

oh yeah, that one is not really that great

Of the recent ones, the best IMO are "Stewie Kills Lois"/"Lois Kills Stewie"

I think I've said this on other threads, but the stuff that's funny about Family Guy is rarely vulgar or pointed and usually just has to do with funny tones of voice or turns of phrase, well-placed common expressions or behaviors, stuff like that

I've seen very little of Family Guy -- in part because it just seems sort of obnoxious, in part because the show's cult annoys me -- but I have to say, occasionally I've seen bits that have made me chuckle. I get the impression that the show is all about throwing a hundred things against the wall and seeing if a dozen stick.

> I get the impression that the show is all about throwing a hundred things against the wall and seeing if a dozen stick.

I hear that claim made a lot, but the other night I just got frownier and frownier and frownier. Maybe it's just a bad episode like Dan says, but that's been my consistent reaction to it with every single exposure.

the one joke that will always make me love Family Guy is the one where all the vowels are having a serious meeting and Y shows up late yakking on his cell phone

this is a great joke! imo part of the strength of family guy is not just jokes like this but that not even having seen the show i think i can pretty clearly visualize how this wld work, what it wld sound like. the shows rhythm just seems really consistent even if its off more than its on, for me

I get the impression that the show is all about throwing a hundred things against the wall and seeing if a dozen stick.

IMO this is a side-effect of the show's format, which is predicated upon distorting the framework of what you expect out of a sitcom with surreal variety show asides and subverted sitcom punchlines (done either with banal inversion, extending them to ridiculous lengths, or making them as crude as possible).

The episode where Peter opens a line of credit at the pharmacy has my favorite scene from the entire series in it; the ipecac contest. If you hate that scene, you're never going to like "Family Guy".

I dunno, I like the show okay, but my laughter during that scene is, like, begrudging

I think I've said this on other threads, but the stuff that's funny about Family Guy is rarely vulgar or pointed and usually just has to do with funny tones of voice or turns of phrase, well-placed common expressions or behaviors, stuff like that

― nabisco, Thursday, 25 June 2009 22:00 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah exactly, and the faintly surreal non-sequiturs which provide a sort of internal logic, hence "No Lois! Let him dream..." when Chris Griffin encounters an overturned truck leaking nuclear waste

but I yammer on about FG too much.

Defend these:

Laugh-In
In Living Color
Upright Citizens Brigade TV show

in part because the show's cult annoys me

struck me that this is the biggest reason why people are so quick to knock it and exaggerate their dislike.

I dunno, I like the show okay, but my laughter during that scene is, like, begrudging

That scene is all about the punchline, IMO.

can we just agree that the family guy is not everyone's cup of tea? it is sooooo a love it or hate it kinda thing.

Laugh-In -- bright, colorful, Goldie Hawn looks hot in it
In Living Color -- Emeril clearly ripped off "BAM" from the two filmmaker guys, also just c'mon I don't know where to start
Upright Citizens Brigade TV show -- this is harder but there are always the "Ass Pennies" sketch and that one where the guy turned into a sandwich and then every joke across the entire show intersected in the dramatic ending and then something happened involving a sticky tag that was just plain mind-blowingly funny

tbh In Living Color is highly hit-miss with a lowish average, and I'm not sure I'd sit down to watch a marathon of it these days, but there was some definite wonderful stuff in there

wait, i'm wrong of course. cuz i don't hate or love family guy. i got no problem watching it though.

self x-post

family guy is generally good for a laugh here and there - what makes it bad isn't necessarily the writing, it's the characters, who are all pretty much horrible and dislikeable people, and not in a particularly funny way.

i definitely don't hate Mad Men, and in fact i must like it, because i watched both seasons of it, but it makes me uneasy and i feel sort of detached from it. i have been assuming this means it's extra-brilliant and i don't fully get it.

confused - why does anyone have to defend the UCB tv show? one of the greatest shows of all time.

that is a kind and good-hearted assumption, horseshoe

lol or a lazy one! everyone (except you, i have learned!) whose taste i admire loves it.

but nancy franklin also loves it.

Hate:

Family Guy
Seinfeld
Have never seen a whole ep but don't think I wd like either Curb Yr Enthusiasm or the other painful one that people like, with the grandfather who disappears and the Bateman...Arrested Development. (Originally typed "Patrick Bateman" which is kind of funny.)
South Park
Flight of the Conchords

I usually jump to the cynical conclusion that a show doesn't have anything meaningful to do but is waving its hands around dramatically trying to distract us from that fact

xpost - I liked Mad Men a lot at first, but through the second season I just didn't feel like it had much point or verve or anything interesting it wanted to do -- for some reason I get really bothered whenever I feel like "subtlety" or "rich characters" are disguising a lack of direction, energy, or momentum

I liked Mad Men a lot at first, but through the second season I just didn't feel like it had much point or verve or anything interesting it wanted to do -- for some reason I get really bothered whenever I feel like "subtlety" or "rich characters" are disguising a lack of direction, energy, or momentum

obv dont feel this way - i tht the 2nd season was pretty clear in what it ultimately wanted to get from "don draper" even it was surprising in the way it got there - but do u really think a show has to have a "point"?

Basically I'm an obedient reader: if a character is written to be despicable, I will despise them. Just point me in the right direction, and I'll assume that's where the story is going. That mind-set makes it hard to stay neutral about people you're meant to find despicable but identify with/feel sympathy for anyway.

South Park

i've laughed a few times at Cartman, but the rest is so painfully unfunny to me.

(I don't mean some kind of morally instructive point or agenda to communicate, but I do like to feel like a show has ... direction?)

mc 2.0: explain this gross-out joke from family guy dad

mc: you're supposed to figure out this kind of shit yourself

"confused - why does anyone have to defend the UCB tv show? one of the greatest shows of all time."
How about Exit 57 or The Vacant Lot?

oh yeah:
defend Strangers With Candy

Does the "most people" in the thread title not mean anything at this point?

I don't mean some kind of morally instructive point or agenda to communicate, but I do like to feel like a show has ... direction?

hmmm im pretty retarded so im not sure i get what u mean but like - id be cool w/ mad men if it did nothing but wander aimlessly amongst disintegrating story arcs about dissolute aristos & go-nowhere office politics. im reading the forsythe saga right now and its kind of frustrating me because the parts i like the best are just hinted at - the basically "meaningless" goings-on of the tertiary characters the dinner parties and the gallery openings and family squabbles that never change. like i totally like "stories" where a lot of detail is paid to just ppl taking and existing next to each other even if nothing really "happens" except the world they live gradually becomes sharper and more real 2 me

Does the "most people" in the thread title not mean anything at this point?

lolol

How about Grey's Anatomy?

I kind of hate that show without having seen it for effectively killing Boston Legal.

Kids in the Hall

(okay I don't hate it, I just don't think they're very consistently funny)

Lost x100. Also Fringe x100.

Friday Night Lights
I also kind of hate this show without having seen it because it's apparently about high school football, but it's supposed to be really good yes?

Yeah sorry, Lamp, I wish I were better at unpacking what I meant -- I'm really not asking for plot movement so much as some sort of ... aesthetic direction? It might be easier to explain it in the negative: sometimes you watch a television show and it feels like it has run out of ideas, like it's just tracing characters around and putting them through random paces to no particular purpose -- it doesn't have any big plot arcs, character developments, new aesthetic ideas, thematic concerns to chew on, none of that stuff. I don't think that's where Mad Men is, but through a lot of the second season I didn't feel like it had a great deal to work on, and some of the stuff it did spend its time working on didn't feel very worthwhile or meaningful.

was just gonna say Kids in the Hall. I have a feeling that my dislike for They Might Be Giants mirrors this.

Where do you guys rank KITH among the sketch shows:
In Living Color, UCB, SNL, the State, MadTV, SCTV, etc...
(If you hate KITH, you should commit to hating all shows underneath it.)

Have never seen a whole ep but don't think I wd like either Curb Yr Enthusiasm or the other painful one that people like, with the grandfather who disappears and the Bateman...Arrested Development. (Originally typed "Patrick Bateman" which is kind of funny.)

http://www.singleparentbible.com.au/content/Image/Please%20Explain.jpg

DR KARL!!

Definitely these three as actual hates:

Family Guy
Grey's Anatomy
Friends

These two as shows I don't really care about, but can't muster hate for:

Seinfeld
Fawlty Towers

Nabisco OTM on MM. You've pretty much summarized exactly how I feel about it at this point more eloquently & succinctly than I was able to. I guess this means I am going to bail on it, but man, those colors & that attention to detail.. I just don't care enough about Don Draper to commit to two seasons worth of observational details of his goings-on unless, you know, someone gets shot or something.

I'll echo the sentiments about a lot of venerated sketch-comedy, particularly the ultra-madcap stuff: Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Upright Citizens Brigade, Mr. Show, The State. Realistically, a non-condensed stretch of any one of those will typically yield about 20% total hilarity & 80% boredom.

Anyone has beef with Sports Night or Buffy ought to stop watching television imo

I'll echo the sentiments about a lot of venerated sketch-comedy, particularly the ultra-madcap stuff: Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Upright Citizens Brigade, Mr. Show, The State. Realistically, a non-condensed stretch of any one of those will typically yield about 20% total hilarity & 80% boredom.

That's beyond venerated sketch comedy - that's all sketch comedy. What else is even left?

not really hate but meh:

seinfeld
curb yr enthusiasm

Where do you guys rank KITH among the sketch shows:
In Living Color, UCB, SNL, the State, MadTV, SCTV, etc...
(If you hate KITH, you should commit to hating all shows underneath it.)

Never seen SCTV or The State.

MadTV is at the bottom of any ranking of anything.

SNL depends on the era but I'd rather watch any sketch with Phil Hartman / Eddie Murphy / Will Ferrell than KITH.

UCB is my favorite show of all time, which is to say that I'd rank it higher than a show I don't like that much.

I dunno I don't even like hating on KITH cause they all seem like cool dudes. It's just the whole 'guy dresses up as a woman = instant comedy!!' idea - I just don't get this.

it's not the fact that they dressed up as women that was funny, it was their good impressions of middle aged women and their concerns that was funny.

not interested :

Prison Break/Heroes/Lost/True Blood

Hate:

Family Guy/Soccer am/x factor

The Office US. I still don't get why it had to be remade.
All that Idols/X-factor/Popstar/Dancers/Marry Millionairs/Marry bums/Celebs shit.

No time to scroll properly so dunno if it's cracked a mench so far but....the ever hey-look-at-me-I'm-as-edgy-as-all-fuck-and-so-unPC-I'm-criticproof 'Married With Bloody Children'

it's not the fact that they dressed up as women that was funny, it was their good impressions of middle aged women and their concerns that was funny.

that shit never gets old.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/70/188629873_4b18c9d1de.jpg

Dave Foley was a MAN???

No but seriously, this has already been said, but one of the things I liked about that show was that it wasn't all "haha we are clearly men dressed up as women" -- surely half of the reason they did it all the time was that each of those dudes was spectacularly good at being a woman of a certain age. (I was about to say that I wouldn't be thrown if I ran into Bruce McCullough as someone's aunt at a family reunion in Wisconsin, but I can't really single him out when they each had really awesome and distinct personalities as women.)

I mean when it gets down to it their women characters aren't an ounce more constructed or camped up or whatever than most of their MEN, which is kind of awesome

^^^nabisco OTM. Monty Python is different, they didn't even try to pretend to be actual women, but the KITH guys were really good at becoming their female characters. Foley as a no-nonsense business woman is kinda uncanny, for ex.

yeah the kith dudes were committed and serious about playing women, it wasn't even a joke it was just them playing different characters.

they're all such perfect and complementary types, like maybe:

Foley = droll, competent, no-nonsense lady
McCulloch = mousy nervous woman tittering at others
McDonald = the prim stylish one who's more "sophisticated"
Thompson = the sassy gossipy ringleader type who cracks jokes that make others say "you're terrible"
McKinney = the type who says the "you're terrible"

(all of which are seriously more naturalistic and credible than, say, McKinney playing the big deep-voiced boss guy who writes "you're fired" on his eyelids)

i am realizing that there is almost nothing on tv that i will not watch + eventually like.

― horseshoe, Thursday, June 25, 2009 4:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is kinda where i'm at, too -- like i wasn't on the Lost bandwagon until i got caught up about a year ago, saw some Arrested Development recently that took the edge off my (still lingering) dislike for it, don't REALLY wanna watch Mad Men or The Office or the Sopranos or Buffy but if i got bored and Netflixed a couple discs my resistance would break down. I kind of feel like TV is in a class of its own as a medium in which things that are popular/revered almost always have some really strong undeniable appeal (whether it's a lowest-common-denominator appeal or not), and sometimes asserting your taste is just about not giving yourself chance to be seduced by that appeal.

i feel that way about a lot of TV--i think its something about never-ending serialized narratives, you know, where given a basic standard of writing and plot development after spending 20+ hours with a group of characters its hard not to invest in them to a certain extent

"The Philanthropist" seems to have gotten a ton of good reviews but based on the one episode I saw it seems like the most expensive, pandering expression of white guilt I have ever seen. The only thing I actually liked was the usage of Ayub Ogada's "Kothbiro" and even that was more of a "thank God they're playing some good music during this horrifyingly saccharine revelatory scene" reaction than anything else.

every reality show

I did see The Soup showing clips of reality shows the other night, and my mind was srsly blown at the sheer wtf of it all. People WATCH THESE? I mean, I will watch some really bad teevee, I'm not pretending I won't. But.......THAT??? Wow.

"I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!" was too terrible even for me.

British I'm a Celebrity used to be pretty good, and was the reality show people who don't like reality shows watched for a couple of series.

Are shows like American Idol, Hell's Kitchen, or Project Runway reality shows, or more like contest/game-shows?

Just seems like those shows are substantially different than Flava of Love, or whatever.

Well yeah, there's actually a skill competition with those shows as opposed to gross displays of human buffoonery.

to be fair, a good percentage of people watching certain reality shows are watching them as a sort of unabridged version of The Soup

lol

it's basically the Joel McHale home game, where you get to make the snarky joke to your viewing companion

this is why watching reality shows with other people is a lot of the time less bearable than watching them by yourself

i'm not sure they're generally intended for people with rich social stuff going on at the moment

The Wire
Its Always Sunny in Philly
The Big Bang Theory
Lost
The Office (US)

But I am super fucking into Law and Order: Goldblum Edition
I liked Reins too. Pissed when they canceled that.

help i'm a celebrity was unwatchable once they got rid of the drunk drugged baldwin cuz at least when he was on there was a morbid fascination about whether he would just drop dead from sweating so much.

worst ever reality on right now is the newlywed thing on abc. couldn't get a more unlikeable bunch of people in one room if you tried! it's kinda staggering really.

all supernatural detectives need to be banned for at least the next 20 years. sorry patricia arquette, really i am. god knows i've loved your ditzy ass for years now.

haha just yesterday I was imagining a new network show called The Boggler, about a supernatural detective who solves crimes by shaking up the Boggle thing and then going "oh, it says someone named Mark did it"

"Mark Bfaelop"

starring peggy hill as the boggler

good corporate tie-ins for that one

ornery police chief: "your ability 2 solve this mysteries so quickly boggles the mind!"

thanksgiving episode about genetically engineered serial killing turkeys called "Gobble Boggle"

i am out of boggle related "jokes" so quickly

boggler breaks his boggle board one week, tries to solve crimes on his own, gives up saying: "This case BOGGLES my mind."

Hate:
American Idol & countless imitator talent shows, and any of those new primetime type game shows (Can you stump a 3rd grader or w/e it's called)
CSI Miami

Meh:
Lost
Office (US)
House M.D.
CSI (all of them except Miami which I hate)

The Simpsons

I don't watch enough TV to include four others.

"I can't make sense of this broken board. It's all BOGGLEDYGOOK!"

Sorry.

The Simpsons

― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, June 27, 2009 2:58 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

Uh, isn't your user name a Simpsons ref?

Also I'm surprised that anyone could actually HATE Sopranos or The Wire.

snrub plays by his own rules. he's a maverick. a loose cannon.

Back when I started on ILX the Simpsons had only been crap for about five-six years. But now it's gotten to the point where they've been so bad for so long that you watch any random episode on syndication and there's like an 80 percent chance it'll be terrible. I know lots of other people like them, but I don't even find most of the quotes on the Top 100: Simpsons moments/dialogue thread all that funny.

"American Idol"
"Seinfeld"
"Friends"
"The Sopranos"
"Project Runway"

You forgot "Dora The Explorer"

six feet under.
battlestar galactica
south park
ER
House (i guess i don't really like medical dramas in general.)

do that many people actually love friends these days? seems like the challop these days is to like it.

Arrested Development
Arrested Development-like shows

millions of people love friends. they just tend not to be the type of people who post on internet message boards all the time.

Big Bang Theory

If you ever enjoyed one minute of this you are the bottom of the barrel.