Don’t hate me, but Breaking Bad
I love that show but it is kinda designed to be hard to watch. I don’t blame anyone for not being able to commit to it.
First season is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. After that the story lines get more and more unbelievable and the characters get less and less tolerable. Possibly the most overrated show of all time, imo.
I agree with that.
I feel like I could already sense the “holy fuck, this thing’s popular, let’s stretch this fucker out as long as we can” vibes in the writing and overall direction in early S2
Honestly by the end of it I was just so thrilled it was over, it was sort of a show that my wife and I watched together but I was fully disinvested by S3
I’m with you. I was with it until Skylar just got unbearably annoying. I’ve tried 4 times now to make it through
Internet turned around from hating her to thinking hating her isn’t allowed because it’s problematic
The first season is pretty bad. It feels so low budget, low stakes and boring.
I wonder if Better Call Saul would be a better entry point and then you’d be more invested in these characters and situations so you could deal with the slow pace of season one of BB
BCS knew what they were doing and had a larger budget from the get go, so you can feel the storylines immediately without revealing too much about the end of BB
If pacing is a problem with Breaking Bad’s first season, Better Call Saul offers no relief there. I love it, much more than I liked Breaking Bad, but the plot was a very slow crawl.
Same. It’s just not bingeable and I struggle to stick to any show that isn’t.
Maybe it’s a product of its time, but I had a week off in 2009 and went through the first two seasons very quickly that week. IIRC, it being on Netflix in the early days let people binge it and contributed to its success while it was still airing which made it very popular. I’d venture to say it may be one of the first bingeable shows, but because that wasn’t a thing at the time, it didn’t follow the bingeable formula, so maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like modern bingeable shows?
It wasn’t the format but the content that makes it hard for me to binge. It’s just so heavy, it becomes overwhelming after a while. I have to step back because it starts impacting my mood negatively.
Same. I made it all the way to season 3 but really couldn’t continue.
Same here. Tried it once, didn’t care for the pilot episode and lost interest. A couple years later, some people encouraged me to give it another try after hearing that I tend to love character dramas. I made it partway through season 2 before I stopped and realized this show just isn’t for me.
The subject matter holds no interest to me, and the characters aren’t likeable or compelling enough for me to get invested.
I can appreciate that Breaking Bad is a well made show, but I don’t understand all the universal love it’s garnered.
Seinfeld. It’s just not funny.
Same with Friends, the laugh track is doing a lot of heavy lifting
There are some clips with the laugh track removed, and they really illustrate how not funny that show is. It’s just a long slew of broken conversations with awkward pauses.
I have the same opinion of any show that relies on a laugh track - if you have to trick my brain into laughing because ‘everyone else is doing it’, then your shit isn’t funny.
I actually chuckled at quite a few of those jokes
Fully agree, no laugh track is a positive selling point for me. Happy Endings is a similar show set in Chicago and since they don’t rely on canned laughs the jokes and characters are actually written rather well, shame it didn’t get as much attention for more seasons
Came here to say this. I love it’s always sunny and people insisted it’s similar but I just can’t. I’ve tried so many times.
I agree that Seinfeld is terrible but all other main actors save the show.
I know it’s a crowd favorite but The Bear.
I have watched three episodes. All of them get my anxiety to the roof. I asked my friends if it didn’t make them anxious, too and they replied ‘yes, but that’s the fun’.
Maybe I’ll watch it when I’m done with my studies… See if I miss my anxiety.
Agreed, I only made it two episodes. Anxiety as entertainment ain’t for me
If just the first three episodes had your anxiety going stop trying. When Jamie Lee Curtis starts popping up, my anxiety started going up, and I’ve never had that issue with any TV or movie I’ve ever watched! I love her as an actress and she kills the role in The Bear, but the role is a seriously messed up mom.
I heard that it only gets worst and I am like noooope
The mom is Jamie Lee Curtis???
Seriously. It’s obvious now than I know, but I haven’t seen her or thought about her since A Fish Called Wanda and wow.
She looks older than she did 40 years ago. Surprisingly enough.They make her look more frazzled in Bear, but yeah that’s her. I hate her role, but she’s amazing in it.
I watched the first season. Loved it, but yeah the anxiety is a LOT.
I only made it about two episodes into the second season. Still very very good TV, but it really is quite a burden to feel all that anxiety.
I’ve never seen The Bear. I want to watch The Bear, but at the same time I don’t want to watch it. I used to work in food service when it first came out and had a few coworkers recommend it, but I told them then that I probably couldn’t handle it cause it would send my anxiety skyrocketing.
And they said “yeah, but it’s SO good!”
Breaking bad. I’ve tried multiple times. Can’t do it. I just don’t like shows where they’re constantly at risk. Dexter was better but still hard to watch.
I’m honestly not familiar enough with it all to really know if I’m criticizing the right thing.
But over the years people have insisted that this show called the office is one of the wittiest, most clever shows ever
I watched a little bit to try to see what the hype was, and my feeling inside was that it wasn’t far removed from the type of humor that edgy teenagers think is grand. Lots of being provocative and inappropriate which is I guess… Funny? Hehehe gay. Hehehe race. Hehehe inappropriate office sexual conduct. Am I really that far off?
I can’t completely tar and feather it, there was some clearly humorous situations, but overall I just thought it was wayyyyy overblown.
And the parts that I saw that were supposed to be the funniest, according to my friends anyways, really just turned me off. I think one of them had people at a office mixer and the game was that they were supposed to have a word written on a paper, taped to their forehead which they couldn’t see. Then another partygoer would have them try to say the word.
The whole humorous premise was that you were supposed to delight at how awkward it would be for someone to say the word ‘Asian’ in an office party, and watch the actress squirm and have the camera bobbing emphasize how uncomfortable we should all feel. Let’s purposely extend this scene to create some delightful tension as to whether this social protocol will be breached!
Like it’s not funny it’s just like saying “Hitler” as a kid and delighting that it will upset the adults. That’s what it felt like to me anyways.
This was the show that taught me cringe-inducing humor is not at all for me.
Oh hell you just teleported me back to Reddit like 20 years ago with that term! Yes, cringe, that was it! And that was not for me!
Yeah, The Office hasn’t really aged well, but it is what kick-started so many of those actors’ careers. Like Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, Ed Helms, Rainn Wilson, etc. I think that’s part of why so many people like it. That and nostalgia.
I will say Parks & Rec is probably way better in terms of how characters are, and their growth. Like Aubrey Plaza starts out as an annoying bitch but as the show progresses, she learns to be more open about her feelings and such.
Parks is just more americanized, it isn’t “better”. Later seasons of The Office look and feel much more like it, as the writers pandered more and more to mainstream audiences
Your image of the show is pretty distorted, it’s not at all some edgy middle schooler show. The humor is (generally) in how much of a dumbass Michael (the boss) is and how much he ruins situations trying too hard to be funny, and the witty jokes are generally well performed one liners by Jim (John Krasinski) or malapropisms by Michael, like “I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious” or “his cap was all pitated!”
The show repeatedly makes fun of Michael’s prejudice, too, like how he feels superior to the warehouse guys despite having the same education as them and not even earning that much more. It isn’t edgy to make fun of the stereotypical middle-aged white male boss being insensitiveNo I think it’s bang on.
The show is what you said, some clever witty writing, peppered with way too much “omg let’s all squirm at how inappropriate this is and how close we get up to the line teehee”
It would be like a great comedian who writes the world’s cleverest jokes then adds in a fart joke every second line. The whole thing is spoiled, I don’t want to hear the fart jokes I don’t need to, they’re horrible. That is a simile for my experience watching the office.
Severance
Bro whaaat
I can understand even though I like it! I believe it’s because of the philosophical question I ask myself when watching it. I find the concept fascinating. Is the other you really you, or is one a slave. Notably with Helly when her innie don’t want to work for Lumon.
Breaking bad, soprano, dexter!
For the last two because it’s too slow paced! Breaking bad I believe having watched first season but couldn’t get into it.I watch the last of us but a lot episodes are also slow paced and if it wasn’t for short seasons and not watching it alone probably I would have dropped it.
At last house of dragons! Would really want to like it as it’s my kind of show.
I recently started watching The Sopranos for the first time last year, and damn is it good. Some episodes are slow sure, but a lot of them are absolutely packed with story. So much so, I needed to take a couple minutes to process what I had just watched.
Also, there’s a very intense, pretty powerful scene like right in the middle of season 3 that kinda changes the entire dynamic of the show.
To me, The Sopranos has some of the most believable characters of any show I’ve ever seen. They’re all just so fucking stupid. But not in a bad writing kind of way. They’re as stupid as the average person and maybe a little more so. The show is full of miscommunication and unreliable gossip going around dozens of characters. It’s not witty dialog, it just feels real.
The Mandalorian
There are cool moments ( ||Luke’s return|| ) but I find the writing to be mediocre.
At least it’s better than the Book of Boba Fett. That show is a disservice to the character of Boba Fett. He’s a remorseless assassin, not a mob boss with a heart of gold.
I’ll watch anything with Timothy Olyphant or Giancarlo Esposito in it, but I can see why you’d say that. The scooter race was laughable and enough with the same damn desert planet already.
Holy shit the kids’ scooter gang was embarrassing. I know this shit is for the kids but come on
Dr Who. People with similar tastes to me love it. I’ve seen episodes with several different iterations of the Doctor (please don’t @ me with your fave). It just doesn’t strike a chord with me.
I like Doctor Who, but acknowledge it’s entirely BS. He says, “Time travel doesn’t work that way.” You must accept that no plot holes can be filled by a time machine that can go anywhere, anytime. There would never be a plot if he could go back and fix it anyway, so we are stuck in a world where everything happens for maximum drama only. I can see why it’s exhausting.
Farscape.
I had a roommate that loved the show and some of the later season stuff seemed really interesting when I caught it by chance, but I just couldn’t get into it every time I tried to sit through the first season. I think it’s a lost cause now with how much sci-fi TV has evolved.
The funny thing is Claudia Black’s character was my favorite part of Stargate SG-1, and I also liked Ben Browder on it too. At least I saw enough of Farscape to catch the little wink-and-nod there.
There used to be a fan edit version of Farscape edited down to a few key minutes per episode, and it was surprisingly good.
(And surprising how many minutes of each episode could be cut without any meaningful loss…)
Voyager.
TNG, and even more so DS9, make the downgrade in writing intolerable. I have willed myself through 1.5 seasons, and I can’t will it all the way to season 5 where it’s “great” but still less than DS9.
As someone who made it all the way to the final season before dropping the show when they started pushing the Seven, Chakotay, Doctor love triangle, I can say that you didn’t miss too much.
While there’s the occasional good episode, I found the quality of the show to have only improved marginally over the seasons.
Having watched through DS9 first, it was clear that Voyager had the B team of writers.
sopranos. a bunch of irritating assholes taking advantage of people for their own gain.
sopraanos begs the audience to feel bad and root for selfish, harmful parasites. no thanks.
runner up: breaking bad for the same reason, albeit with fewer assholes.
better call saul, on the other hand? great.
I don’t think The Sopranos forces or begs the audience to sympathize with literal mobsters and criminals. At least I didn’t (all the time), although Johnny Sack is probably my favorite character. He just loves his wife so much, he literally doesn’t even look at other women twice. But God help you if he thinks you made a comment or joke about her.
My second favorite is probably Ralph Cifaretto, played by Joe Pantoliano. He’s just shitty and smarmy in every single scene he’s in and plays it phenomenally.
No The Sopranos doesn’t make the audience root for the mobsters. It’s a show that follows horrible people doing horrible things. There is great writing and very realistic dialog, but that has never tricked me into rooting for Tony or anyone else. Especially if you make it to the last season, I was personally rooting for Tony to get killed.
Yes. Sopranos glorifies a weak-willed bully exacting revenge and exerting control through violence and intimidation.
that coward is the antihero of the show named after him, glorifying his life and his choices. fuck him, his wife and his shitheel buddies, I’m not interested in exalting the sliver of humanity in assholes who choose to hurt, manipulate and exploit others for their own gain.
office (us), it’s cringe
It’s a shame too because the UK version is so good. NBC was like what if we took this really unique idea and turned it into a generic-ass American sitcom and sadly it worked for them.
This one took me a long time to get into but was ultimately worth it
It’s supposed to be
Lower Decks. I love all things Trek, but LD just annoys me.
Game of Thrones. It was like a less interesting version of Lord of the Rings, with a few mins of porn sprinkled throughout each episode.
My take away was that if you want to watch LoTR, then watch LoTR. If you want to watch porn, watch porn. But pouring both into the same cup doesn’t make it good. …which is apparently an unpopular opinion.
This is kind of a weird take, GoT is not even remotely similar to LotR in style, themes or narrative.
Medieval fantasy. The similarities may end there, but the point is it’s a mediocre medieval fantasy that leans heavily on tits to keep the audience watching.
So is Breaking Bad just Seinfeld with drugs, because they are both set in modern USA?
You seem to have forgotten a major draw in the show for a lot of people…
