Saturday Six – Shows You Gave Up On

Welcome to the Saturday Six, where each week I let you get to know me a bit better with the help of a list. Any idiot can do a Top 5 list, which is why I kicked it up a notch to a Top 6. This week’s topic: Shows You Gave Up On.

So a new year rolled in on Thursday. It did not bring in hoverboards and holograms like it was supposed to, but a new year means New Year’s Resolutions. It’s only been 2 days, but I’m pretty sure I’ve already given up on my resolution to lose some weight. I’ll just buy some new pants, that’s way less effort. In much the same way as most people give up resolutions within a few days, sometimes there are TV series you just have to give up on. Sure, the trailers looked cool and appeared to be full of such promise, but you keep watching and watching, and after a while you realize you no longer enjoy the show and just have to throw up your hands and go “I’m done!”.

1. The Walking Dead – The Walking Dead does 3 things well: Season premieres, mid season finales, and season finales. The rest of the show however, tends to be extremely boring. You can skip all the episodes in the middle of a season safely and not miss much. And don’t get me started on how slow season 2 was. They spent like 10 episodes at Herschel’s farm not doing a damn thing until they had to set it on fire and run in the finale. I finally gave up when the end of Season 3, after being built around how badass The Governor was supposed to be, ended up with him just driving away in his truck. I was expecting a huge battle. I got a drive in a truck. I fully intend to catch up at some point, but this is a show that works better in bursts of marathon viewing, rather then weekly episodes.

 

2. True Blood – I tried, I really did. But it was just so boring, that no amount of a nude Anna Paquin could save it. My friends brought me in during season 3, and I made it through about 3 episodes in season 6. I tried to go back and watch the series from the beginning, but I just kept falling asleep. It’s literally like reading a book, but a very poorly written one. As the series progressed, and got further and further away from the source material, it became painfully obvious the writers had no idea what the hell they were doing. There were so many filler side stories (Jason and the were-panthers, Terry’s Iraq experience and the demonic baby, etc.) that were just used to pad out the episodes, it made viewing episodes unfun because you had to sit through so much garbage just to get to the main Sookie story, and even that became less and less interesting as time went on. Plus, all the characters are total assholes all the time with no real redeeming qualities that make me watch them. Sookie makes the worst possible decision she can at every turn, Tara is annoying, Jason is a hypersexed idiot, Lafayette is interesting but underused and over stereotyped, Bill and Eric seem to do nothing but fight over Sookie. This series is the opposite of The Walking Dead, in that it worked much better week to week than in one sitting, because when you watch it all in one chunk, you realize just how much of a mess it is, where when you don’t have that immediacy between episodes, you tend to forget a bit. When the main impetus to watch a show is the possibility of nudity, not the story or characters, you know it’s doing something wrong.

 

3. Boardwalk Empire – This was a show that should have been right up my alley. I go to Atlantic City all the time, I’m familiar with a lot of the settings, it’s got Steve Buscemi. But I just couldn’t do it. After the first few episodes of “Oh, I know right where they buried that body!” and “Hey, check out these period costumes and sets!” wore off, it too got boring. Plus Margaret’s horrible Irish accent was tough to get through. This is another example of “If everyone on this show is an asshole, why do I care?”

 

4. 24 – I was hooked on the gimmick of the premise as soon as I heard it. Too bad it meant a lot of filler and misdirection. Each season starts out with like 6 or 8 episodes going down one path, then it turns out we were never on that path at all, it was actually this guy over here. Every time a season changed directions, I stopped caring. I think I only watched 2 seasons all the way through. Most I watched for 5 or 6 episodes, then picked back up to the finale, if at all. There never seemed to be any consequences. At the end of season 2 there is a nuclear bomb exploded on US soil and no one seems to care (sure, it was in the middle of the desert, but still, it’s a big deal!) and President Palmer is poisoned, but he’s back next season and perfectly fine and it’s never mentioned again. The nature of the premise meant there had to be so many threads going on at once, it was hard to make all of them interesting all of the time. Also, when did anyone every go to the bathroom? I can’t go more than like 4 hours without going, Jack Bauer apparently pees by sweating.

 

5. The Venture Brothers – Back when I was in college, my friends turned me on to Adult Swim. At the time, it was a great counterculture idea. Cartoons all night long? Awesome! Now, as an actual adult, the idea of staying up to 2 A.M. just to watch a cartoon seems silly. I’ve given up on the whole Adult Swim block in general, but The Venture Brothers is the best example of why. I used to be a huge superfan of the show. It had great writing, an excellent voice cast (I’ve even had dinner with Dean Venture himself, Michael Sinterniklaas), was full of nerd jokes, and had an interesting story arc. But Adult Swim killed it with such long hiatuses between seasons. The pilot aired on 2003, the first season was in 2004, season 2 was in 2006, then season 3 wasn’t until 2008, and season 4 was split in half over 2009 and 10. Three 13 episode seasons spread over 6 years takes extreme dedication from fans to make work. Sure a two year gap can work on something like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, where each episode is a stand alone piece of surreal absurdism, but Venture Brothers always had a continuity and overarching story lines. By the time Season 4 rolled around, so much time had elapsed that I had forgotten why I even liked the show in the first place, and to get caught back up on the series by rewatching it seemed like too much of a chore, and I never bothered to keep watching.

 

6. Law and Order: SVU – I believe I’ve talked of my love of Forensic Files before, so this show should be right in my wheelhouse, at least the Order part. But after a while, the Law part got to be just too much, even for me. After binge watching several seasons in a row on demand, it really desensitized me, where everywhere I looked it was all rapists and child predators. I’m sure it’s not like that, but the way they portray it on the show, New York City is nothing but nonstop rapes and child pornography rings. I was like, yeah, I should probably just stop watching this show now.

 

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook