marvel: “here’s what you wanted”
us: “kys”
Apparently I have horrible taste because every show i like gets canceled in the first or second season
We should start our own streaming service
With blackjack, and hookers!
forget the blackjack!
I hate when they release streaming shows one episode per week. I am not going to watch it until it’s done and I catch up on other shows. Stop trying to get me to watch weekly, it’s not going to happen. That’s just not how people watch tv anymore.
So a new show to me is new for a solid year before i can get to it sometimes. So many times a show gets cancelled before I can watch it and half the time I lose interest once I know it’s cancelled
I prefer it that way, because if all the episodes are available at the same time I would just binge it, which always makes me feel bad.
I don’t watch a TV show until it is finished, it had a satisfying ending and it is acclamied.
This is how I watched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Sopranos. I loved it.
This is how I avoided watching a single episode of Game of Thrones.
Maybe I’m weird but sometimes I actually enjoy streaming one episode per week, especially if I like the show, it just forces me to spread it out.
I used to hate the weekly model when streaming became popular, but I think people are better viewers when they watch weekly. It’s easier to have ongoing water cooler conversations about each episode, so your show gets consistent buzz. Plus you don’t have the extreme of a whole year+ to wait between seasons. If a classic show ended in May you could start a new season in September. By the time most modern shows have new seasons, I forgot 40% of what I saw last season.
Dude id be fine with like 3 per week… if they do 13-14 episodes then they guaranteed two months streaming income. As it is… yes im gonna just keep rotating streaming services.
There’s so many shows that I watch one episode of something with the wife every night, and we haven’t run out of stuff to watch in years. We like to watch one show at a time till we finish the season before we move on to something else, so we just wait till the show or season is over
I much prefer one episode a week. However the wife doesn’t. This is the main reason we never finished Flash. Also because she felt we had to watch all the arrow verse shows in order to watch Flash and she decided it wasn’t worth it once to do that you’d have to watch one episode of Arrow than one of Flash, then one of DC’s Legend of Tomarrow.
I spread it out regardless, I just don’t want to pick up a show without a conclusion.
That’s some rose colored glasses right there.
TNG, Voyager… Rough first seasons leading to excellent series
Really Star Trek in general…
Star Gate Universe finally hit its stride in its final season but too late to prevent cancelation
Also see Life on Mars, Journeyman, Freaks and Geeks, Pushing Daisies, and Freaking Firefly.
None of this is new.
I love Freaking Firefly.
Also TV now:
Murder mystery.
“Comedy” that’s all about murder mystery.
Depressing drama.
Drama about murder.
Murder comedy that’s mostly just drama.
Documentary about murder.
Depressing documentary.I miss the good engineering docos, how it’s made etc. And shows like Mythbusters.
There’s nothing quite like that now.
Same. If you haven’t seen made in America, I highly recommend it. It’s like how it’s made, but better, like it also includes interviews with workers and executives.
Back when you had TV on a specific schedule, you were forced to watch things as they were. If a show was clunky, well you didn’t have much choice in the matter, it was watch that or change channel or go outside.
With on-demand stuff, you can just completely skip over stuff you might actually like because the first few episodes are clunky. Why should I watch something clunky when I have the choice to watch something I know is good from the start?
…I’m still not watching One Piece though, I don’t care how good it gets later.
I read One Piece and I like it. Yes, I don’t recommend starting.
Every 100 episodes of one piece has 10 good episodes. Fans of the show will clip those 10 episodes and yell from the rooftops that it’s the best show.
Also TV now: This show/movie did well 40 years ago so we rebooted it with people who never saw it, a shitload of special effects, and totally missed why it was popular in the first place.
They did this a lot in the 90’s too. Production companies love to ground an IP into the dust.
That explains why I’m so familiar with boomer shows and movies, despite being a millennial. There was a lot of old content and remakes on TV then.
When I was growing up I thought Gilligan’s Island was a much bigger deal than it actually was.
Tbf back then I wasn’t watching remakes or reboots (mostly, and I know they did make them, but…) I got familiar with those shows by watching the reruns themselves. And even as a kid who wasn’t alive at those shows releases, they still held and in many cases still do hold their original magic. Ex: Golden Girls.
But I type that as my Caddyshack VHS rolls credits so maybe I’m the weirdo. Oh well, I’m alright, nobody worry 'bout me!
Wait… have you also been trying out the MacGyver reboot from 2015???
We don’t talk about that.
I bought the OG McGyver on DVD a few years ago and I was all “I remember this being a lot better than this”
Magnum PI still holds up, at least the first season.
Airwolf, not so much. Same with Hardcastle & McCormick and Riptide. I still liked Knightrider last time I watched an episode, but it was always kinda corny.
Been meaning to watch Simon & Simon next, but haven’t looked for it
NuTrek that you?
Curious - do you feel a lot of reboots have missed the mark?
I’m starting to feel the opposite, where a lot of reboots are way better than the original.
In general I feel like reboots are lazy. There is a plethora of created and not-yet-created IP to choose from but producers continue to reboot the same franchises often ignoring established cannon in favor of “popcorn eating masses” appeal. Reboots frequently result in a generalization or dilution of the original plot with character traits dialed up to 11.
To answer your question more specifically; yes. Movies like ‘The Magnificent Seven’, franchises like Star Trek in the 90s, even shows like MASH or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both based on films of the same name) showed that reboots don’t have to be in the same vein as their source content either by a change of genre, a change in timeframe, or even a change in medium. The best reboots have always brought their own new flavor to or take on the original material. But even doing that little means taking a risk and that doesn’t seem to be something producers are willing to do right now.
Nu Trek has been consistently awful.
only SNW has come close to anything that feels like the spirit of trek
Orville best NuTrek.
…and yet the elevator pitch “Seth McFarlane wants to be Picard” sounds like it would be awful. But it works.
I’m reserving my judgement until I see the reboot of the Munsters.
Is this a real thing?
Not yet, but at the rate things are going…
Haven’t they already made a million of those?
The 'Lost In Space" reboot was amazing. They took everything that was dumb in the original show and made it smart. Then they took the one really good thing [Dr. Smith] and made them fantastic.
Honestly there is so much back catalog to watch, who even needs a flood of new stuff? I can’t possibly keep up.
That’s the problem.
All new TV must compete with the rest of the gag streaming catalog.
Conversely
Producers find a new show idea that looks interesting and could be popular …
Writers: yeah we got this idea that could be turned into an hour and a half hour long film … it’s very interesting, great plot dialogue, and there’s a great twist
Producers, executives: Great idea! I love it! But it would give us more content if you could turn it into a series instead. Take the whole film and stretch it out across seven one hour episodes.
Writers: how?
Producers, executives: just cut it up into seven parts, slow everything down and make a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of every episode.
And then, Kai Patterson comes in and cuts it back down into a pretty good standard length film which I see as a win.
Opposite problem, too. Take what was supposed to be a series and shrink it down to a movie. The Section 31 movie comes to mind. It’s so much better if you view it as if it were the pilot for a new series, but that’s never going to happen.
Also writers: We don’t give a shit about the source material the fans love. Fuck these nerds.
I was so disappointed by the ready player one film and was absolutely flabbergasted when I learned the author was actually actively involved in the film.
It depends. I really like the ability to flesh something out into a longer format - especially book adaptations. Not that there isn’t space for 2 hours and under films, but the rise of high production TV series that aren’t meant to go on forever IMO has been net positive.
There is a weird inverse relationship between how long audiences will wait to give a show a chance, and how long execs (specifically Netflix) will give the show.
I think there must be more to the Netflix example. Maybe they are monitoring other data points like web searches or show mentions on fora to quantify buzz and work out if the show has hit potential with target markets. Either that or they get some new opportunity for creative accounting with each show.
It’s capitalism. Unverified, but I’ve heard it explained as a result of tracking growth through new subscribers. Keeping around an old show won’t drive new subscribers unless it’s a huge show that generates a lot of buzz. New shows have a better chance of appealing to people who aren’t already subscribers. So they cancel the old one and start up another new show instead.
That makes a lot of sense
50 years ago: 6 episodes in a season and stop after 2 seasons because it’s well written without a bunch of useless filler.
I wanted to dispute this, but aside from the hyperbole around the number of episodes per season, top-rated TV in 1975 was pretty damn good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-rated_United_States_television_programs_of_1975–76
I was thinking of Fawlty towers tbh, but sure
I love that all I the family and two of its spinoff are on there.
Then again how many shows were there with three channels, top 30 is probably most of what was on prime time.
They make a lot of shows now that would never have been greenlit back when all shows had to be hits. It’s possible to have a niche now.
Absolutely.
I maintain that Netflix is basically like The Cannon Group was back in the 1980’s… only, profitable. They just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. You get some real art that way, a few okay wins, some real duds, and some absolute freaks of nature that crawl their way to the top and/or into cult status. But none of it is what typical execs would go for. Which is to say that it’s a viable economic niche in the entertainment industry, especially now that it’s bigger than ever.
Briefly, but it’s possible.
If it’s on Netflix, don’t expect them to finish the show.
Mindhunter and Altered Carbon my beloved. Even if I don’t like AC S2, I still like to see their world explored more.
But I guess I have the source books to read.
cause we need to pirate it.
I’d rather have them kill shows immediately than right before the final season. See Westworld, Expanse and (almost) Snowpiercer. I’m currently really anxious about Yellowjackets.
Firefly still hurts though.
Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say “Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!” vs “Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!”?
This is how I’ve always felt about it too. All of Whedon’s other shows had twists that made the audience hate entire seasons; there’s no reason to believe Firefly would have escaped that pattern.
So instead of being sad it died early, we can be glad we can still imagine where it could have gone in the best case scenario. The vision in our minds will likely be better than what we would have got if it’d continued.
No need to worry about Jayne’s inevitable face-heel turn, or whatever other terrible subplots could potentially have cropped up in later seasons like River developing explicit (rather than merely suggested) incestuous feelings for Simon, or Inara betraying the crew for a cure to her disease (before being welcomed back a season later), or Kaylee getting killed off out of nowhere because Whedon loves doing that to characters of her archetype, or YoSaffBridge becoming a core crew member after we learn her tragic backstory even though her awful personality hasn’t changed at all.
And that’s not even getting into what the network execs, who hated the show, would have done with their meddling. Things could have been so much worse. Fans should console themselves with the fact that the show at least died with its dignity intact, and we even got a movie that resolved a few of the major hanging threads.
No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way.
Something like this would have happened even if Joss Whedon wasn’t revealed to be a scumbag. Adam Baldwin, the actor who played Jayne, went on to become a major mouthpiece for the alt-right and a mainstay of conservative Twitter. IIRC he’s even the one who named GamerGate (not that the name required even a modicum of creativity).
If you want to know how the series would’ve been if it had stayed on, you can read the comics.
Graphic novels were sweet, especially the Shepherd’s tale.
They just make me miss Ron Glass
Yeah, but half a season?
If memory serves, the DVD set had 3 extra unaired episode, plus the follow-on movie. So all told, closer to a full season.
But those didn’t air prior to it being shitcanned.
I will never forget when Netflix had the “New Season” banner on Firefly. On April 1st.
The Expanse would need at least 3 seasons to catch up to the books. I’d rather they stop at the actual end of an arc (which is followed by 30 year time skip, mind you) than half ass through and botch the ending of the entire series.
the one thing i do appreciate is them dropping filler episodes
Oh no, filler is a good thing. Filler gives you time to know the characters, and adds depth and color to the world. Filler is where writers actually get to stretch and try out ideas. Filler is what makes a show feel full.
Imagine the X-Files with no filler. We’d lose the Jose Chung episodes, “Home,” “the Post-Modern Prometheus,” and so many other great episodes. Without the filler, it’s just an endless slog through Chris Carter’s poorly planned mythology. Just the smoking man and vanishing babies for
elevennine seasons.Filler can be good, it can also be bad, and perhaps most strangely it can be “bad” but also “fuck you I want to see Goku scream ‘give me your energy’ for four episodes before he releases the spirit bomb. Again.”
just an endless slog through Chris Carter’s poorly planned mythology
Exactly. Watching just those episodes on a binge is going to be… okay, at best. You really need the time in-between those plot beats to let it marinade a bit. Let the conspiracy and shadow-government machinations grow in your head. It lets you get real hungry for the next morsel of “the truth” that eventually comes your way. Then you savor it while you watch Mulder out-think a Genie or whatever.
I think your opinion is by far the more popular view right now. I completely disagree though. Almost every mini-series I see I’m left dumbstruck as I feel like any decent editor could have gotten the same story across just as well with a 2 or 2.5h movie instead. I feel like they are just wasting my time.
And then you end up with a 6 hour story chopped to shit and get a very disjointed movie that feels like you’re watching what was left of the film stock after Bubba Sawyer had a turn in the editing room.
No. Good movie editing has been happening since shortly after movies were a thing. Huge books have been made into really good movies. Streaming has opened up new outlet for mini-series like content and some of it really takes advantage of the format to deliver new kinds of story telling that can be worth the time investment. However, most of it is just about generating content with minimal editing and borrowing hook techniques that evolved from TV drama series in the 80s and 90s.
i mean i haven’t rewatched xfiles since the 90s but isn’t that more of a victim of being a transition between monster of the week episodic and season long story arcs?
Community has the best “big round number” episode.
And also the best bottle episode.
Wait… what is going on here?!
Other than the best possible costume choices for the cast of SG-1? Only the best TV mash-up ever to be crammed into a few glorious minutes of film.
(Sorry LousyCornMuffins, I can’t help it)
There was an episode of Stargate SG-1 where…remember the paranoid dude who turned out to be an alien? Well he ends up working in Hollywood, and produces a TV show called Wormhole X-Treme, which is a parody of Stargate SG-1. This character then tries to pitch other shows which are pastiches of Sci-Fi shows, to include a very brief send-up of Farscape, especially relevant since Season 9 and 10 take on Ben Browder and Claudia Black, John Crichton and Aeryn Soun on Farscape respectively.
So we get T’ealc in a Luxan chin and Chiana Carter.
Amazing.
hey! i’m feeling mighty aggravated by this!
also, i always get that alien confused with the dan castellaneta episode in season 8. mostly because I’m so excited for that episode I can’t wait for it to happen.
no one tell make them watch 10 seasons of stargate
I tell everyone I can to watch 10 seasons of SG-1 . The first show I actually watched every episode in order, though I am sure I saw many of those in syndication before Netflix became a thing. If you don’t like Stargate there it’s something wrong with you.
But the acting is SO BAD!
It took all my willpower to get through B5…
it’s not supposed to be good it’s supposed to be fun
I… but bad acting isn’t fun!
Except that one episode of Breaking Bad…
But then again, that show is over a decade old at this point.
Which one was filler?
S03E10 - “Fly”
omg I was watching behind the scenes and Vince Gilligan was like “i really think that Fly is an episode that’s going to stand out to viewers!” like, why, for being a boring hunk of crap? I think his rationale was that it’s a lot of walt and jesse screen time
The one where the whole thing is just Walter chasing a fly around the lab. I’ve even got a vague memory of Vince Gilligan admitting it was only there because they were an episode short of whatever they were contractually obliged to produce but had very little budget left.
no he thought people would like it because of how it develops the relationship… the episode gets referred back to a lot. I thought it was boring though, I’m glad I’m not the only one
A lot of people dislike the “fly hunt” episode.
The Netflix show, House of Cards, in the first few minutes of the first episode, Kevin Spacey stumbles on a hit-and-run and there’s a badly injured dog. He puts it out of its misery.
According to Netflix who wanted it removed, it led to a major drop off of people dropping off the show. But to the showrunner, that’s the point.
Now, people drop off that show when Kevin Spacey appears so whatever.
a major drop off of people dropping off the show
Uhh… what? So more people kept watching?
Yeah. That first season was really good! And Kate Mara!
Why the point?
My guess is that if you didn’t like the dog scene, you wouldn’t like the rest of the show. The tone is the same.
Nailed it. Kevin Spacey, in the show, does whatever he needs to get what he wants. Just like in real life.
Its the idea that not every character should be likeable and not all media should be without friction.
I… generally think stuff like that in the first few episodes is really stupid. Mostly it just turns things into misery porn and is a great way to alienate your audience. I think a much better approach is to lure the audience in so that they don’t quite realize when Walter/Saul/Kim became truly irredeemable monsters… even if that tends to lead to people never realizing it.
And I think it is extra disingenuous to pretend that House of Cards was some daring show that bucked all the norms. It wasn’t HBO levels of sexposition but they definitely were playiing up the “you can’t watch this on network TV” from the first episode.
Print, not TV, but one of my favorite authors is Harry Connolly and his Twenty Palaces series had a pretty infamous chapter that was all one long run on sentence (I forget how many pages but I want to say 5-10?). You don’t necessarily realize it in the moment but it is a hard read that is mentally tiring and it perfectly suits the contents of the chapter. Apparently basically every single beta reader hated it and he has alluded to it being why his Agent and Publisher dropped him and… I probably would too. I loved it but it very much hurt the overall pacing of the book to a large degree.
But that was also 3 or 4 books in. Not the first chapter of the first book (which was a child burning to death horribly… Yup. Connolly definitely got a hold of some incriminating photos or something).
It’s amazing Black Mirror ever got off the ground then…
