Is there anyone out there besides me still watching this shipwreck? Once my favorite TV show, I am soooooo sick of watching Tommy drink or not drink. A million drunks have been cured since Tommy tipped the bottle.
What ever happened to sharing the stage with the other characters on the show? And if Tommy is speechless one more time at the antics of the women on the show, I give up. Nobody looked on with eyes apopping this much since Spankey on the Little Rascals/Our Gang.
At 50, he shouldn't be so easily shocked. Why can't the writers come up with a new arc? Why is this show still on? Why am I still watching it? What did you watch long past its due date?
28 comments:
The Sopranos fits that category for me.
Well thanks for warning me. I've never seen RESCUE ME and I won't start. I watched the first episode of HAVEN last night and that was godawful!
I watched SCRUBS past its expiration.
I gave up on Rescue Me a while ago. Your post just confirms my reasoning.
Yes, I still watch it and yes, I pretty much feel the same way as you do. When he drank at the end of last week's show and the other characters (including Teddy, who had threatened to kill him if he drank) jsut stood there watching I wanted to smack them all.
The relationship with Janet just annoys me and the daughters...well, the older one needs a good spanking and the younger one needs a shrink, badly.
Don't even get me started on Sheila and the obnoxious Chief... so why do I still watch it? Good question. I guess the firehouse humor can still be funny at times - is Sean the stupidest human being who ever lived? - and the fire stuff, rare though it is these days, is still done well.
But maybe it's just inertia. This is the last year and we want to see how it ends.
David is right about HAVEN, by the way. Just horrible. As soon as the mumbler showed up I called him as the bad guy and Emily Rose had zero credibility as an FBI agent. Whether it was her acting, the awful script or the weak direction - or all three - I couldn't even make it through the entire hour.
Avoid this one at all costs.
Jeff M.
Yes, I still watch it and yes, I pretty much feel the same way as you do. When he drank at the end of last week's show and the other characters (including Teddy, who had threatened to kill him if he drank) jsut stood there watching I wanted to smack them all.
The relationship with Janet just annoys me and the daughters...well, the older one needs a good spanking and the younger one needs a shrink, badly.
Don't even get me started on Sheila and the obnoxious Chief... so why do I still watch it? Good question. I guess the firehouse humor can still be funny at times - is Sean the stupidest human being who ever lived? - and the fire stuff, rare though it is these days, is still done well.
But maybe it's just inertia. This is the last year and we want to see how it ends.
David is right about HAVEN, by the way. Just horrible. As soon as the mumbler showed up I called him as the bad guy and Emily Rose had zero credibility as an FBI agent. Whether it was her acting, the awful script or the weak direction - or all three - I couldn't even make it through the entire hour.
Avoid this one at all costs.
Jeff M.
Sorry - don't know why that double posted.
Jeff M.
That pretty well sums up my opinion on every aspect of the show, Jeff. Glad to know we aren't the only ones still waiting for a return of the quality of the first couple of years. Vainly though.
Yes the Sopranos tailed off too although not this badly.
No HAVEN either, I guess. Too many shows seem to be the same now.
I never got around to watching RESCUE ME--a good thing, I guess.
CAPRICA I watched long after its expiration date because my husband liked it. Terrible show.
I finally gave up on HOUSE last season. Yes, Hugh Laurie is brilliant and the cast is great, but the writers have gone brain-dead. The patients are merely a necessary annoyance to them now. The medical mystery aspect of the show shrank into the background as House's drug problems became the focal point. What a waste!
Out of some sense of nostalgic loyalty, I watched STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION until the bitter end. Which gave me permission to dump DEEP SPACE NINE and not even try the next 37 sequel shows.
HOUSE is definitely past its sell-by date but we still watch it. And as George can attest the last two seasons of 24 were pretty bad.
And yes, I kept watching to the bitter end.
Jeff M.
Never seen Rescue Me. Or The Sopranos. Thanks, David, for the heads-up on Haven. I hadn't planned on watching it. Now I won't be tempted.
The last show I bailed out on was the original Hawaii Five-O shortly after Jack Lord took over control of the show's direction. Ego-maniac that he was, he ripped the heart out of a favorite. I refused to watch an episode after season six.
I thought at one point this looked interesting, but I've never managed to catch an episode.
Producers and writers are market driven, and--sad to say--there is a considerable market for inferior scripts in what someone once called the "wasteland," the place wherein discerning minds will find little that is worthwhile. A simple critical overview of the so-called "best" (i.e., most popular) television programs should remind all of us of another quip: no one ever went wrong by underestimating the intelligence of the American society. Television, book publishing, and politics are three sources for confirming that thesis.
The Beloved Spouse and I heard good things about RESCUE ME, so we ordered it up on NetFlix last month. Watched the first three episodes,sent it back. We both wanted to like it--we love Denis Leary--but the show worked too hard to make sure I knew how I was supposed to feel. I hate that. The individual scenes were good, especially the banter among the guys in the firehouse, but they didn't trust me enough to come to my own conclusions and it turned me off before I had a chance to get tired of the drinking/not drinking see-saw, which I would have.aphori
Patti - I've never seen Rescue Me, but based on your comments, maybe that's not such a bad thing. There are a few shows through the years that I've truly enjoyed, and I've always appreciated it when everyone knew that it was time to end the show gracefully. Some have done that quite well - others...not so much.
I'm still watching "Rescue Me" for basically the same reasons Jeff M. is. I've stuck with series so dumb I wonder why I ever watched them in the first place, like "Nip/Tuck". And sometimes a show will go bad and then resurrect itself. "The Shield" is a perfect example. The first two seasons were great, then there were a couple of off seasons where I almost gave up, then in the last three seasons it kicked into a new level and was probably the best thing on television at the time. I did bail on "The X-Files" when Duchovny left.
I'm speechless.
Not being much of a TV watcher, not, I've not seen it, but this is just the kind of thing that seems to happen to every weekly show after a little while. I wish they'd just bring back (the original) Surfside 6.
SURSIDE SIX and 77 SUNSET STRIP. What a fun show that was. But would it hold up. So few do as more than a lark.
I did manage to stop watching Nip and Tuck after the season with the defacer. And 24 after he shot the woman in the leg. A little torture and I manage to SEVER my relationship.
Dana-the first three is all you need. Nothing new in the last six years.
I thought when cable came along we would have shows about books, RT but that never happened except for CSPAN with more political fare.
I would have watched TNG forever, Randy. Glad they pulled the plug. The others less so.
Could never watch HOUSE. I am too much of a hypochondriac to go down that road.
All HOUSE episodes are the same: He misdiagnoses once each segment until he finally gets it right at the end. I'm not taking my aging butt to a doctor with a 25% diagnosis rate.
And along the way there are a lot of painful tests. No thanks.
I'm so glad to read this. My disappointment at the new Rescue Me is one of the things that's helping me make the decision to give up TV. I found myself screaming at Denis Leary--"drunks are boring!" I turn off nearly all the shows I try to watch these days. Every successful series seems to fall into self-parody after the first three seasons--and the "new" series are simply bad copies. Or there are vampires. Sooooo over vampires.
It's been ages since I've watched TV on a regular basis. I've been away from it so long I've forgotten what shows bored me to death by the time they needed to be cancelled. I can see I'm not missing much.
Amen to vampires.
Since when has Most Popular *ever* indicated Best?
Television is a medium that can be exhausting, and it's tough to maintain quality, if not almost impossible, certainly with utter consistency...but that doesn't mean we don't get brilliant or near enough dramatic series ranging from THE ROCKFORD FILES to TRYING TIMES to HOMICIDE to ONCE AND AGAIN to THE WIRE (which also was not consistently good, by any means) to SONS AND DAUGHTERS (the shortlived sitcom) to THE GOOD WIFE...to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. All the dull vampire shows which have followed were not inspired, with only the very inconsistent ANGEL, a spinoff, and the pretty good TRUE BLOOD distinguishing themselves...but there are dozens of Anne Rices and Stephanie Meyers for every Kim Newman.
And there's uaually at least something good to watch. I still say the last couple of seasons of SCRUBS were a return to form, even if the first five seasons were, of course, fresher...and, yes, HOUSE is too-rigidly structured, which is why I rather like the story "arcs" which refocus on House's problems or those of the other characters.
THE VENTURE BROS. started out as a rather decadent but rather brilliant satire, but has been losing steam as it trickles out. And Randy is certainly correct about the disimprovement of HAWAII FIVE-0, and why, though I didn't like it quite as well as he does...it did do some suprising episodes when producer/creator Leonard Freeman was still alive.
However, MAGNUM PI went even further off the tracks when Selleck started throwing his weight around in latter seasons...and the sitcoms such as ROSEANNE, GRACE UNDER FIRE, CYBILL, and THE DREW CAREY SHOW (though the first and last rather more intentionally, I think) completely fell apart by the end of their runs, as the stars were allowed to act as if they were the primary creative forces involved. THE COSBY SHOW rather set the standard for that, as it devooved into Cosby mugging at small children shortly after the first season.
Pity about RESCUE ME, which I've never liked quite as well as (not great, but better) THE JOB, and largely for the reasons that Dana puts forward...too ham-handed and forced.
Conversely, STAR TREK TNG improved sharply after Roddenberry passed, and it was no longer required to rehash the first series.
And I certainly spell and type better when I've had some sleep...'night.
The new Battlestar Galactica would improve significantly if you removed certain episodes from Season 3 and move up various plot points from Season 4.
Everyone who hated the show after the one year leap at the end of Season 2 is pointing to the wrong cause for the show to jump the shark.
Everyone that hated the show after the big reveal of the final five Cylons is, too.
The reason the show went belly-up and didn't get the momentum back was due to the Kara/Anders/Dualla/Lee love rectangle.
One week, Kara's with Lee.
Next week, she's married to Anders.
One week, Lee wants to be in Kara's pants.
The next, he's begging Dee not to shove him out an airlock.
Next week, Anders is telling Kara he wants a divorce.
Next week, he's frakking Kara.
The character that got the rawest deal out of the entire thing was Dualla, who went from someone with a voice of reason, to someone that had no voice at all, until she finally silenced herself in Season 4, albeit without any connection to this rectangle. I'm surprised she could wait it out so long; I'd've probably blown my brains out a lot sooner.
Buddha knows the writers blew the brains out of the show long before they should have.
I liked the first few seasons of that, Chris. But inconsistency in plot lines would drive me wild.
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