Shows I Should Like More Than I Do

This isn't a list of shows I don't like.  That could fill an encyclopedia.  These are shows that based on certain criteria, I really should like them more than I do.  Some I like and still watch.  Some I really like and won't miss.  Others I should like but just stopped watching because I had problems with them.  And it's not shows that ran too long (The Mentalist should have stopped after killing Red John) or ones I would never like (2 Broke Girls because I prefer my comedies to be funny).  It's shows that had something going for them, but I just think I could like them more if they fixed their problems. 

Many have characters that I just can't get beyond.  I liked CSI early on.  But I really can't stand that gapped tooth wench.  It just wasn't worth putting up with her to watch that show.  So I stopped. 

Blacklist is a new show.  It has a lot of potential.  Mainly James Spader.  Actually, it's all James Spader.  Granted, the fake husband killing people did give it an uptick, but when Spader is not on the screen, the show typically drags.  Is that really what you want to base your show on?

How I Met Your Mother.  Based on early views, I should like this show.  It had some funny moments (like the Fiero episode).  Some good characters.  But.............the focal point is that Ted guy.  He was a douchebag.  Why would I care how a douchebag finds his wife? 

Dads.  So much to like about this show.  Low brow humor.  A guy from Animal House.  Martin Mull.  Seth Green doing Seth Green stuff.  Mexican ethnic humor.  A hot Thai actress wearing a schoolgirl outfit in an early episode.  But on the other hand.........who am I kidding?  I love this show.  I'm bummed out that it won't see a second season.

NCIS.  I like police procedurals.  I like Mark Harmon.  I just could not get into this show.  Every time I tried, the sheer implausibility of it just wrecked my brain.  And I expect some implausible stuff.  I'll accept superscientists doing police lab analysis and finishing DNA tests in about an hour.  But trying to convince me that a Mossad agent wants to quit that and join NCIS is stretching it a bit.  By bit, I mean to Jupiter and back.  Then, in another episode, Harmon's boat gets found with two bodies full of bullet holes.  Guess who they think is the best person to lead the investigation.  The boat owner himself.  But don't worry.  No one really thinks Harmon is responsible.  They think his long time friend and mentor is involved.  Have they ever heard of conflict of interest?  But the all time brain bleeding moment was this clip.  You have someone hacking into a computer.  And two people are typing on the same keyboard as if they could stop it with each using half a keyboard.  Do they have any clue how computers work?

 

Agents Of Shield.  I'm not a comic book nerd, but I do like them.  So I had hopes.  This one is actually getting better as the season goes on.  But when it takes adding Bill Paxton as a major character to your show, it could be problem no matter how much I liked him as Chet in Weird Science.   There were just character problems early on.  I liked three of the main characters - Coulson, Ward, May (another Asian actress in skin tight outfits).  But those Harry Potter science twins were mind numbingly boring.  The computer hacker just didn't fit.  Even worse, the battle hardened Shield agents who have seen plenty of death and destruction suddenly became little babies at the thought that their little hacker (who was a short timer on the team and never an agent) might die. 

 Sons of Anarchy.  Great show when it came out.  Not sure it has held up recently.  Began to feel like I was watching it out of habit.  There are certain things I can accept in a show like this.  It's really not plausible that a pretty boy biker metrosexual like Jax would become President of an outlaw biker gang (see any documentary about outlaw biker gangs and you'll see ugly is often a prerequisite for leadership), but chicks like him so making him the main character brings in that demo.   One problem with the show now is killing off Clay who I found the most interesting person on the show.  The show was at its best when there was an interplay between Jax's family dynamics, internal issues with the club and problems with outside forces.  Unless someone thinks Juice can provide the internal conflict that Clay did (and that person would be wrong), killing him off is a huge loss. 

The other problem is how the morality (or lack of) of the characters just changes.  Evil Clay practically became a doting grandfather in seasons 2 and 3.  Jax ends season 3 with a rededication to the outlaw MC life, but by the start of season 4, he's back to whining about getting out of the life.  Then a bunch started becoming pacifists.  Piney wants to "change" but the showrunners seem to think everyone will forget that Piney set up his old Army buddy's militia group to be blown up and then was then the big pusher to do a murder for hire to help out the Irish.  Opie blows up the militia but can't shoot one person for the dirty leprechaun bastards.  So Bobby (End The Cycle of Violence) takes care of that.  Now, shooting a complete stranger for money doesn't make you a bad person.  Well, maybe it does.  Then Chibs and Tig turned on Clay and are big supporters of Jax (who was of course willing to set up Tig to be killed.  Thanks Jax).  Now Tig only turned on Clay because Clay fooled him into thinking a gang member shot him instead of Opie and Tig runs over the gang banger's girlfriend and kills her which devastates Tig.  Or would seem to if it wasn't for the fact that Tig (and Chibs) went to murder a teenage girl who could be a witness against Bobby for his murder for hire.  Does this all make sense now?  No, because it seems like the writers just make crap up as they go along.  Hell, maybe it is better that Juice is becoming a sociopath so there is at least one halfway interesting character.  If the series ends with a bloodbath and everyone dead, maybe I'll think it's okay.

But the one that flummoxes me the most is The Walking Dead.  Really good show.  Can't argue with that.  I watch it every week and also watch The Talking Dead on after it.  But it's just got some stuff that bugs me.  It's rather amusing to see recaps of episodes talk of how shocking and brutal it can be.  Because if you've ever read the graphic novels that the show is based on, the show is about as brutal and shocking as a Disney musical compared to the books.  And some of the episodes tend to be boring.  But things that really bug me about the show are either situation related or character related (although there isn't a lot else besides situations or characters).  Some things happen that make no sense.  I'm not talking about the dead coming back.  I can suspend reality for that (but I can't suspend reality enough to think the actors playing Rick and Maggie have southern accents).  I'm talking about things like the bus fleeing the prison and then apparently just stopping in the middle of the road with everyone now a zombie.  How did that happen?  Did they die of carbon monoxide poisoning?  Even if one person turned and started biting, wouldn't at least one person have opened a door to flee?  Then you have Michonne walking around with two walkers on ropes because that somehow masks her presence.  She's still a few feet away from them.  Why would that be any different than just walking with a pack of them?  Is it magic rope?  Didn't they make it clear early that walkers smell non-walkers?  Speaking of which, why are they so often surprised by walkers?  Can't they smell those rotting bags of flesh?  I'm not talking about in a city setting where at this point, the whole place must smell like death and you fart to clear the air.  But in open fields or houses, they act surprised to stumble across one.  The moment you walk into a house, one whiff should tell you if a dead person is in there.  Personal body odor should not mask the smell of a dead body.  I'm not saying that just because of my personal bathing habits along with a crawlspace full of dead hookers.  I don't have a crawlspace.   

The show has some great characters.  It also has some really annoying ones.  One nice thing about the show is while it follows the graphic novels to an extent, it has time to flesh out the stories a lot more, extend plotlines, takes new detours and it mixes up how the characters act and what they do.  And adds characters like Daryl.  That way, you don't really know for sure exactly what is going to happen or when.  Shane lasted much longer on the show than the book while some like Dale got bumped off much earlier on the show.   One downside is when it doesn't quite mesh.  In the book, I can see why they followed Rick as he made the hard decisions, but in the show, not so much.  He was made leader the moment he showed up but didn't really do all that much to earn it.  In fact, in the book, a lot of the hard decisions he made were things Shane did on the show.  Rick did lose his shit in the book too, but he was never so wishy-washy like he gets at times in the show.  But making the characters so different at times has some downsides if you've read the books because you might like a character from the book and hate them in the show.  Lori was about the only one who was pretty much the same in both.  Annoying.  But fortunately they killed her off rather early.  Andrea and Dale were fine in the book but irritating on the show which means I was happy they got killed off.  But so did Shane who I actually found a lot more interesting than most of the others on TV and was glad he stuck around.  Which gives me hope that they might kill off Glenn or Maggie (or preferably both) early.  Those two are the most selfish bastards I've ever seen.  After the prison escape, they act recklessly to try to meet up again.  Which would be fine if they were on their own, but they seem to think it's perfectly alright to involve others in their mission of love or glorified booty call.  But the others aren't even against them meeting up.  They just want to be cautious about it.  Normal rest breaks, sleep in a safe spot, don't go through tunnels full of walkers.  But Maggie and Glenn are determined to risk their lives (and everyone else's) to meet a day or two earlier.  Which leads to Glenn leaving Abraham, Eugene and Rosita (damn, she's hot) to drag some guilt ridden moron woman into a zombie riddled train tunnel while following Maggie's trail because he can't wait a little longer to detour over the mountain.  If you're that hard up, just spank it.  The worst part?  Abraham and company find a min-van, get ahead of them, find Maggie and end up having to save Glenn and stupid girl from the other side of the tunnel.  Meaning Glenn nearly got two people killed, let his group waste ammo saving his stupid ass and actually wasted time in finding Maggie because he's an ignorant bastard. 

And that is what annoys me most about this show.  They are so stupid so often.  Off the top of my head, let me think of all the stupidity.

1. Protect your camp from zombies that feel no pain with cans on string noisemakers and tents?  Can't see anything going wrong there.  I guess parking your cars in a circle and sleeping inside it would be too much work.  Then you get to a farm that has had some walkers come around (and you know they can form packs), I guess trying to reinforce some kind of fence line was just too hard in the hard Georgia sun.  Hell, I would have dug a trench or moat around the house.

2.  Did anyone think to get a dog?  Yes, it would eat some of your food, but dogs have a good sense of smell (which see above about how lacking it is in the humans).  They are more alert.  They would warn you long before the zombies get into your camp. 

3. Maybe if your secret sex hideaway is a local pharmacy in town with the doors broken open, the smart thing to do would be check for zombies every time you go in.  Since they obviously can't smell them.

4.  Andrea pulls a nice trick by taking a long range shot at a walker.  Which turned out to be Daryl.  It's a double stupid because Daryl was surrounded by other members of the group going out to check it out meaning if she missed, she might have hit one of her buddies. 

5.  Shane and Rick go to drop off a prisoner well away from the farm and take the time to round up some supplies including filling a few gas cans from a gas truck.  Think about that for a minute.  They had a gas truck.  Needed gas.  Filled a few gas cans from it.  Why not take the whole truck?  Afraid it might look like a walker and Andrea shoot it?

6.  Lori spent every episode being pretty much useless in every situation not involving washing clothes.  So, obviously even though Rick and Glenn have gone to get Hershel at a bar, it was sheer genius for Lori to go out alone after all three.

7.  So you finally get a safe situation inside a prison.  You've got multiple fences and concrete walls and guard towers to protect you from zombies outside.  Yet, even though you know that anyone who dies turns into one, you don't have a night watch inside in case someone, you know, dies of natural causes?  Yes, waiting until someone dies of the flu and eats half your group is obviously the way to go.

8.  Even Daryl (the supposed smart one) opens the door to yell at a dog letting in a pack of walkers.  Meaning that he was in a house without any walkers, but couldn't smell a whole pack of dead bodies on the front porch.  AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

Then there is the king of stupid.  Dale.  I actually feel sorry for Dale because his character isn't irritating in the books (and he gets laid there).  He's a bit of a crank, but in the TV show, he's...... a nag.  They act like he's a moral conscience of the show, but he's not.  He's just an annoyance.  And dumb.  To begin with, what's his fetish for his RV that breaks down constantly?  I understand the advantage of an RV, but this one doesn't seem to lock and keeps blowing a radiator hose.  Here's a thought.  When Glenn goes to town, ask him to run by the dealership and steal a new RV.  Hell, take six and park in a rectangle to make a fort.    Then Dale begins to worry about Shane who is kind of a crazy would be rapist so that isn't really a dumb response.  But he takes their load of guns to go hide them in a swamp so that Shane can't access them (ignoring the fact that Shane has a sidearm which is all he'd need to kill Rick).  A brilliant idea because items of made of wood and metal do so well in swamp storage.  And you know who else can't use the guns?  The rest of the group if an emergency happens.  And if Dale gets killed (which thankfully happened), no one else would have known where they were.  Guns are kind of important in the zombie apocalypse.  But before he could do much else stupid, Dale gets killed.  Actually, the way he died showed how stupid he was.  They know walkers can get on the farm (they pulled one out of a well).  Yet, he decides to walk across a field in the dark by himself.  Right by a walker.  Who he couldn't smell.  Or shoot apparently.