General Television Thread

[GoGo Yubari]

[Your Mom]

Really liking Scandal. Yet another show I have to play catch up on. I wish I would give more debuting shows a chance but I've been burned too many times before. But yeah this is so good. Kerry Washington and Joshua Malina from West Wing. Great stuff!

[Your Mom]

So so glad I didnt skip Arrow season 1. They just added it to Netflix!

[TKz]

So so glad I didnt skip Arrow season 1. They just added it to Netflix!

Stick with it! The first like, 6 episodes are crap. But it really picks up in the second half of the first season and it's off to a great start with the second season!

[livid]

I never thought the first episodes were horrible but they are uneven. That's to be expected with most shows though, really. Which is why I don't get why people are getting up in arms about what Agents of SHIELD is or isn't doing; it's early.

[Benji]

Unlike SHIELD, Arrow had and showed a lot of potential, it just struggled to decide what it wanted to be. SHIELD has potential that's not even been tapped. So far it has come off as utterly bland and uninteresting outside of Coulson, and even he's less interesting than the few minutes on screen he's had in the films. It's a problem a lot of recent sci-fi seems to have - they create an interesting world full of incredible fictional science, and then forget that at the heart of every great sci-fi (heck, every great piece of fiction) is well thought out characters and how they will interact with each other and the events around them.

Two episodes in to SHIELD and the group went from strange bedfellows to all being bestest best friends and I think the closest we've had to character background is that two of them can kick ass without superpowers and one of them is teh l33t hax0rz. Oh, and two of them are some weird kind of British. Not really what I'd call interesting. Honestly, both Arrow and SHIELD are fortunate because they have an established background of loyal franchise fans who are willing to give them a chance in a longer term, but if either of them had been regular shows then I probably would have dropped them both after two or three episodes.

[livid]

That line of thinking kind of proves the point I'm trying to make. 2-3 episodes of a show that runs 22-24 episodes a season is not enough to reasonably judge what the show is and is not capable of. It's a bit different with cable shows that only have 10-13 episodes a season because they need to provide that information in a shorter period (though not always).

[Benji]

I watch way too much TV to give a show I'm barely interested in 24 episodes. I can only imagine what people with actual lives would be like in terms of dropping it. I'm always supportive of shorter seasons of 10-13 episodes because it allows for a massive drop in filler content, which is pretty much why I rarely watch procedural police shows, because they're almost entirely filler but for the first and last episodes of each season.

[Blue Rosler]

'Hello Ladies' is quite fun.

[Josh]

I watch way too much TV to give a show I'm barely interested in 24 episodes. I can only imagine what people with actual lives would be like in terms of dropping it. I'm always supportive of shorter seasons of 10-13 episodes because it allows for a massive drop in filler content, which is pretty much why I rarely watch procedural police shows, because they're almost entirely filler but for the first and last episodes of each season.

More or less this. I'm trying to trim back my TV viewing anyway, and even people who aren't trying to curb their habit have too many options available to them to just coast through the first 2-5 (or however many) episodes of a season, including the first. I'm all for letting a show develop, but it has to show signs that's it's trying.

[Your Mom]

Yeah like Fringe is one of my fave shows in a long time but if I hadn't watched season 1 on DVD I might not have stuck with it. It took too long for the main story to get going. There needs to be a hook quickly

[Benji]

If it gets good reviews and lasts a season then I'll come back and marathon it, but I'm not waiting weekly for a show that gives me no reason to.

[KONGO]

That. I'm kind of baffled by people talking about "giving shows a shot" in such dour and duty-bound terms. Got so many shows out there to watch, and plus, just 'cause you give up on a show now doesn't mean you'll never ever watch it again. Might suck for the show's longevity but they should have written a more immediate show, everybody knows what it is.

[TKz]

Because if no one ever bothered to stick with any show past the first few episodes, no shows would ever get past that first season.

No one's telling you to stick around if you're not enjoying it. But if you're not going to bother giving it more of a shot than the first three episodes, then you're not going to get in to many shows.

[livid]

I never said you had to wait weekly or anything like that, just that the first 2-3 episodes of a show's first season of 22 isn't really enough to gauge the actual quality of the show.

[KONGO]

Sure it is. I can't think of any show that I thought was unwatchable and it turned out to be great. Any random episode is gonna tell you the general quality level you're dealing with.

[Benji]

And people are telling you that the quality isn't good enough early on to keep them hooked. As for the 2-3 episodes not being enough to hook someone - that's bullshit. Plenty of shows have amazing pilots, let alone first three episodes, in fact that's pretty much the entire purpose of a pilot.

[EddieG]

I haven't given it a second chance, but general concencus is that New Girl was unwatchable, and has turned into one of the best comedy shows on tv?

[TKz]

I haven't given it a second chance, but general concencus is that New Girl was unwatchable, and has turned into one of the best comedy shows on tv?

Yes. Yes it has. It's probably not far behind Parks right now.

[Your Mom]

I haven't given it a second chance, but general concencus is that New Girl was unwatchable, and has turned into one of the best comedy shows on tv?

If I based my opinion off the previews it looks just as bad. But maybe I just will never like it