For me if I had to pick a good contender it would be the UK version of The Office.
I know many tend to debate how Ricky Gervais really fell off and how he repugnantly acts like a whiny centrist edgelord but me personally IMO I actually don’t think he was ever funny not even a little.
His big break through television was just so painful to sit through it’s so charismatically boring the characters are completely generic at best (notably Tim) or straight up insufferably unlikable at worst (especially the protagonist David FUCKING Brent) and most importantly the humour is just embarrassing.
Always seemed like The Thick Of It but without the nuisance tongue in cheek and charming satire.
A big part of why many of the things in this thread haven’t aged well, is because a lot of what made these shows original and unique was copied to death following the fame of the original.
If you weren’t there for the original release of a piece of media, there’s a good chance you’re not necessarily seeing it in the context where the accolades make sense.
Seinfeld basically invented the 3 camera sitcom and a lot of the key tropes in the format. If you go back today having not watched it before, the vast majority of it just comes across as a boring sitcom, because every sitcom to follow took notes from the way they did Seinfeld.
It’s the same with the UK office, it basically invented the modern mockumentary format as well as the cringe comedy era that followed (and gave us things like peep show). If you look back now without that context, it just looks like a generic combination of both those things.
I believe “I Love Lucy” is credited with inventing or popularizing the three camera sitcom. Not to dampen’s "Seinfeld"s contributions or the point of your comment, but I just wanted to add that small correction.
Just to mention it, this is literally named the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect on TVTropes
I think the bigger issue is that most of the show isn’t that good. Less than half the seasons are good, and the lows from the bad seasons are really low. Watching it on a streaming scenario exposes this a lot more than reruns of the good parts.
I actually still enjoyed it for the most part last time I went through. Jerry’s standup is terrible and I have no clue how he ever got an audience, but the actual show I enjoyed most of, even if nowadays pretty much all the plots would be solved because everyone would have a cell phone.
Seinfeld didn’t invent the three camera sitcom, but it was important in creating modern sitcoms that didn’t have a lesson to learn at the end of redeeming protagonists.
Ahh so THAT’S what they meant with the whole “It’s about nothing!” thing…
The Office (US) pretty much killed laugh tracks in US sitcoms.
My aunt Gisela promised to bring me into touch with my father. In reality, she simply darkened the room and, with a lowered voice, gave a bad imitation of my deceased dad. That’s one medium I could do without.
Funny and original comment. Nicely done
The James Cameron Avatar movies.
They’re so bad.
…well the first one was. Didn’t bother with any after that…
I thought the wecond one was way better and more intereating than the first one. It even made me genuinely sad at one point. I watched like 15 or 20min of the third one and found unwatchable. I’m not saying you should watch the second one, because it’s a masterpiece or something, but i thought that if they keep that pace, maybe the third one will be good are something. It’s still a technical marvel, at least the first one at the time and the second one for the insane water scenes and water physics and time and effot that went into it. The third one looks a lot more like a greenscreen movie.
Great example of; just because it was a technical masterpiece, that doesn’t make a movie good. The special effects were outstanding for the time, and still hold up very well. That is something I will always praise it for, but it is the only thing worth praising about it. It really is a very polished turd, in that sense.
Yeah I saw it in IMAX 3D and it was certainly a spectacle. The visuals were phenomenal, but the film itself was otherwise completely forgettable.
I’ve never seen them, probably not going to either
…as opposed to the M. Night Shamalan movie?
We will never get along
Watching without a laugh track is amazing, it highlights how awful it really is.
Big Bang Theory
I remember it was once described as “a show about smart people for stupid people”. Arrested Development being it’s antithesis in that regard, I guess.
The worst part is how it’s fans seem to think it’s a love letter to “nerd culture” (whatever the fuck that is) and endlessly bring it up if you dare mention any interest in comics, roleplaying games or anything in that vein. “Oh you’ll love this show, it’s all about that nerdy stuff.”
Yeah I hate fake nerds on TV. Big Bang Theory being the absolute worst.
Obligatory Portlandia Nerd PSA (invidious link)
I grew up with actual nerds in the 89s and 90s. No one was like Big Bang Theory. We were not cool.
Blackface for nerds
deleted by creator
Dave Matthews band. Also, any “jam” band in general.
Dont forget what they did on the Kinzie Street Bridge in Chicago.
Ok, what did they do?
Dumped a bus load of shit and piss off the bridge onto an architectural tour boat full of people.
none of the band members were in the bus at the time
The shit and piss they dumped out of the bus didn’t appear from nowhere. Even if he didn’t dump it himself dave matthews supplied the shit and piss for it to happen.
That is the stuff of legend.
100% with you on this.
I just don’t get the appeal at all. I knew a couple that were all about String Cheese Incident. Finally listened to their stuff…fucking 15 minute long songs of fairly standard 90’s ironic music zapped by bloat ray. Hard pass.
You gotta be taking some psychedelics and want to dance, I’m not into it either. But I have plenty of friends who are and it makes them happy to have a show that lasts for long sets and they can get their freak on
I’ve seen String Cheese Incident live a few times at a festival. It was honestly a pretty good show, and I think that’s pretty much the only way jam bands work. When everyone’s a bit high and dancing and the band is playing off the crowd, it’s great.
I listened to a couple of their tracks at home, and had no interest in listening to any more. Jam bands are only good live.
That’s a fair point! Thanks.
Well, that’s just what the ass-crack bandit would say to throw us off their trail, isn’t it…
Clearly they don’t have two ears connected to a heart
Have a few in mind:
Catcher in the Rye. Holden is insufferable and I found it baffling that adults expected me to relate to him as a teen.
Grease aged very poorly and I do not understand the hype (is it because John Travolta is wearing tight pants?)
Family guy. The ship that launched a thousand cringe as fuck “adult animation” shows. Yes, I’m salty as hell about it.
It terrifies me that there are people walking around out there who feel seen by Holden Caulfield.
Just a bunch of phoneys.
Or to reference another overrated work: John Galt. Lol
IDK, I can see that making sense if you read it as a teen.
As adults? Absolutely. But there are phases we all grow out of (well, most of us).
A lot of the hype about Grease is nostalgia, no doubt about that.
But a lot of the rest is that a loooot of the songs are both catchy and very easy to understand. The movie also forms a social dynamic that is easy to understand for kids.
We learned to sing “Summer Nights” in school, and then friends and I would sing the song over and over, adding more and more childish humor that we found hilarious (because…kids). We also instantly got the implied social dynamic (boys just want to get sex, girls want to have mushy romance).
Catcher in the Rye was always an unforgivable whiney crap-mound of a book. Its notoriety is based on its banning, and the larger issue of whether people should be allowed to read books with swears, misanthropes, and sexual references in them, but there are and were so many better books featuring those things out there.
Family Guy is a fascinating case of a crappy show insisting upon itself so hard that it successfully got itself uncancelled and forced into pop culture as a zombie endlessly repeating itself on the level of its inspiration and closest rival The Simpsons.
I also loathe Grease but its general appeal is pretty easy to explain: it came out in the 1970s as a rose-tinted nostalgia piece for white middle-class boomers who grew up in the 1950s and, as so many people of all ages do, idealized their childhood era as when things were so cool and simple. (Spoiler to folks of all eras: things weren’t actually any simpler when you were young, you were just shielded from more of the bullshit than you are now.) It was the same nostalgia that fueled the runaway success of Happy Days on TV in that era, though at least that show managed to be a functional sitcom with more substance to it than the empty-headed misogyny-flavored story of Grease.
Family guy has always been bad, I lived through its peak and it was so painful
Oh you think that’s bad? What about the time I fell off of that elephant and broke my ankle in 75 places while a monkey played la cucaracha on a tambourine?
(wince) “aHHHHhhh!..(wince)…Aaaaghh!!.. It’s in my raccoon wounds! :(”
The US Office is unironically a better show because it understood what path it wanted to take as it went on and stop trying to rely heavily on cringe comedy to focus more on absurdist but still relatable scenarios.
There’s a huge regional and cultural aspect to what you’re saying. You’re comparing slapstick in-your-face American comedy to subtle cringe British comedy. The Office is an excellent example since it is exactly the same script used in both initially. Watching S1E1 for British vs American version is an excellent comparison of styles. I don’t like British comedy particularly and don’t even like The Office, but watching both back to back, I would prefer the British version.
There are a number of amazing British comedies. They are very different to American. British comedies are understated and a bit miserable. Try “I’m Alan Partridge”…such an amazing comedy.
Equally I’ve tried watching Curb Your Enthusiasm with British friends and a large portion can’t stand that for how cringe it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
There’s no superior choice in matters of art and taste. Just different flavours.
There’s a big cultural difference between Curb and Partridge - cringe isn’t universal!
Specifically, Larry in Curb has a distinctly American sense of individualism. He does what he wants and doesn’t care if someone doesn’t like him for it. The cringe comes from his attempts to enforce his own set of unwritten social values on others.
Alan Partridge is the exact opposite - fundamentally insecure and desperate for approval. His cringe comes from lack of self-awareness and trying to fake social status, which is painfully obvious to a British audience with our deeply ingrained sense of class.
Ultimately, taste is taste, but I think that goes some way towards explaining why some people like one or the other but not both.
Part of the longevity of the US version was the decision to make characters likable, especially Michael Scott / the manager. The UK version leans hard into the cringe / social ineptitude and gives the manager essentially no redeeming qualities.
Good points. iirc, the US Office almost got cancelled the first season. The type of humor in the first episode didn’t really work for US audiences. Only after the series found its own style did the series really thrive.
Personally I think Office UK is awesome. The whole Training session is freakin hilarious.
I can’t watch The Office.
My empathy makes me feel super uncomfortable watching people do socially mean or cringe things. I enjoyed most of Parks and Rec, but I didn’t like the way they treated Garry, and almost stopped watching because of that running gag.
Oddly enough, I devoured The Bear. It’s not high anxiety or intensity that turns me off, it’s the banal meanness that some express that I can’t stand. The Bear is intense, but the characters feel genuine and honest
but the payoff for Garry was SO good.
Kinda surprised I didn’t see breaking bad already listed. I guess I’m one of the few who dislikes it. I don’t like tragedies in general. Life is already a tragedy.
I’m sure it was extremely well executed and totally worth making, but it’s not my flavor of ice cream.
It started out a lot funnier and slowly became darker over time. I think I remember Gilligan saying this was a conscious choice, to grow darker in tone over time.
Anyway, that’s what hooked a lot of people initially, and a lot of them stuck around for the drama that followed
Genuinely though the Talking Pillow scene is still my favorite. As someone who lost a dad to cancer the conversation was morbidly funny and real to me, with the pillow as a perfect set piece.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Its not just that the humor is unfunny (and basically just bigotry porn with a side of cringe), its that none of the “friends” in the show are even friends with each other. The whole show is just a bunch of assholes being bigoted assholes and then you are supposed to think that its funny.
Well, yeah, the whole show is based around each character being the worst narcissistic and self-serving asshole you can imagine, and then some.
I personally find it really funny, but I can sort of see why some people don’t like it
This is a style that I first noticed with Archer, and it is very hard to do well. I enjoyed Archer, I enjoyed some of Rick and Morty, but I also recognize that I’d refuse to engage with someone like that in real life. Iasip takes it to the extreme of being genuinely unpleasant.
The whole show is just a bunch of assholes being bigoted assholes
and then you are supposed to think that its funny.
They take their twisted logic and antics to such extremes that it resembles a live-action version of some mid-20th century American cartoons. Same level of slapstick cruelty but the plotlines make it all more premeditated and sociopathic.
(I laugh hysterically at it, but I totally understand anyone who thinks it’s depraved!)
Not depraved, just pitiful.
Danny DeVito is still “pitifully” entertaining 50 years later, with his studio producing the longest-running American live-action sitcom.
I think it’s supposed to be Seinfeld but moreso. Part of the humor is watching these assholes screw themselves over with their terrible plans.
Anything anime. Lots love it, I hate it.
Not liking anime is so isolating as a nerd because people find out I’m into nerdy stuff and all they want to do is recommend anime to me and talk about anime and I have to explain that I don’t like anime and won’t be watching that show they love (insert show here).
Ya’ll be talking about anime like it’s a genre but it’s a medium
Yeah but some people just can’t stand the medium. Me included.
Everything? Perfect Blue? Paprika? Angel’s Egg? Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space? Anne of Green Gables? Moomin? Belladonna of Sadness?
I’d be genuinely surprised if the answer was yes, as all of those wildly depart from the tropes people have in mind when anime is brought up.
Yes
Yeah, but come on. Sure, you could depict anything with it, but in practice, it’s correlated with content.
Chinese ink painting is a medium too, but people talking about it probably are not going to it for cyberpunk stuff.
I mean, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Great Teacher Onizuka, Frieren, DragonBall, and whatever are absolutely different genres and have practically nothing in common.
Yeah, but normies don’t know that. It’s all just cartoons with a weird annoying fanbase to them.
Never understood the “I don’t like anime” mindset, of course everyone has the right to like and/or dislike anything they choose to, but as you said it’s a medium. “I don’t like anime” makes as much sense as “I don’t like live action movies.” It doesn’t.
I guess “I don’t like the way anime look,” or, “I don’t like the Japanese approach to storytelling” makes more sense.
It makes sense to me because they’re describing in a simple way the thing that they don’t like. If you ask why, they’d probably tell you the reason. “I don’t like the way anime looks” or “I don’t like the Japanese approach to storytelling” or whatever…
Not liking “anime” is just saying “I watched a few hours of popular anime, didn’t like it, assumed it’s all like that and now I’ll never be able to correct my opinion.”
Personally, it’s the art form I don’t like. I couldn’t say why, but there’s something about the style of drawing people that I just can’t get past.
I accept that I’m in the minority, and I’m not criticizing it or talking down on it in any way. I understand there’s an incredible amount of love and talent that goes into it, it’s just not for me. Think of it as someone who says they don’t like the Mona Lisa, they aren’t saying it isn’t a famous painting or shouldn’t be well known, they’re just saying they prefer other styles of art.
Even with the wide variability of art styles, something about that anime gene creeps you out? That’s fair, but a little sad that keeps you out of it.
I was speaking mostly from personal experience. I used to think all anime was adolescent violent wish fulfillment and tits, so I didn’t explore too much, and found plenty of incidenthl confirmation bias.
Not OP, but some genre conventions of anime weird me out. I can learn to ignore them with practice, but I have to stay in practice to keep doing this.
I don’t hate anime, but getting myself in a state where I can enjoy a show is a huge chore.
Another part that makes even less sense: the existence of people that only watch anime makes me less willing to engage. This happens with other things too, but it seems moderately common with anime.
It’s usually ugly as fuck and blatantly misogynistic, it infantilizes and objectifies women and often has very strong pedophillic themes? 90% of it is an incredibly problematic form of media and when a person tells me they’re into it I wonder do they just willfully ignore these problems or are they not actually smart enough to notice in the first place, or are they into that gross shit?
How do you feel about other forms of animation?
I’m picky. Some are ok, some just weird me out. I think it really just depends how close they get to portraying the human figure, when they start intentionally skewing proportions and making features anatomically impossible it’s just creepy for some reason. If it’s not a human character or if it’s still sort of realistic to normal proportions it usually is fine.
If you mean stuff like Fantastic Planet, The Thief and the Cobbler (Re-cobbled Cut) and The Glass Harmonica, then I love it.
(Edit: oops I misread the comment nesting, you weren’t talking to me.)
What’s wrong with bugs bunny?
3 body problem. What a fucking terrible shit waste of paper.
The worst part is that if you somehow drag yourself through the first book and rightly declare that it sucks, fans will all say “Oh, yeah, the first book is bad, but it gets sooooo much better after that!”
This is a fucking lie. The books actually get progressively worse at a genuinely shocking rate.
Do you like reading a series of Wikipedia articles about all these really cool ideas the author had? Do you like being slapped in the face with moments of truly egregious sexism? Do you like characters with zero defining traits? Do you like entire plotlines built around Death Note style “I know that you know that I know that you know that I know…” style bullshit that falls apart the moment you think about it for five seconds? Do you like like awful solutions to the Fermi Paradox? Oh boy do we have the book series for you!
this is the definitive review. 10/10, no notes.
I think I’ve read (or at least started reading) the book like three times and watched the show twice and I remember none of it
at least, I think it’s that one. might have it mixed up with something else.
Oh my God, I thought it was just me. I usually consume a lot of sci-fi media in general and was like, “why can’t I like this highly acclaimed work?”
The only answer I can’t understand. A great novel. I Chinese context was very fresh and interesting for me. Sometimes it seems amature, like fan fiction, like author is not a professional writer. But it makes it even better.
I mean, I think you explain the reasoning in your own comment, the writing (at least in the English translation for me) was so rough that I couldn’t get into it. I can’t say I hated it, I just never got far into it because it couldn’t keep my attention.
I’m surprised to hear someone say the poor writing was a plus for them. Why did that make you enjoy it more?
As I explained - it feeled fresh. I can’t explain why, but I can’t put it down while reading.
I don’t try to convince people, who read this book, that it’s great. I address people who haven’t - you should give it a chance.
Sports. I have little tolerance for it because every time a big event is on, people get incredibly obnoxious. They think they know better than the professional players, they keep making so much noise, it polarizes people into arbitrary bands and start talking shit like using that as an excuse to be a homophobic POS, sometimes they’ll even riot because their team lost/won (da fuk), and even kill people over their favorite fucking team, and so much more. If the game is on I’d rather steer clear because it really brings out the worst in people.
That’s mostly referring to football. Kind of generalizing.
Non-American football?
Honestly both. Global football has its hooliganism, and U.S NFL fans are also quite notorious.
I wouldn’t crash on all sports though. The ones with the gigantic corporate leagues that profit from people engaging in more-than-harmless tribalism (i.e: the NFL) aren’t great, but there’s a lot of excitement to be had in watching really skilled players out-compete each other toward a goal.
Except it bothers me how acceptable it’s gotten to just be yet another vector for predatory gambling. Disgusting.
I also hold contempt in particular for U.S football because of how ridiculously regularly players are giving each other head trauma. Nobody should be enduring that life-threatening brain jarring for a friggin game.
Yes, football
Woah surprised no one mentioned South Park yet, it quite common in discussions like this.
I never really liked South Park (with occasional exceptions where it shone) but I loved the movie.
Honestly one of the best musicals I’ve ever seen.
They absolutely deserved the Oscar for that movie (almost literally any of its songs) over fucking Tarzan
I don’t like it but I cut them some slack for their willingness to tackle some issues publicly and mock people who deserve it.
I think out of all the Adult Swim type shows ( Family Guy, Robot Chicken, American Dad, South Park, etcetera ), I cannot stand any of them besides King of the Hill or Futurama. So definitely gonna agree with you.
I don’t think any of the shows you listed are Adult Swim shows
I distinctly remember at least Family Guy, American Dad, and Robot Chicken airing on AD where I lived, so maybe I might be misremembering, but I meant those shows as in the style of show I’d expect to see on there. If I wasn’t clear about that, my bad.
Family Guy and American dad are famously fox shows made by Seth McFarlane. Plenty of networks do reruns.
Futurama is one of the best TV shows of all time, at least forst 5 seasons.
Blade Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey
Citizen KaneThese movies are so well regarded and spoken so highly of (ok - maybe not Blade Runner); their champions are so passionate and enthusiastic, every time I hear folks go off on how great they are I get, once again, excited to watch them. But every time I try, I just can’t get into them. 2001 is a particular slog with its ~30 minute intro of no dialogue. It almost inevitably puts me to sleep before even the first word is spoken.
I hate that they’re so well regarded and I really want to enjoy them but I just can’t get into them.
Citizen Kane
@9point6@lemmy.world has a comment below stating that some of these are examples where a piece of media did something new and innovative that was so compelling that many subsequent pieces of media copied it, and thus whatever it was that the piece of media did failed to impress later audiences. For them, it was just the new normal. So the work was very influential…but maybe no longer stands out.
I’ve often seen Citizen Kane cited as being the poster child for this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Kane
The film’s narrative structure, cinematography and themes have influenced countless filmmakers and films worldwide, asserting its place as a cornerstone in the history of cinema
EDIT:
https://thecinemaholic.com/citizen-kane-innovations-flaws/
‘Citizen Kane’: The Innovations, the Flaws, and the Films that it Influenced
EDIT2: @marzhall@lemmy.world linked to the Seinfeld is Unfunny trope on TVTropes, and it has an entry for Citizen Kane:
Citizen Kane, oftentimes trumpeted as “The Greatest Movie of All Time,” tends to inspire “what’s the big deal?” responses from modern viewers, especially since Post Modern movies have become the norm and the cinematography has influenced so many other films. And everyone knows what the twist at the end is.
Definitely true. I’ve heard the same and it’s another one of the reasons I want to appreciate it.
A other example of this that’s frequently cited and happened in my own life time which makes it easy to see first hand and understand is The Matrix/bullet-time.
Citizen Kane is generally considered the origin of the “innovative media that’s considered boring because everyone copied it so now it seems cliche” trope. It was a masterpiece when it came out, but it pioneered so much stuff that became commonplace. When a modern audience looks back at it, you just see the cliches, without realizing that they’re only cliches because they were endlessly repeated afterward.
This post made me angry because I’m one of the people that love this 3 movie and go passionate about them.
2001: A Space Odyssey
I like behind the scenes footage far more than the movie. I can appreciate how it’s made but I absolutely can’t stand to actually watch the resulting movie.
2001: A Space Odyssey is so insanely boring and pretentious, I’m still glad I watched it though because it’s very influential, you even see it in the Project Hail Mary movie, and it’s satisfying to have context to art but unless you’re really into watching films I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone
They are worshipped because they were the first in their particular area (neon cyberpunk, Space FX, non-linear storytelling). Each has been improved on by so many other films that the originals pale in comparison.
They are classics, but not timeless.
For blade runner the original film is awful. I didn’t get the hype until I watched the directors cut which I personally thought was excellent.
2001 definitely overrated.
I enjoyed Citizen Kane though I completely understand why you wouldn’t like it.
Worst take of the thread, edgelord.
