TV Meme: Day 5

[frayadjacent]

Day 05 - A show you hate:

I was about to write how I never watch more than a few episodes of a show if I don't enjoy it, but it's not really fair to say I hate something if I haven't seen that much of it.  Or, more likely, I won't even watch one episode of the shows I'm pretty sure I'd hate, but then it's really not reasonable to say I hate them.

But then I realized: I've seen most of How I Met Your Mother.  And I kinda hate it.  No amount of Robin Scherbatsky in the world will be enough to stop my bitterness at giving hours and hours to this show when I could have been discovering Parks and Recreation working on my dissertation.

Day 01 - A show that never should have been cancelled:
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching:
Day 03 - Your favourite new show (aired this TV season):
Day 04 - Your favourite show ever:
Day 05 - A show you hate:
Day 06 - Favourite episode of your favourite TV show:
Day 07 - Least favourite episode of your favourite TV show:
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch:
Day 09 - Best scene ever:
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving:
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you:
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times:
Day 13 - Favourite childhood show:
Day 14 - Favourite male character:
Day 15 - Second favourite female character:
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show:
Day 17 - Favourite mini series:
Day 18 - Favourite title sequence:
Day 19 - Favourite TV show cast:
Day 20 - Favourite kiss:
Day 21 - Favourite ship:
Day 22 - Favourite series finale:
Day 23 - Most annoying character:
Day 24 - Favourite quote:
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new):
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale:
Day 27 - Best pilot episode:
Day 28 - First TV show obsession:
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession:
Day 30 - Saddest character death:

Comments

[quarter_to_five]

Ooh, what do you hate about it? I don't feel strongly about it one way or another, but I like hate. (And sitcoms don't get talked about enough.)

[frayadjacent]

I get really tired of the wink-wink offensive humor that's so prevalent in US sitcoms, or at least the US sitcoms that I watch. It was sort of funny when I first started seeing it in The Office, but now it just feels lazy, and it feels like the writers are patting themselves on the back for being subversive when they so aren't.

It's a feature of pretty much all sitcoms I watch, except (for the most part) Parks and Recreation, but it's basically the comedy backbone of HIMYM.

But honestly I probably would have kept watching despite that except the actual storylines were so obnoxiously drawn-out, and I hated the will they-won't they with Barney and Robin. If the show had been, like, four seasons it would have been fine.

I did like the frenetic editing and some of the things they did with the storytelling device ("oh wait, that wasn't my 28th birthday, that was my 30th", or whatever it was). But after the first few seasons it didn't work so well, and it wasn't enough.

I also liked that, at the very beginning, Barney was actually not that successful as a pick-up artist. He was pretty pathetic and self-deluded. I would have been able to stand his character a lot more if they'd kept him that way instead of deciding to make him irresistible because the writers said so.

[quarter_to_five]

Yeah, Barney seems to have been turned into someone essentially in possession of a particularly obnoxious magic power. I think my continuing tolerance for this show is because I never really watched it in any kind or order - just random episodes from random seasons (which did make piecing together various hints like what the hell was going on with the umbrella kind of surprisingly tricky.)

[frayadjacent]

About sums it up! And yeah, I could see how out-of-order watching would help. I gave up after the season finale a couple years ago. I don't even remember what season it was, and I have no idea what's happened since, though I guess the Mother is about to be introduced? Or has been? Whatever.

[quarter_to_five]

The mom has been introduced, in a rather tepid fashion. I think she's kind of milquetoast, but a of people seem to like her. I do like the conceit of the final season, in that it's all set over a single weekend and there's a lot of that kind of back-and-forth and clever multi-layered jumping about that the show is good at, so that's something.(One episode had a moment where Old!Ted was telling a story about Marshall telling a story about Barney telling a story about, well, banging a chick. That's more layers than Inception. And it was in iambic pentameter. I can be had for that kind of thing, i'm afraid. *slinks off*)

[frayadjacent]

Ha, I know how it can be. :D