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computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP
The Simpsons hasn't been cancelled yet so you can't mention it.

Steve Yun posted:


If you look over their entire history I think they actually make an effort to keep things fresh and they're willing to evolve their worldviews a little bit and take some risks by arguing against popular opinion on several political matters

Like Climate Change! Oh wait, they've been doing that consistently since ManBearPig.

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Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Steve Yun posted:

South Park did get stale for a few years but I think in the last two years it actually got funny again

I think because South Park is a cartoon and they've never pretended to be "real" it has a lot more scope than The Simpsons. That's meant that although they've had a lot of dud episodes they've still got absolutely tonnes of room to maneuver and having crazy episodes doesn't completely ruin the feel of the show like it did with The Simpsons.
It's just a shame they're enormous right wingers who don't believe in facts.

With Family Guy there are some good ones since they've come back but I do feel it's got extremely racist. The jokes they make about Jews have gone from a sort of "laughing at the idea someone would think that" to "every character believes it including the Jewish characters".

letthereberock
Sep 4, 2004

I remember when I stopped watching the Simpsons around season 11 it felt like is spent most of my life with that show.

It's really weird to me that there have been more episodes made since I stopped watching then there were the entire time I watched it.

Content: I've often wondered it Parks and Recreation would have been better served if it ended after Leslie won the city council election. While there were some great episodes after that, it did start to feel like the show was kind of crawling up it's own rear end after a while.

letthereberock fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Sep 13, 2015

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

letthereberock posted:

It's really weird to me that there have been more episodes made since I stopped watching then there were the entire time I watched it.

*than.

You do wonder if there are people out there who genuinely love the new Simpsons and cannot see what's up with it.
They're probably the same ones who love the new Family Guy - where the start of the episode just has no relevance to the rest of it and gets forgotten as soon as it happens.

Phylodox
Mar 30, 2006



College Slice

Taear posted:

With Family Guy there are some good ones since they've come back but I do feel it's got extremely racist. The jokes they make about Jews have gone from a sort of "laughing at the idea someone would think that" to "every character believes it including the Jewish characters".

Every once in a while I get to thinking, "Man, Family Guy sure is popular. Maybe I should give it another chance!" and, without fail, every time I try to watch it, within minutes of me turning it on, regardless of whether I'm tuning in at the beginning, middle, or end of a given episode, something just staggeringly offensive happens. Whether it's protracted vomiting at the thought of sleeping with a trans woman or an honest-to-god buck toothed, coolie hat wearing Chinese stereotype, it always seems to happen. Either I just have incredibly bad luck or it's just a completely toxic show.

JediTalentAgent
Jun 5, 2005
Hey, look. Look, if- if you screw me on this, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, you rat bastard!

thrakkorzog posted:

I think part of it is that at the start the Real World was actually real, there weren't any auditions for stars, it was basically, "Hey, we need some cheap programming, let's grab some good looking interns and let them live in a NYC apartment rent free and we film it." The people in the apartment had day jobs, and the arguments tended to be things like, "I've got to go to work at 8 A.M. and you assholes are making too much noise at 2 in the morning." Which is a fairly standard argument among roommates.

After a few seasons the show just gave up on the concept of the people on the show having real jobs, instead they just got shitfaced and fought all the time.

I have to take back something I did say, though: Season 3 was actually the last season I watched and was interested in, but that was also the season where I think where the personalities of people got more in conflict with one another. I couldn't care about season 4 onward, and the ONLY thing I sort of remembered of season 2 was the guy getting evicted for the ripping the blankets off a girl. Season 2 and 3 sort of blurred together for me, for some reason. Maybe because both were set in California and I think both had people getting kicked out or made to leave

Close to 15 years ago I recall an interview Puck gave someone, and I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of it, but I think he claimed he soaked his balls in the house milk in sort of retaliation for everyone giving him poo poo for sticking his fingers in Pedro's peanut butter.

Wasn't one season of the show essentially them making the cast members all get a job at the same place or something for a while? Like they were running some ice cream shop together?

computer parts posted:

The Simpsons hasn't been cancelled yet so you can't mention it.

Heck, I assumed The Real World had been cancelled, too, but according to wiki it's apparently it's still trucking along. I'd heard so little about it in the last several years that I figured MTV had long dumped it in favor of other reality programming and/or the existence of the much more popular network shows had caused it quietly vanish without much fanfare.

JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Sep 13, 2015

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


Phylodox posted:

Every once in a while I get to thinking, "Man, Family Guy sure is popular. Maybe I should give it another chance!" and, without fail, every time I try to watch it, within minutes of me turning it on, regardless of whether I'm tuning in at the beginning, middle, or end of a given episode, something just staggeringly offensive happens. Whether it's protracted vomiting at the thought of sleeping with a trans woman or an honest-to-god buck toothed, coolie hat wearing Chinese stereotype, it always seems to happen. Either I just have incredibly bad luck or it's just a completely toxic show.

I tried watching a recent episode. My breaking point was when Peter eviscerated a whale with a forklift.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Inspector Gesicht posted:

I tried watching a recent episode. My breaking point was when Peter eviscerated a whale with a forklift.

Then you just don't like Family Guy. Which is fine but not really an example of how the show has become actually offensive - that stuff happens all the time.
And it was him doing something stupid because he's a massive idiot instead of us laughing along with him like most of the racial jokes.

SweetMercifulCrap!
Jan 28, 2012
Lipstick Apathy
I have to disagree. There's a ton of jokes in Family Guy that are very clearly fueled by actual hate. I like to compare it like, if South Park does something offensive, you get a sense of "oh god we're going to hell, aren't we?" With Family Guy it's very blatant racism and misogyny. Whether the creators actual believe this stuff or are just playing to their fan base is unknown.

Also every episode has to have he characters getting violently ripped apart, and it isn't even played for laughs. The early seasons of the show were not mean spirited like this.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

sweetmercifulcrap posted:

I have to disagree. There's a ton of jokes in Family Guy that are very clearly fueled by actual hate. I like to compare it like, if South Park does something offensive, you get a sense of "oh god we're going to hell, aren't we?" With Family Guy it's very blatant racism and misogyny. Whether the creators actual believe this stuff or are just playing to their fan base is unknown.

Also every episode has to have he characters getting violently ripped apart, and it isn't even played for laughs. The early seasons of the show were not mean spirited like this.

I think we're being trolled. They wonder just how far they can push the audience (and the network).

I can't wait to see what Seth has planned for the final episode (whenever that will be).

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

sweetmercifulcrap posted:

I have to disagree. There's a ton of jokes in Family Guy that are very clearly fueled by actual hate. I like to compare it like, if South Park does something offensive, you get a sense of "oh god we're going to hell, aren't we?" With Family Guy it's very blatant racism and misogyny. Whether the creators actual believe this stuff or are just playing to their fan base is unknown.

You're not disagreeing with me there, you're agreeing. That's exactly what I said before.
I just don't think the whale joke was a hateful one because everyone was looking at Peter like he was a monster. We were meant to think he was stupid and awful.

Meanwhile when they visit Israel and it was tonnes of Mort Goldman picking up coins like a bird we were laughing at "Jews love money!" rather than the stupid bad characters thinking that "Jews love money!".
Which is a big difference.

Irish Joe
Jul 23, 2007

by Lowtax

Taear posted:

Meanwhile when they visit Israel and it was tonnes of Mort Goldman picking up coins like a bird we were laughing at "Jews love money!" rather than the stupid bad characters thinking that "Jews love money!".
Which is a big difference.

The joke is the absurdity of an entire country of people looking and acting like the one Jewish guy the Griffins know. If you didn't get that, then maybe the problem is that you're too dumb to understand Family Guy's ultra-sophisticated humor.

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



letthereberock posted:

I remember when I stopped watching the Simpsons around season 11 it felt like is spent most of my life with that show.

It's really weird to me that there have been more episodes made since I stopped watching then there were the entire time I watched it.

Content: I've often wondered it Parks and Recreation would have been better served if it ended after Leslie won the city council election. While there were some great episodes after that, it did start to feel like the show was kind of crawling up it's own rear end after a while.

The last season of Parks and Rec, aka the Andy and April show, could've easily been cut. The end of the previous season, with the jump cut to 3 years in the future, was a perfect ending point. The last season was just re-treads of old plots or boring plotlines

- Ron and Leslie feuding over what was essentially nothing
- Donna got a throwaway romance plotline to make up for 4 years of being a prop character
- Wayyy too much Chris Pratt

If you ignore the completely mediocre first season and the final season, P&R probably stands as one of the better sitcoms in recent memory. But those anchors really drag it down and I don't think it'll age well.

Phylodox
Mar 30, 2006



College Slice
The last season of Parks and Recreation felt really off. Somehow more sit-commy in that bad way. The humour felt forced instead of flowing naturally from the established characters and their interactions. Andy became cartoonishly stupid and Leslie became weirdly mean-spirited and competitive, undercutting her friends to prove herself right and stuff. It just felt ugly, somehow. Is there some behind-the-scenes reason for this, or had the show just run out of steam?

egon_beeblebrox
Mar 1, 2008

WILL AMOUNT TO NOTHING IN LIFE.



The final episode was pretty fun, but yeah, season 7 was weak.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
Family Guy just got lazy. Offense is fine if you're making a point or you have conviction behind it, but the show does it in this insincere "we're being ironic OR ARE WE?" way. There's no substance.

Hell even MacFarlane wants to move on these days, but it's hard to say no to lots and lots of money.

Gaunab
Feb 13, 2012
LUFTHANSA YOU FUCKING DICKWEASEL
The most offensive episode of family guy I remember was when Peter meets a Muslim guy, gets converted to Islam and then it turns out that the guy who converted him was actually a part of Al Qaeda and was planning a terrorist attack.

The episode that made me stop watching for a while was the one where they visited ground zero and Peter was just annoyingly stupid throughout and then quotes Trains, Planes, and Automobiles when called out on it.

Beefed Owl
Sep 13, 2007

Come at me scrub-lord I'm ripped!
The Walking Dead should have stopped after season 1. I really, really liked season 1 and it hasn't even gotten close to that quality since. That being said, I haven't seen the last two seasons so does it in fact get better? I gave up halfway through season 4.

dennyk
Jan 2, 2005

Cheese-Buyer's Remorse
Hertzfeldt had it right; The Simpsons will never die. Aeons in the future, when the ice caps have melted and the seas have boiled, the only things still being created on this blasted Earth will be cockroach poo poo and new Simpsons episodes (and any alien explorers who happen upon the ruins will undoubtedly have a difficult time distinguishing one from the other).

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

dennyk posted:

Hertzfeldt had it right; The Simpsons will never die. Aeons in the future, when the ice caps have melted and the seas have boiled, the only things still being created on this blasted Earth will be cockroach poo poo and new Simpsons episodes (and any alien explorers who happen upon the ruins will undoubtedly have a difficult time distinguishing one from the other).

For those who were wondering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA_EYTBrD_s

One of the best things ever on the Sampsans.

Also, Groening said he wanted to reference that The Simpsons was still on the air in the first episode of Futurama and that people were arguing that the first 500 years was better than the last 500 years.

Mister Kingdom fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Sep 14, 2015

JediTalentAgent
Jun 5, 2005
Hey, look. Look, if- if you screw me on this, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, you rat bastard!
Transformers original run in the US should have maybe ended before the Headmasters saga/miniseries started up. Even in Transformers canon I don't think it works very well.

However, that being said, I seem to have a lot of fond memories of the post-film season where we have a follow up to some of the film plot points and some general all-around oddball stuff for the show.

crazy eyes mustafa
Nov 30, 2014
I couldn't finish Arrested Development S4- primarily because of just how disparate it is with everyone segregated on their own. It's an ensemble cast- it only works when everyone (or at least more than two people) are in the room together. Also because of how much work Portia de Rossi had done. She wasn't bad looking before, but now she just looks like Ben Stiller's wife. Kinda lovely that in the show they make so much of her nose and then IRL she gets a nosejob- I hope that wasn't an influencing factor.

Plus, the S3 finale ties everything together in a neat little box, so perhaps FOX cancelled it at the right time- but they clearly abandoned it before it was expended, forcing it to wrap itself up. Dunno if I'll go back to the new eps, but I'm always looking for something new to watch rather than just rewatching my favourite old shows.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Irish Joe posted:

The joke is the absurdity of an entire country of people looking and acting like the one Jewish guy the Griffins know. If you didn't get that, then maybe the problem is that you're too dumb to understand Family Guy's ultra-sophisticated humor.

I'd be fine to buy that if every Jew in the show didn't act like that now. If they didn't have jews outside the bank hollering and hooting when the money turned up and all sorts of ridiculous poo poo.

Shadow
Jun 25, 2002

crazy eyes mustafa posted:

I couldn't finish Arrested Development S4- primarily because of just how disparate it is with everyone segregated on their own. It's an ensemble cast- it only works when everyone (or at least more than two people) are in the room together. Also because of how much work Portia de Rossi had done. She wasn't bad looking before, but now she just looks like Ben Stiller's wife. Kinda lovely that in the show they make so much of her nose and then IRL she gets a nosejob- I hope that wasn't an influencing factor.

Plus, the S3 finale ties everything together in a neat little box, so perhaps FOX cancelled it at the right time- but they clearly abandoned it before it was expended, forcing it to wrap itself up. Dunno if I'll go back to the new eps, but I'm always looking for something new to watch rather than just rewatching my favourite old shows.

I think they were given advanced notice, that's why a lot of the 3rd season had them joke about HBO or other networks picking them up. Plus they named the last episode "Development Arrested" to have it go full circle (also with it being on the cruise ship).

100% agree on the ensemble cast. I heard that the reason they couldn't afford to bring in more than an actor or two at a time is because they spent upwards of $100million on the first season of House of Cards and didn't have the funds to do AD correctly. A show like that really can't be called in, and I choose to believe that the 4th season didn't happen. It sucked.

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

Alter Ego posted:

I dunno. I felt like Parkman was really the only unbearably bad character.

Forgetting about the DL/Michah/Nikki/Jessica plotline, are we?

SweetMercifulCrap!
Jan 28, 2012
Lipstick Apathy
AD Season 4 did have some really great moments, but overall it was an absolute chore to sit through and try to piece together what point in their timeline each character was at in relation to the others. I keep reminding myself to re-watch it because its probably more enjoyable on a second watch, but I can't bring myself to care enough to watch it again.

Irish Joe
Jul 23, 2007

by Lowtax
I rewatched the last four or so episodes of the Netflix season not too long ago, and they were hysterical.

I've also been sorely tempted to revisit the Fantastic 4 scenes in light of the recent film based on the musical.

wukkar
Nov 27, 2009
Homeland should have ended in the bunker.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

wukkar posted:

Homeland should have ended in the bunker.

I don't think there's another show that dived as sharply in quality as Homeland Season 1 to 2. If you drew a graph of how quickly it went from TV gold to complete poo poo it would look like like 1929 stock market crash

Probably because they burned through the source material and had to start coming up with new stuff in season 2. Same problem Heroes had (ripping off ideas from Watchmen) but even when Heroes was good they were never quite the award winning TV Homeland was.

I'm of the opinion that Homeland's deviation from the source material in the season 1 finale was kinda cool in its own right. Brody decides not to blow everyone up because of a teary phone call from his daughter in a genuinely moving scene. He gives up on his plot and Carrie gets her memory erased which means Brody would never get caught... it was kind of a neat way to tie things up.

Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Sep 14, 2015

NoEyedSquareGuy
Mar 16, 2009

Just because Liquor's dead, doesn't mean you can just roll this bitch all over town with "The Freedoms."

Steve Yun posted:

I don't think there's another show that dived as sharply in quality as Homeland Season 1 to 2. If you drew a graph of how quickly it went from TV gold to complete poo poo it would look like like 1929 stock market crash

Sons of Anarchy is a strong contender even though you have to look at it from S2 to S4. Seasons 1 and 2 are good enough for a dumb biker gang show, then S3 is kind of gimmicky with the Ireland stuff and generally considered the point where the show became bad. Then S4 plunges into the dirt. It features a plotline where one of the gang members agrees to become a police informant and steal cocaine from a Mexican Cartel deal they were setting up, all because the sheriff has information that he's half black and is threatening to out him. The end of the season is actually even worse in an "X was actually working with Y all along!" resolution that carried it into a garbage S5. I stopped watching after that.

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

Steve Yun posted:

I don't think there's another show that dived as sharply in quality as Homeland Season 1 to 2.

Friday Night Lights?

I mean...I think?

I've never seen it, but I think I've read/heard that season 2 is poo poo.

Vanderdeath
Oct 1, 2005

I will confess,
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.



DrBouvenstein posted:

Friday Night Lights?

I mean...I think?

I've never seen it, but I think I've read/heard that season 2 is poo poo.

FNL Season 2 was so bad that everything that happened in it was pretty much stricken from the record.

It was also written by scabs during the Writers' Strike, so that accounts for the terribleness.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
Friday Night Lights season 2 is bad, but not unwatchable by any means. I mean if you were gonna watch the whole show I wouldn't really say to skip it even though yes some of the poo poo that happens gets retconned because it's so dumb.

It still has some great moments due to the acting quality.

And seasons 3-5 are great so it definitely shouldn't have been cancelled.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

crazy eyes mustafa posted:

Plus, the S3 finale ties everything together in a neat little box, so perhaps FOX cancelled it at the right time- but they clearly abandoned it before it was expended, forcing it to wrap itself up. Dunno if I'll go back to the new eps, but I'm always looking for something new to watch rather than just rewatching my favourite old shows.

This is funny because a lot of people hated Season 3 before S4 came out, especially the MRF stuff.

MachuPikacchu
Oct 15, 2012

Sacre vert! Maman!

I'm surprised no one has mentioned How I Met Your Mother yet. Low hanging fruit, I guess.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
I didn't keep up with that show very much, but it seemed to me like the actual episode quality didn't really decline too much until the last season or two, it just happened to have used the absolute most dogshit ending possible.

HUGE SPACEKABLOOIE
Mar 31, 2010


Steve Yun posted:

I don't think there's another show that dived as sharply in quality as Homeland Season 1 to 2. If you drew a graph of how quickly it went from TV gold to complete poo poo it would look like like 1929 stock market crash

Probably because they burned through the source material and had to start coming up with new stuff in season 2. Same problem Heroes had (ripping off ideas from Watchmen) but even when Heroes was good they were never quite the award winning TV Homeland was.

I'm of the opinion that Homeland's deviation from the source material in the season 1 finale was kinda cool in its own right. Brody decides not to blow everyone up because of a teary phone call from his daughter in a genuinely moving scene. He gives up on his plot and Carrie gets her memory erased which means Brody would never get caught... it was kind of a neat way to tie things up.

Not that it really matters but he'd already left the SD card with his suicide tape on it which would have been released had things not happened the way they did.

Vanderdeath
Oct 1, 2005

I will confess,
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.



precision posted:

I didn't keep up with that show very much, but it seemed to me like the actual episode quality didn't really decline too much until the last season or two, it just happened to have used the absolute most dogshit ending possible.

Nah, HIMYM started circling the drain around Season 6 or so. Once they had Barney pining over Robin, it was the beginning of the end.

That and Ted showed no loving growth past a certain point.

Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

Inspector Gesicht posted:

Breaking Bad worked because the story had an expiry date, Walt has cancer and one day the other shoe will drop and Hank will find out Heisenberg's identity. The Shield worked because Vic Mackey and friends keep digging themselves deeper with every cover-up, until the day where every little sin falls on Vic's head. What any long-running story needs, either serialised or episodic, is some kind of endgame or exit where all the major characters and themes converge and get some kind of resolution. Dexter had no endgame. He just faced a new killer every season and learnt nothing.

Dexter had the same theoretical endgame as all those shows: family member / the authorities finding out about you.

It's just they botched it because they loved Dexter too much.

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SweetMercifulCrap!
Jan 28, 2012
Lipstick Apathy
I'm watching through HIMYM, but I'm actually in season 6 and getting pretty tired of it. Could I skip to the final season and not miss out on anything?

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