It happens. Every once and a while a show comes along that most critics love but I don’t “get.” Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s them, but either way there are always at least five or six shows on TV that other critics think are worth watching but I don’t. This list isn’t going to be about shows that AUDIENCES love and I don’t–that list would be closer to five hundred shows than just five–it’s made up of those small shows that are always struggling in the ratings and fighting to see another day, that I just don’t think deserve another day. [We’ll call them the anti-Community’s.]
5. Downton Abbey–Part of my disconnect with this is that I just don’t like this genre of “Stuffy old British Shows with Class Systems and Dukes/Duchesses.” I can’t relate to this material at all, don’t care about it, don’t want to care about it, and don’t get why one of the “servants” just doesn’t punch Maggie Smith in the face for being an uppity snob who really believes some people are born “lower” than her. Other critics have raved about how Downton Abbey is much more lively than other Masterpiece Theater productions but that’s kind-of like saying one sloth is faster than the others. D.A. is very much a regular Masterpiece Theater production–there really is nothing that special about it–the same as Gosford Park was a decade ago but critics kept swearing it was different. What I often find with things like this is that if a critic really loves the genre in general, they’ll swear something is different just to get you to watch it.
4. Chuck–So this show was recently cancelled after five long seasons and a series finale that apparently no one liked. People will repeatedly say “The show lost its purpose in season five but the first couple seasons were soooo good,” but you know what? They’re lying. Chuck was always a programmer–a very plain, frivolous spy comedy not worthy of the praise–that big time stepped into the “luck sauce” when people started to claim this was a show worth fighting for every season, right up there with Fringe and Community. Those people were wrong.
3. Cougar Town–This is part of that genre of shows I call “Friends-Ripoffs-That-Critics-Pretend-Are-Original” that could also include Happy Endings and the horrible New Girl. So in a way I could include about half of the shit-coms that appear on broadcast TV with Cougar Town, but there’s something about the way people are fighting to keep this show on the air that sets it apart. Its that same Chuck/Downton Abbey quality of people telling you there’s something different about it, when in fact, no, there is nothing different about it. This is a group of shiny white people that sit around saying things no one I have ever met in my life would say, grinning about it like jackasses, and not really caring if the audience goes along with their smugness or not. In that way it is indistinguishable from Happy Endings or New Girl or How I Met Your Mother, etc. The only difference between Cougar Town and those shows is that, for once, audiences aren’t buying into this insular world of in jokes and self-consciously obnoxious people. They want this show gone, and critics should let it go.
2. How I Met Your Mother–Never liked this show, never got on board with it, still don’t like it, and it’s time to cancel it. They have drug out the search for that fucking mother long enough–if it was an actual missing person’s investigation the FBI would have called time of death six years ago–it’s clear the show has no direction, and most of this talented cast (who have been so good in other things) could be better served by being set free to follow different projects: writing/starring in movies for Jason Siegel, getting a better show for Alysson Hannigan, hosting every awards show beginning with the Latin Grammys for Neil Patrick Harris, etc.
1. Friday Night Lights–I know that this show technically ended last year, but since it is seemingly still winning awards even though it was cancelled three years ago by NBC but kept alive from a bizarre deal with DirecTV, it’s time to call it: this is one of the most overrated TV shows that has ever existed. Much like Chuck/Cougar Town, this was one of those shows where people kept screaming at you to watch it, and telling you it was “sooooooo good,” and how “different” it was from what you were expecting, and then turned out not to be when you actually watched. [How surprising that something I had already read a book and watched a movie on wasn’t as fresh as, say, Breaking Bad or The Shield.] This was an overrated network show that looked like a masterpiece because it wasn’t about cops/lawyers/doctors (the same team is winning similar praise for the same reason on Parenthood) and somehow they’ve been able to deceive critics into comparing this show to The Wire or Deadwood. Stop the insanity already…