The original post: /r/television by /u/StarChild413 on 2024-08-01 08:54:55.
Just thought this might make a good discussion topic that I hadn’t seen in a while as long as the discussion’s civil, anyway here’s some of mine
- procedurals on broadcast TV aren’t all “copaganda” and aren’t a thing only a boomer can love
- if magical realism as a genre can extend beyond Hispanic media (as I’ve sometimes heard people say it’s a mainly-Hispanic-cultural-thing) to apply to Pushing Daisies as I’ve seen people say about it then imho shows like Community, Glee, Riverdale, Bones, So Help Me Todd (#savesohelpmetodd #renewsohelpmetodd #sevenseasonsandamovie #sohelpmesavesohelpmetodd), Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and that certain subcategory of shows that includes shows like Wonderfalls, Kevin (Probably) Saves The World, God Friended Me and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist all fall into the magical realism category too (and no I did not intend to put three Skylar-Astin-starring shows on this list on purpose, he just seems to end up on these kinds of projects I guess)
- It’s a major disappointment that The Good Place didn’t get to have a musical episode as it had the right kind of tone (though I feel like it’s too overt with the magic to go on my magical realism list) that one wouldn’t be surprising and at least one cast member has a hell of a voice (maybe other leads just couldn’t sing that well and they didn’t want a Grey’s Anatomy “Song Beneath The Song” situation). Although it could have just been a double episode to have enough time for substantial songs there have been at least two musical-ish half-hour episodes of sitcoms to set precedent, the Juneteenth episode of Black-Ish and the American Housewife episode "Mom’s Parade"
- Out of the main ensemble (as obviously there are villains worse than her) Allison Blake is the worst character on Eureka and the only times I’ve liked her and Jack together were as parents rather than as romantic leads
- The Big Bang Theory is better than you remember and while it does have parts that have aged badly it gets better over time and even deals with issues you wouldn’t expect (like I mentioned on another thread “The Wiggly Finger Catalyst” that partially deals with positive prejudice as Penny won’t believe Raj’s new girlfriend is a gold digger because she’s deaf and disabled people are nice)
- Glee also had things that aged poorly in hindsight but it’s nowhere near as cringe as people make it out to be nor was Mr. Schue as problematic (as e.g. if he were anything like he is in people’s negative fanon of him he would have taken Rachel up on some kind of secret relationship after her crush on him is briefly sparked in “Ballads” instead of using that one mashup to tell her off in song)
- Speaking of Glee one of my biggest problems with it that aren’t the things that actually did age poorly is that later on it got a little too focused on covering then-contemporary pop and (either by the show or the music industry) when a deserving indie song got the Glee bump nothing was done to really help them stick in the mainstream
- Saturday Morning Cartoons need to come back and sometimes I forget they apparently aren’t a thing (and maybe their return could help yoink the Pokemon anime out from behind a streaming paywall)
- I didn’t even know Cyberchase was still going but from what I hear about the new seasons I wish they’d stopped around when I stopped watching
- On a related note I get TV over-the-air/via antenna/whatever and I’ve noticed the main PBS channel (channel 10-1 for me) doesn’t air as much PBSKids as it used to yet 10-3, the 24-hour PBSKids station airs PBSKids shows I didn’t know existed. Now I’m afraid PBSKids is in some kind of death-spiral and I don’t know how to get it out and if that’d involve, like, education reform or something (y’know like how No Child Left Behind led to the end of Reading Rainbow)
- I don’t think the Harry Potter fandom has died out on Tumblr or Reddit even despite the revelations about JK’s beliefs but that’s one of the only explanations I can think of for how nobody seems to have noticed that in The Owl House’s attempts to pastiche Harry Potter it actually got something wrong that it was supposedly criticizing. Boscha’s team automatically winning the Grudgby match because she caught the Rusty Smidge was supposed to be a commentary on how the Golden Snitch seemingly makes the actions of the other Quidditch players unnecessary if “you catch this, and we win”. Except despite those words of Oliver Wood in the first movie the Golden Snitch isn’t an insta-win it just often looks like it because catching it ends the game and often one team isn’t so far ahead that the 150 points it’s worth makes no difference (but there are exceptions, look at book 4 and both the Quidditch World Cup finals and the throwaway line of Ron’s where he says England lost to Transylvania 390-10)
- I got excited when I first watched The Goldbergs as I’m Jewish and I thought it’d be a Jewish family sitcom, turned out to be more of an 80s-shoved-down-your-throat sitcom with the worst stereotypically-Jewish-mother ever and now I wish there was a show to be to the Jewish experience what Black-Ish was to the African-American one
So what are some of your unpopular TV opinions