Who still watches TV and follows consistent shows?

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I hadn't watched most of those shows till the last few years, only shows I saw when they originally aired was Buffy/Angel and some of the Star Trek shows although I missed a good chunk of eps of the latter and never saw them in proper order till recently. Buffy was my show as a teen.

But other than that I started watching them all in the last 5-6 years and got through them all, they're considered some of the top TV shows of the last 20+ years.

I saw the later eps of Buffy back when it was on. Similar to Charmed and MK Conquest and WCW.

[CyberCubed]

My advice is to watch shows on the 1.5x speed setting. You'll get through all these shows in no-time flat. You can still understand what the characters are saying pretty easily and maybe lower it to 1.25x speed during the action or fighting scenes to see it properly.

When I watch shows on normal speed it now feels like slow motion to me, the characters talk like they're mentally retarded, slurring their words or stunted or something.

[sdp]

1.5x is my default for youtube videos, anything less is annoying, they purposely speak slow and add filler words to make the videos longer. 1.5 is the right speed where they start to sound normal, the really bad ones you have to go to 1.75 or 2x to be able to make it through so much nonsense.

I can't do it with tv shows since I'm already not paying full attention to what is going on since i'm on my computer or whatever so it's already at the right pace, any faster and I'd be missing information.

[MrPliggins]

I watch over-the-air tv about once a year, when the ball drops on New Year's Eve.
Before kids, my wife and I streamed shows regularly. We probably will again once the kids get older. Currently our schedule rarely allows us time to relax.
I did manage to watch the latest season of Black Mirror and Daredevil: Born Again this year. If there's something I really want to watch, I'll find some time.

[CyberCubed]

I'm now going through Game of Thrones for the first time, I know it ends badly but I've never seen the show before so I'm going through it. Blows my mind this show started way back in 2011, I had no idea it was like 15 years old now. Wasn't this one of the earliest big streaming/HBO hits? That didn't just air on TV? At least as far as I remember. unlike say The Sopranos which aired just on TV in 1999.

It's kind of funny, I never watched any of these shows before because you needed either cable or a subscription to HBO or netflix or whatever to watch it all. But now thanks to the illegal streaming websites all those barriers are gone and everything is uploaded in one place. I've literally been watching hundreds of TV shows and movies I would have never watched if I actually had to pay money for them.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I'm now going through Game of Thrones for the first time, I know it ends badly but I've never seen the show before so I'm going through it. Blows my mind this show started way back in 2011, I had no idea it was like 15 years old now. Wasn't this one of the earliest big streaming/HBO hits? That didn't just air on TV? At least as far as I remember. unlike say The Sopranos which aired just on TV in 1999.

Sopranos was only on HBO.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

I only watch live-broadcastings like sports when they air.

[Antoniocafe]

Current shows? Let's see. I still watch the new episodes of South Park and Saturday Night Live. I'm watching the first season of Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage on Paramount. I didn't watch Young Sheldon, which preceded it. But I was a big Big Bang Theory Fan, and Emily Osment is pretty hot. I like HBO MAX'S Harley Quinn. Is that getting another season? And I'll definitely be checking out the Scrubs and Buffy reboots when they come out.

[CyberCubed]

People tend to watch the wrong shows or old shows and complain there's nothing worth watching. Also almost every show in the pre-2000's except for maybe like 3-5 shows have aged worse than anything in the last 25 years.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

People tend to watch the wrong shows or old shows and complain there's nothing worth watching. Also almost every show in the pre-2000's except for maybe like 3-5 shows have aged worse than anything in the last 25 years.

I disagree, while I do think shows were getting better and better over time, I think the 2010s saw a decline in storytelling and now we're at a pretty low point.
-In the past seasonal arcs were rare and the few shows that did it were so much better because of it, thanks to HBO shows and dvds/recording serialized shows became more of a thing. But then the worst happened shows became the seasonal arc, each individual episode now seems worse than they were before. In the past they tried to make each episode great since they didn't care to make a continuous story, sometimes they succeeded sometimes they didn't. But now it almost seems like they don't care, especially if it's filler, only a few episodes whithin the season matter and the rest are all trash, and even ones that move the storyline they are doing it so slowly that it kills any interest. I feel with newer shows that it's basically a 3 episode storyline being stretched to 10 episodes.

- In the past we had 20+ episode seasons and you'd get a new season every year. Sure not all 20 episodes were bangers but whatever. Nowadays you get 10 episode seasons and not all episodes are bangers. Perhaps the % of bad episodes is similar but you're still left with less great episodes. Also seasons are no longer every year, they can take 2 or 3 years before another one drops. These long breaks means the actors change, especially if they're young, the style of the show feels completely different between seasons, you don't see a slow evolution of season after season. Less episodes and longer wait doesn't mean higher quality, in fact since they have less experience doing the show.

-Writing has taken a downturn, now politically polarized people will say it's DEI, but it's deeper than that, not the real root of the problem. We have a whole generation of writers who didn't grow up reading the greats of the past, they grew up reading social media andwhatnot. You also have a generation of fans who are writing for the franchises they like giving us their version of what they think the franchise is. Writing has gotten worse because of it, there's actually a lack of great writers.

I won't say old shows are flawless but they have a different feel. For example, right now I'm watching the Addams Family 60s series, it's very basic but it's comfy, can't say that for some current shows and it's not like I have nostalgia for a show that came out 3 decades before I was born.

Now when people say current shows are crap and prefer to watch ****ing He-Man, knight rider or some 80s slop then yeah I'd agree we have plenty of better stuff now.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by sdp

-Writing has taken a downturn, now politically polarized people will say it's DEI, but it's deeper than that, not the real root of the problem. We have a whole generation of writers who didn't grow up reading the greats of the past, they grew up reading social media andwhatnot. You also have a generation of fans who are writing for the franchises they like giving us their version of what they think the franchise is. Writing has gotten worse because of it, there's actually a lack of great writers.

That's not incorrect. I could say it's a problem that these showrunners are filling their writers rooms with left-leaning activists and not actual writers -- and it is -- but if these activists actually versed themselves in the greats (sci-fi authors if we're talking about sci-fi) then maybe at least under all of the activism there could at least be quality writing and well crafted characters. Or maybe not. Maybe "the message" is all they care about delivering.

[CyberCubed]

A lot of those old 80's and 90's TV shows, speaking strictly about non-sitcoms or comedies were pretty awful. There's a reason sitcoms were the most popular shows on TV back then, it was the only thing TV was good at, at the time.

Shows had poor budget, barely any continuity between episodes (there was hardly any season long arcs because the eps were meant to be watched randomly out of order on reruns on TV), shows were often canceled randomly without a conclusion, etc. Also a lot of shows back then relied on really tired writing tropes that were dated even for the time, or the good guys always winning and the villains always losing no matter how absurd the plot was.

I realized after marathoning all of TV over the last 10 years on 1.5x speed that very few shows from the 80's or 90's even hold up. Only ones I still like are Buffy and the Star Trek shows, Bablyon 5, and probably 1-2 others I'm forgetting at the moment. Old 70's shows aged even worse, like the 70's Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Planet of the Apes TV series, Time Tunnel, V (this is ok to be fair), The Six Million dollar man, all those awful cops and law and order shows, lol.

When you look back at shows back then, the most popular shows were sitcoms like Seinfeld, Married with Children, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Full House, Home Improvement, 90210, Melrose Place, etc. Comedies were cheap to make and were easy crowd pleasers, so it's why TV was filled with them back then.