Five Shows Which I Don't Watch But I Assume They Suck

You know what people need to shut up about on the internet? Pretty much everything, but especially TV shows they like because they've been manipulated by exploitative corporations. It's like "Wow, you enjoy this incredibly popular TV show that every man and his dog claims to like? Do you want some kind of prize?" What's the deal with that? Anyway, let me completely take the piss out of myself by ripping into a selection of popular TV shows I've never watched but which almost definitely suck. If you're clever you'll notice that some of the images direct you towards old or current alternatives on screen - and some of them are just weak visual gags.

Yes, this mediocre spy show is better than Arrow.

1. Honourable Mention 1: Arrow

The reason this gets into the Honourable Mention category is because I watched the first episode out of curiosity and subsequently wanted to drill a hole in my head. Some of the worst acting I'd ever seen on television was crushed further under the weight of utterly generic "angsty" presentation, full of moody lighting and music and lame cod-emotional dialogue and some buff dude taking his shirt off a lot. Why do people getting their jollies and telling a story have to be intermingled? People go on about this show now like it's the dog's bollocks but I don't believe it for a second. This show stopped me dead after one episode, and I can't believe it actually gets any better, only probably "better" in the sense of more accomplished at tricking "geeks" into watching it. The first episode sucked, and he should have stayed on that damn island. 

2. Honourable Mention 2: The Walking Dead 

"Not very much."

This gets an Honourable Mention because I actually watched the first four episodes of the first season before I gave up because of how mind-numbingly boring it was. You watch forty-five minutes of show and about half a per cent of that actually involves zombies. The rest is all just a bunch of pretty actors with strategically-placed dirt marks on their faces having domestic dramas in the middle of the apocalypse. Maybe I could be accused of shallowness for wanting sweet zombie action, but Ramero made that into a profound statement about American society. You know what's equally, if not more, vapid? Characters having boring "dramatic" dialogue about their relationships and feelings and stuff. I could watch any dime a dozen drama if I wanted that. I wouldn't want it, of course. "Geeks" these days who watch this genre stuff are just the modern-day equivalent of soap opera buffs who put on false airs of speciality and uniqueness because their soap opera has zombies or aliens or whatever. It's crap. 

"I must apologise for not being here to greet you personally."

3. Honourable Mention 3: True Blood

I gave up on this after season two because clearly all it really cared about was guys taking all their clothes off. Hey girls (and gay guys, and anyone else, I guess), if you want to look at naked dudes, do a Bing image search for it. I assume now the situation's even more egregious. Jessica is cute though. Nonetheless, this show can piss off.  I don't even know if this show is that popular, but I still wanted to rip into it.

 

The List Proper

1. The Big Bang Theory

Probably the only TV show ever made which has a reasonably realistic
portrayal of geeks. No, The IT Crowd doesn't count.

This almost qualifies as an Honourable Mention category because I've actually watched a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory - like, literally, about three - but I don't remember anything about them beyond the fact that I found Sheldon vaguely amusing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people have compared me to Sheldon in the past, but Sheldon is clearly way too non-critical of the puddle-like integrity of modern geek culture to really have too much in common with me. As for the rest of this show, it's basically one of those things where the audience members bark like seals every time a character so much as opens their mouth, and as far as a portrayal of geeks go it's woefully inept. That whole "Blackface for Geeks" comment someone made was a horrendous trivialisation of Western culture's history of racial prejudice, but at the same time The Big Bang Theory is from my limited knowledge basically just a bunch of lame references cobbled together and an incredibly outdated depiction of "geeks". I mean c'mon, they're all scientists? Oh, one is an engineer - which is basically like a scientist who builds stuff. Firstly, modern geeks in my experience are far from being academically minded or intellectual people, as a general rule, a lot of them are barely educated, and secondly the idea that "all smart people are scientists" is an utterly effortless depiction. Couldn't one of them at least have a qualification in the humanities instead? 

Help, we've caught a fish.

2. Community

I know literally nothing about this show. Well, isn't it set at a community college? I think there are two particular characters that people really like, but honestly I'm not entirely sure. The point of this is not to look anything up, so I'm going to remain blissfully ignorant. Oh, I know there's a parody of Doctor Who in it called "Inspector Spacetime" and I remember finding a clip of that kind of amusing, although it of course has its own fanbase now writing weak pastiches of every existing Who story and the actor trying to actually make a web series out of it, thus killing its positive side completely. Other than that I know nothing about Community beyond the fact that it has a hard core of fans who seem to think it's really funny, and yet nothing I have ever heard about it has ever made me remotely interested in watching it. 

Just so you know I don't only like old stuff:
I honestly think that before Jeph Loeb ruined it
this was one of the best superhero cartoons yet made.

3. Adventure Time

I feel bad for ripping into a kid's show, but on the other hand, it's just a kid's show. I mean, I get that like any good kid's show there's stuff in there for adults to appreciate, but that doesn't mean it needs to be portrayed as some kind of masterpiece of animated entertainment. The whole suggestion of a post-apocalyptic scenario sound vaguely interesting, but also deeply played out in innumerable sci-fi works, and while John DiMaggio is generally good value that's not really enough. Sorry Adventure Time, but for the (adventure) time being I'm going to have to assume that your most vocal adult fans are overselling it in their desperate bid to pretend that they have an identity. 

I can't think of a Fantasy TV show
I've watched, let alone liked.
Next Gen will have to do as sci-fi/fantasy.

4. Game of Thrones

The book sucked, I'm not going to watch the TV show. Well, that's somewhat unfair, the book, or at least the first one, was incredibly middling pulp of the aforementioned sort where some genre framework is placed around boring, predictable stab-in-the-back political drama so that the "geeks" who watch it don't have to feel all square like they're watching mainstream TV. When did geeks become the people of high status in pop culture that have to be pandered to? Anyway, people on the internet also act like this show is one of the best things ever, but I honestly can't believe that. The argumentum ad populum tells us that it's fallacious to argue that a proposition is true (the proposition here being "Game of Thrones is good") just because many people agree. I'd take it further: if many people like something, it's probably exploitative of the majority of the population who lack well defined critical faculties, and therefore probably sucks. 

5. Breaking Bad

You're not the boss of me and you're not so big.

So some bald dude gets a terminal illness and becomes a drug dealer. Or a drug maker. Am I supposed to care? People talk about this show as if it's some kind of divine blessing from on high. It sounds to me like the usually gritty shit that people love to lap up when they have their spoonful of gravel every morning so that they can feel edgy. Is it bad to make assumptions about people's insecurities based on what kind of shows they watch? Anyway, at least Breaking Bad is over now and people are talking about it less. Seriously though, some bald guy who cooks drugs in the desert? Why the hell should I care?