We’ve discussed our love for How Does This Get Made? many times here on UPROXX. If ever you’ve wanted to hear Rafi from The League discuss the greatest Christmas movie with a cameo from Jim Belushi ever made, it’s the podcast for you. Every episode concludes with “Second Opinions,” where host Paul Scheer reads glowing Amazon reviews of terrible movies. The Last Airbender, The Love Guru, Speed 2: Cruise Control, From Justin to Kelly, Tiptoes: they all have their defenders. Not many of them, but they’re out there, or at least they were in 2002, when seemingly every Amazon movie review was written.
I thought it might be interesting to check out the opposite of HDIGM’s feature, and for TV: looking at negative reviews of great seasons. Everyone has the right to their opinion, but if you’re hating on season one of The Wire or season four of The Simpsons, no, no, you don’t. (I tried picking criticism that weren’t obvious troll jobs.)
Breaking Bad — season three
I get suckered into a lot of lousy shows by the “hype” surrounding the show and all the glowing reviews on Amazon and in the media. This show is another one of those “con” jobs. Sorry, folks, but I found this show just plain lousy. It’s depressing. It’s glacially slow. The characters constantly bicker and fight in the most annoying ways. Almost all the characters are a-holes, jerky, uninteresting, unlikable, and unsympathetic. I disliked every single character on the show, especially Jesse, who has got to be the whiniest, most annoying, most unlikable character ever created for TV. In short, this show was torture to watch. Sadly, the premise is good. It could have been a good show. The story idea was there. But it is just written so poorly–unlikable protagonists, cliched bad guys, a story that moves at a snail’s pace–so the promising premise is never developed into anything good. Even Bryan Cranston (who is a truly outstanding actor) seems bad on this show. His character has two notes, he’s either bitter or angry. The people who should be bitter and angry are the people who get conned into watching this gratingly bad show. And this season, Season 3 is especially bad, worse than the first two seasons. Virtually nothing happens in the first 4 episodes of Season 3, these four episodes dragging on forever, as the “story” (or lack there of) focuses almost solely on a pending divorce between two characters (God is it boring). Another bad episode later on is spent almost entirely in a hospital waiting room. And then in another supremely bad episode, I swear to God, the whole episode is spent watching two characters try to kill a house fly! Yes, the show is that bad! And it eventually gets totally unrealistic as characters do things (like murder people or plot murders) which seem TOTALLY out of character for these characters on the show. Season 3 just gets way over the top in the worst possible way. And I’ve never seen a show with so many meaningless just-there-to-waste-time “filler” shots. It’s like every scene begins with meaningless time-wasting montages of landscapes or super slow panning shots. This show is SO slow. Badly written. Badly edited. Bad everything. Avoid it at all costs. (Via)
Cheers — season four
Nice promotion for alchohol and cigarettes. a show based on people without a life, nothing better to do but to hang out at a bar. the sad part is that there are real people that waste their life away hanging out at bars, ending up dead or becoming homeless brain dead alchoholics. Lousy show. go watch taxi instead. (Via)
Friday Night Lights — season one
Friday Night Lights is a show which is unorthodox glaringly because it focuses on a seemingly boring subject: high-school football in a small, rural, southern town. The reason an audience has eluded this show is precisely because of this seemingly boring premise, yet the ardent defenders of this show will sensitively cite character development, themes and “heart” of the show. Another reason critics dislike the show is because of the jerky camera which resembles amateur camera work, or even a drunkard fooling around behind the scenes. The plan of the producers was obviously to make the show more “realistic” by doing the extreme close-ups and the like, but they failed heavily.
For my money, I refuse to care about the aforementioned criticisms of this show because I feel that my criticism of this show should be the only reason why people dislike this show. In my view, the most obvious affront of FNL is how it disparagingly stereotypes red-state Texans!!!! Whether it’s their Christian religion, their southern accents, their passion for football, or their small-town folksiness, white, Christian Americans are being ridiculed in this show because FNL is an elitist show made by Hollywood liberals. In fact, the only reason this show is so popular among critics (read: liberal shills who vote Democrat) is because it reinforces, in its discriminatory stereotyping, the views of liberals on the coast of people in red-state, “flyover states.”
Here are some abominable examples of abusive, liberal-elitist stereotyping in FNL’s 1st season.
First and foremost is the way many of the actors absolutely parody the southern accent of their characters. Lyla Garrity sounds like a bimbo-ish airhead with her perkiness. The Matt Saracen (does anyone know Saracen means “Arab” or “Muslim”; how PC can you get!) and Landry characters epitomize what liberals on the coast think of Southerners. This is demonstrated inarguably by the way the actors have their characters speak in their southern drawls. Matt’s always insecure and like “Uuuuuh, hi there J-J-Julie (Coach Taylor’s daughter)!” His best buddy, Landry, relentlessly utters lines like “Uuuuuh, h-h-hi there, Tyra. D-d-do you want suuum help wit dat?” The point is that the liberal actors intentionally speak their southern accents to make Texans look as inbred, dumb and uncouth as libs stereotype them to be!!!!
Another maltreatment is how FNL shows these red-state Texans in social/cultural situations which are often at odds with the Christians they are.
For instance, the Lyla character is a Christian as is her dad, Buddy, yet both are written by the liberal writers to be such personal hypocrites with their cheating on their respective significant others. Lyla, of course, cheats with the lowlife miscreant Riggins while her dad is thrown out of the house by his wife after he admits to an affair. These story developments aren’t defensible enough to be cited as mere plot devices; it’s inarguably blatant that they’re meant to derogate Christians as hypocrites, and one can almost imagine the gloating schadenfreude the liberal writers experienced while penning this BS.
In criticizing this shabbiness of a TV show, I cannot omit the egregious exaggeration of “religiosity” that’s skewered by the writers. Again, one can just imagine the sadistic, liberal-slanting writers gloating with malice when they contrive scenes which show the characters in prayer, such as before a big game. The way the mocking writers derogatively portray Texans is almost like the unflattering movie Jesus Camp where Christians are misrepresented as “Jesus Freaks” and general radicals. This is irrefutably established in scenes showing characters like Smash and his fat momma praying with their eyes closed and mouths open as if in rapture.
Yet another unforgivable trespass is the abuse of the Iraq war veteran (Matt Saracen’s father) to make a barely veiled attack against the Iraq war policy!!!! The context of the episode arc featuring Matt’s father was to disparagingly mischaracterize Iraq vets as returning to troubled homes without enough money to make ends meet. Viewers WILL remember that Matt’s father wanted to move the family out of town because he couldn’t afford healthcare for Matt’s senile/demented grandma and even took a job as a used car salesman.
Completing the lib-elitist stereotypes is an episode dealing with racism where Smash is allegedly defamed by one of the assistant coaches due to his black skin color. Of course, subordinating to the liberal ideology, the assistant coach looks like a bigot full of hatred while Smash is doubtfully portrayed as a courageous “martyr” who stands up for his “rights” despite the fact that his actions actually hurt his whole team!!!!
As I lectured earlier in my thesis, the reason critics (read: liberal agents planted in the media) love FNL is because it reinforces all the demeaning stereotypes of white, red-state, Christian Southerners. FNL questionably depicts all characters in Dillon to be basically white trash from broken homes, white trash who drink and copulate excessively, and white trash who are economically destitute. All the lowest, unflattering tangents are here, whether it’s driving pickups or wearing ballcaps or polishing shotguns. (Via)
Game of Thrones — season two
What an offensive film. The depiction of Little People made me cry, it was so hurtful. Don’t buy this garbage. (Via)
The Office (U.K.) — series one
This show has its funny moments (not as many as the American version) but it is flat-out raunchy. And by raunchy, I mean: vulgar, smutty, crude, earthy, obscene and hands-down dirty. Almost every single joke is based on sexual situations or a part of the human body. If you have any standards at all, leave this one alone and try the american version, much cleaner and much funnier. (Via)
The Simpsons — season four
I really don’t like watching populist garbage for the sake of one joke an episode (on average), especially when it’s done in such an obtusely arrogant way. I highly recommend you do not buy this collection, and I highly recommend you do not ever watch the Simpsons, because it is awful. (Via)
The Sopranos — season five
Having been a dyed-in-the-wool Soprano’s fan since Season 1, I found it quite difficult to wait so long for the release of Season 5 on DVD. I don’t have satellite or cable, so I’ve only seen the Sopranos by buying the DVD box sets.
For all this time, I’ve carried on a running argument with myself and my best friend Trent about which is the better TV series, The Sopranos or Stargate SG-1. Trent has always leaned a bit towards the Sopranos and I’ve been hard put to make a choice.
Season 5 of the Sopranos finally made the choice for me. I can hardly stand to watch it. It is so boring, and so seeminly superficial. New characters by the dumptruck load do nothing to increase the watchability of this season. It is so boring, that, even though I own the complete box sets for the first 5 seasons, I may just simply forego buying the final 6th season, whenever that may be available. I certainly am not going to stay up late watching for signs of it’s impending release. (Via)
The Twilight Zone — season one
IT WAS OLDER AND SEEN IT WHEN IT WAS NEW ON TV YEARS AGO DO NOT WANT TO RE WATCH (Via)
Twin Peaks — season one
This is one of the most misogynistic, disturbed pieces of garbage I have seen – ever. I like art films. I like creative television, but the violence toward women, the obvious attitude that they are bodies and little more is so backward that any attempt this series made at far eastern spirituality is completely lost. The women in this program spend their time doing what their cheating, abusive boyfriends/husbands tell them to do, engaging in prostitution, engaging in adultery, and all (but one) are essentially high school drop outs. When they’re not busy doing those things, they’re getting murdered. The series is bloody and violent. This violence is mild in the earlier episodes, but by the time you get further into the series, it’s stomach turning. The portrayal of pure evil is given double the screen time as the portrayal of pure good. Worse than daytime drama in the area of lying and infidelity. Don’t pollute your mind or waste your time. Worth skipping. Read a synopsis online if you feel the need to know the storyline so as to converse with your tasteless friends who like this. Better yet, let them know you have better things to do. (Via)
The Wire — season one
I like TV cop shows. I really do. I have never, even when a 20-ish something liked anything where the detectives are as obnoxious and ignorant as the thug criminals they pursue. A guy at work told me this is supposedly being talked about as the greatest TV Cop Crime Drama ever? I say B.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was awful. Ejected in 20 minutes! Guess I’ll give it to someone at work. If you enjoyed series where each character says “Mutha F – er” in each sentence and use it with affection towards their friends, and its considered normal. Then this is your show. I say its rubbish and proof America is getting DUMBER. (Via)
