Thoughts on a Season - The Bad

I haven't said much about the current TV season this year. For the most part I have just been kicking back and enjoying it. But I thought I would finally answer the call and pontificate a bit on shows old and new. This time out I will concentrate on returning shows that have disappointed me.

Lost

I haven't yet given up on Lost, but if it goes off the air next week I wouldn't morn its demise. I feel it is just jerking me around and I'm not the only one. If there was an award for show most often compared unfavorably to Twin Peaks, Lost would win hands down. Despite the protestations of the producers, I think there is little faith out in the great American wasteland that this show will ever reach a timely and satisfying end, but I would love for the producers to prove me wrong.

Survivor Fiji

I love Survivor, but this season is so patently unfair to half the contestants that I don't know if I can continue watching. Having all the contestants build a dream camp together, then giving it to one team after the first challenge and giving the other team almost nothing just rings of foul play. There is not a single contestant on the "lap of luxury" team (who lounge around on hammocks or on couches all day) that I would want to see win the money and it appears that very soon they will be the only ones left. The producers better have a way of flipping this thing on its head or I predict fans will abandon the show by the islandful.

Grey's Anatomy

This show lost me at the end of last season. Just about every character on the show would be in jail or in court as a precursor to going to jail if this were the real world. I can't find a redeeming quality in any of them. I hope they spend the rest of their horrid lives pining over the love of some other shitty, self-absorbed character that they have lost and will never get back except in out-of-focus, Vaseline-lensed sophomoric dream sequences and I don't want to ever waste my time on it again, even if it means missing Sandra Oh. God does this show piss me off!

CSI: Miami

I swore off CSI: Miami after the season opener and have not missed it a bit, except as comic relief. My opinion on this mess of bad acting on top of laughable writing can be found all over this BLOG and collected here.

24

So right-wing and so over-the-top that I have pretty much given up on it seven hours into this season. Reading that our soldiers at Abu Ghraib watched DVDs of this show and took lessons from it on how to torture people doesn't do much to endure me to it either. And what is the deal about Kiefer Sutherland? I find it incredible that he has been nominated repeatedly for best actor for this show when all he does is either talk calmly under his breath or scream at people.

Next time: The other end of the spectrum!