Happy New Year! My resolution is to not ignore my blog for months. Sorry about that! I hope I haven’t lost too many readers.
Well, it is 2013. It’s a good a time as any to reflect on what I watched during 2012 (year 3 of being cable free). My husband suggested that I do a sort of round-up of all the terrible and guilty pleasure shows that I watched. I think I’ll take him up on that. There were some spectacularly bad shows that were on TV.
Let’s start off with the shows that I used to watch that just turned bad.
Raising Hope. I used to be a fan. I thought it was silly, but clever. It had good characters and hilarious plots. But, with the newest season starting this past fall I just couldn’t do it anymore. I got one episode in and gave up. Honestly, I haven’t even thought about this show in so long that I can’t remember what it was that made me remove it from the HuluPlus queue. I don’t miss it at all.
Fringe. Oh, Fringe, you were such a fantastic show for 2 seasons. Then the 3rd season came and shit just got off track. I’ll watch the 4th and final season at some point, but now isn’t the time. I have too much other stuff to watch to put up with your bizarreness right now. But, you are a JJ Abrams show after all. I should have known better.
The guilty pleasures are up next.
Hoarding doesn’t really offer much aside from voyeuristic television watching. It’s a way for us to sit comfortably on our couches judging other people’s lives. The show isn’t making a statement (unlike a show like Ru Paul’s Drag Race). Even if it began by making the mental illness of hoarding more widely known, it’s moved beyond that. It’s pure guilty pleasure watching. I’ll add Animal Hoarding and Freaky Eaters in with this as well.
*sigh* Toddlers and Tiaras. Another vehicle to judge the mentally ill. Speaking of judging people, feel free to judge me for actually paying money to watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I make no excuses. That shit is hilarious.
There are two shows that I’ll throw in here that I don’t actually believe are terrible, but they are certainly guilty pleasures. I’m talking about Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl. For me, Pretty Little Liars is still going strong, and I can’t wait for the next season to be thrown up on Netflix. Gossip Girl was a great watch for about 4 seasons. I caught up in time to watch the last few episodes, and I’m glad it ended. It went stale – although not as quickly as it could have.
And we’ll end with the truly terrible.
Netflix offers a lot of Korean imports. One of those is the adaptation of the manga Boys Over Flowers. My husband may disagree with me, but I thought it was terrible. Granted, I’ve never read the manga, but the tv adaptation was bizarre (and not in a good way).
New Normal. Ugh. Insulting and derivative. I can’t believe it’s still on the air.
My husband actually seemed to enjoy Animal Practice on a certain level. I enjoyed it on no level. Not even the cute monkey could save that show for me.
I debated about including Go On here. It’s not the worst, and it’s certainly not on a level with Animal Practice or New Normal. But, we stopped watching it for a reason; it just didn’t live up to our comedy expectations. I know many people would disagree and say that Matthew Perry is hilarious, but I bet those same people get a kick out of Two and a Half Men. No thanks. I’ll just be over here waiting for Community to return.
I gave Bridalplasty a try on Netflix. I watched about 10 minutes and then fast forwarded to the end to see who the “winner” was and what she looked like now. I feel sad for society that this show even happened.
See, even the kid from that show I gave up in 2011 is weeping for our souls.
And I’ll end this section with two anime I tried giving a try to last night: Kaze No Stigma was straight up boring for something that was supposed to be action packed and Rosario + Vampire seemed derivative in a weird way of Inuyasha but with too much fan service and a boring story.
Honorable mentions include: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the last season or two has made this once interesting and fun show into a disaster), Extreme Couponing (belongs shelved somewhere near Hoarding), and Sister Wives (not included above because I think the show actually has something to say about society).
Here’s to another year of good and bad television for me to deem worthy or not.
Cutting the Cord 