TV - What's your passion (NON-sports)?
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I don't watch a lot of scripted tv but I've got youtube tv set to record The Alienist, Unsolved (Biggie/Tupac) and the Gianni Versace American Crime Story. I am hoping at least the first two of these are good.
I got really sidetracked during the Olympics and trying to take care of family affairs, and I don't even watch much tv to begin with anymore. But all of these caught my eye.
I got really sidetracked during the Olympics and trying to take care of family affairs, and I don't even watch much tv to begin with anymore. But all of these caught my eye.
This made me chuckle, because I don't really watch anything except for scripted television, aside from wrasslin. Especially since I quit the Kings. Like, I watch the WNBA, and whatever the early national NBA game is on ESPN/TNT/NBATV (I don't watch any games that start after 21:00 ET, either), but that's about it.
Ugh! Just when the last episode had made it look like we'd moved past this asinine Paige/Walter/Florence triangle... 
I'm more perturbed over the baby silliness, but I do agree the love triangle thing is not up to what I've determined their standards should be. I harbor the secret hope that Florence will turn out to be bat-crap nuts or something.
Nah, I don't think it's going to play out like that. In fact, I'm going to predict what's going to happen:
Florence and Walter will continue this undercover "theory building," or whatever the hell it is they're doing, and they'll get their signals crossed, leading Florence to make a move on Walter... Paige and/or Sylvester will see her kissing/attempting to kiss Walter, and it will be epiphany that Walter needs to realize that he is still in love with Paige. Walter and Paige will have a mini-blowup, that they resolve in (over/under) 1.5 episodes and get over it... but Sylvester won't. Season Finale will end with Sylvester walking away from Scorpion.
Well then, I heartily endorse your comment. While I still love the humor and absurd nature of some of the Scorpion assignments, I think whomever is writing needs a smack upside the head with a shovel. Not every show on TV needs complicated romantic entanglements IMHO, especially if they're forced and contrived. That wasn't what this show started out to be, and I hope it doesn't continue too much further down that path. I'll be honest, though. I'm not real excited about the potential genius baby on the horizon either.
I have a new show at the top of my "must see" list - Instinct. Alan Cumming plays Dylan Reinhart, a university professor teaching abnormal psych/behavior classes and former CIA agent who is called upon to assist Lizzie Needham (played by Bojana Novakovic), a NY homicide detective. The series is based on a James Patterson novel Murder Games. I have been a fan of Patterson's for years and this series does him proud. One of the best things about it is there will be no romantic chemistry between the two leads as Dylan Reinhart is an openly gay married man. I am so glad as I've thought many other cop/detective series with male/female leads have been ruined by the apparent need to bring romance into the equation (think Moonlighting as the premiere example). Alan Cumming is an incredible actor. Novakovic is a Serbian-Australian actress has a long list of productions, most recently including Shameless and WestWorld and I, Tonya.
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We are generally in accord about the situation on Scorpion but, on my end, that's more a function of my hatred of PLI angst/triangles than an antipathy for romantic relationships between the leads, in general. I actually gotta break ranks with you about the notion of no relationshipping being a positive feature of a show, since that's like 85 percent of why I watch dramas. All of that procedure and stuff isn't relevant to my interests; I certainly didn't watch eight seasons of Castle, because I cared about the police work.
Now that I think about it, that's probably why I have so much difficulty finding people to talk about TV with: I care way more about character interaction than whatever the premise of the show I'm watching ends up being. Like, I'm looking forward to the final season of The Americans, starting in a couple of days: I haven't been all-in on the first five seasons of this show because I give a rat's ass about the intrigue of a spy drama, I have been all-in on this show because of the chemistry between Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, and the mother/daughter chemistry between Russell's Elizabeth and Holly Taylor's Paige, and whether
I also don't believe in the Moonlighting Curse, FWIW: I think that what most people chalk up to the "curse" is more often a combination of lazy writing, and shows that have been kept on the air far beyond what the original show-runners had conceived for it, and are then forced to continue well after the writers have run out of good ideas. That last point, to me, is the single-biggest contributing factor to the so-called "curse": entirely too many shows get 8-10+ seasons worth of episodes for a premise that reasonably only has around 5-6 seasons worth of quality content to mine from it.
Now, with respect to the show in the above quoted post, I am happy to hear that there will be no romantic entanglements between the two leads, but for entirely different reasons than you put forth: I am first happy because I believe that we need more LGBTQ representation on major network series, so I consider any steps taken to broaden that to be a net positive. Also, Alan Cumming is literally old enough to be Bojana Novakovic's father... I mean, just barely, but still. Also, because I primarily watch dramas for the relationships, when you take that out of the equation, it forces me to take a closer look at the premise and, I'm not going to disagree with you about how good the show is, but I can't help but ask what it is that viewers can expect to get out of this show, that they didn't already get out of psych, or NUMB3RS, or Elementary, or Monk, or Castle, or The Mentalist?
Now that I think about it, that's probably why I have so much difficulty finding people to talk about TV with: I care way more about character interaction than whatever the premise of the show I'm watching ends up being. Like, I'm looking forward to the final season of The Americans, starting in a couple of days: I haven't been all-in on the first five seasons of this show because I give a rat's ass about the intrigue of a spy drama, I have been all-in on this show because of the chemistry between Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, and the mother/daughter chemistry between Russell's Elizabeth and Holly Taylor's Paige, and whether
Elizabeth's loyalty to her country is going to trump her love for her family, and whether Stan will actually find out the truth about the Jennings' real occupation before they either get killed, or get away, and how he's going to react to that information.
I also don't believe in the Moonlighting Curse, FWIW: I think that what most people chalk up to the "curse" is more often a combination of lazy writing, and shows that have been kept on the air far beyond what the original show-runners had conceived for it, and are then forced to continue well after the writers have run out of good ideas. That last point, to me, is the single-biggest contributing factor to the so-called "curse": entirely too many shows get 8-10+ seasons worth of episodes for a premise that reasonably only has around 5-6 seasons worth of quality content to mine from it.
Now, with respect to the show in the above quoted post, I am happy to hear that there will be no romantic entanglements between the two leads, but for entirely different reasons than you put forth: I am first happy because I believe that we need more LGBTQ representation on major network series, so I consider any steps taken to broaden that to be a net positive. Also, Alan Cumming is literally old enough to be Bojana Novakovic's father... I mean, just barely, but still. Also, because I primarily watch dramas for the relationships, when you take that out of the equation, it forces me to take a closer look at the premise and, I'm not going to disagree with you about how good the show is, but I can't help but ask what it is that viewers can expect to get out of this show, that they didn't already get out of psych, or NUMB3RS, or Elementary, or Monk, or Castle, or The Mentalist?
I have to say I was very happy with last night's episode.
I think the romantic entanglement scenario is too often used as a bailout. When writers cannot come up with any more ideas, they fall back to the obvious. What follows is far too often a baby, which results in too many retread plots IMHO. I would rather enjoy a show where there is unfulfilled tension between two attractive leads than the alternative. In the shows you listed at the end of your post (all of which I thoroughly enjoyed), I think the plug was pulled prematurely on at least 2 of them (not including Castle whose departure still irritates me to no end. It was, I suppose, the outlier for my long-standing complaint.
I view dramas for not only the personal dynamics but for the mystery and the ability to tell a good story, something I honestly think is coming back into fashion to some extent
I would push back again, and say that the romantic entanglements part are not the part that the problem. The problem, as I see it, is that too many of these shows become so popular that the the networks won't allow them to end when they should, and so what ends up happening is that writers have to rely on tired tropes, because they were never planning on the show lasting that long in the first place. There have been successful shows where the romantic entanglements resulted in a baby, and the stories did not become trite and derivative; what was different about those shows is that the writers had either always meant for children to be part of the plot, and were prepared for them to factor into the storytelling, or the writers were prepared to shift them into the background in a way that was believable, without being a distraction.
It's not the pairing of the romantic leads that's the problem: the problem is that, with a lot of these shows, they arrive at a point where they find themselves asking, "Okay, we paired the leads together... Now what?" And it becomes clear that, for many of these shows, there was never supposed to be a "Now what?" They solve the 'unsolvable mystery' and/or bring the Big Bad to justice, and then the two leads get together... and then, that's supposed to be the end of the show. But what happens is that a lot of these shows get so popular, that the networks make the actors and the show-runners Godfather Offers to keep them on the air, and throw so much money at them, that they can't make themselves turn it down. So then you arrive at the point where the writers have told all the stories that they actually wanted to tell, but now they're under contract to write fifty more stories. So, what happens next? You go to the Big Book of Tropes, that's what happens. And that's when you end up with all of the re-tread plots that you hate so much.
I'm not going to say that storytelling doesn't matter but, considering that my favorite show of all time is Chuck, you might say that I don't value storytelling as much as some others might.
It's not the pairing of the romantic leads that's the problem: the problem is that, with a lot of these shows, they arrive at a point where they find themselves asking, "Okay, we paired the leads together... Now what?" And it becomes clear that, for many of these shows, there was never supposed to be a "Now what?" They solve the 'unsolvable mystery' and/or bring the Big Bad to justice, and then the two leads get together... and then, that's supposed to be the end of the show. But what happens is that a lot of these shows get so popular, that the networks make the actors and the show-runners Godfather Offers to keep them on the air, and throw so much money at them, that they can't make themselves turn it down. So then you arrive at the point where the writers have told all the stories that they actually wanted to tell, but now they're under contract to write fifty more stories. So, what happens next? You go to the Big Book of Tropes, that's what happens. And that's when you end up with all of the re-tread plots that you hate so much.
I'm not going to say that storytelling doesn't matter but, considering that my favorite show of all time is Chuck, you might say that I don't value storytelling as much as some others might.
I do not disagree. A lot of British series are limited run, meaning they know at the beginning how many seasons the program is going to last. I would not be opposed to that idea, but I'm sure those who depend on the $ from syndication might.
Again, I do not necessarily disagree. I see a lot of shows stretched on way past their "best by" date because networks are greedy and that advertising revenue is a tough addiction to crack.
Chuck? I can honestly say (after looking it up on IMDB) I do not recall ever watching even one episode. My favorite of all time? Either Buffy the Vampire Slayer or MASH, depending upon my mood when I address the question.
Again, I do not necessarily disagree. I see a lot of shows stretched on way past their "best by" date because networks are greedy and that advertising revenue is a tough addiction to crack.
Chuck? I can honestly say (after looking it up on IMDB) I do not recall ever watching even one episode.
My favorite of all time? Either Buffy the Vampire Slayer or MASH, depending upon my mood when I address the question.
When the Dick Van Dyke Show finished it's 5th season it was the #1 ranked show and Rob Reiner decided to end it. When asked why; he said, after 5 seasons you start to repeat the same storylines. If you are going to do that, you might as well start over with a fresh cast and setting.
I agree with him but wonder if he would succeed trying to do that today.
I agree with him but wonder if he would succeed trying to do that today.