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I'm done with Television

Madflavor

Member
The past few years have really tested my patience, and I'm finally throwing in the towel. I'm done. The only television I'll watch is older shows I love (Breaking Bad/Saul, Sopranos, True Detective S1, etc), or I'm just going to wait until a show is completed and I hear that all seasons were good.

The greatest age of television began in 1999 and lasted for around 20 years. During that time period we got some of the most prestige and iconic shows, and we received new seasons on a yearly basis. Nowadays we have to wait 2-3 years instead of 1, and we get less episodes with worse quality writing. Even the VFX for something like Stranger Things Season 5 look WAY worse than previous seasons.




(Three years for this shit?)

There's no excuse for any of this. I'm tired of waiting longer for less, and I'm tired of investing myself in tv shows that start off great and then start shitting themselves in later seasons. I do not care if someone tells me if some new shows is off the charts amazing. My mindset will immediately default to the prediction that later seasons will nosedive in quality. From now on I'm spending my free time on gaming, books, and the occasional movie. I was just reading this article and it was pretty much the straw the broke the camel's back for me:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...pisodes-in-the-time-pluribus-will-give-us-18/
(We got 62 Breaking Bad episodes by the time we'll get around 18 episodes of Pluribus)

Whatever has happened to the industry, they gotta figure out how to get back to a one or one and a half year wait between seasons. This is bullshit and I don't care for whatever excuses they or some armchair industry expert has. FIGURE it out.
 
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Sometimes I feel the same way about the game industry, how games take 4-7 years to develop now. But at least that kind of makes sense, since the scope and technology of gaming has increased so much over the years.

But what's TV's excuse? If anything, technology should make TV easier and quicker to produce. Waiting 2-3 years per season is insane.
 
The past few years have really tested my patience, and I'm finally throwing in the towel. I'm done. The only television I'll watch is older shows I love (Breaking Bad/Saul, Sopranos, True Detective S1, etc), or I'm just going to wait until a show is completed and I hear that all seasons were good.

The greatest age of television began in 1999 and lasted for around 20 years. During that time period we got some of the most prestige and iconic shows, and we received new seasons on a yearly basis. Nowadays we have to wait 2-3 years instead of 1, and we get less episodes with worse quality writing. Even the VFX for something like Stranger Things Season 5 look WAY worse than previous seasons.




(Three years for this shit?)

There's no excuse for any of this. I'm tired of waiting longer for less, and I'm tired of investing myself in tv shows that start off great and then start shitting themselves in later seasons. I do not care if someone tells me if some new shows is off the charts amazing. My mindset will immediately default to the prediction that later seasons will nosedive in quality. From now on I'm spending my free time on gaming, books, and the occasional movie. I was just reading this article and it was pretty much the straw the broke the camel's back for me:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...pisodes-in-the-time-pluribus-will-give-us-18/
(We got 62 Breaking Bad episodes by the time we'll get around 18 episodes of Pluribus)

Whatever has happened to the industry, they gotta figure out how to get back to a one or one and a half year wait between seasons. This is bullshit and I don't care for whatever excuses they or some armchair industry expert has. FIGURE it out.


These past four years have been exercise of me dropping new shows midway through the first season or dropping it while watching the first episode

I still watch TV but when it comes to new shows, I'm rather picky nowadays. And I've been going back to shows I missed out on when they aired

I tried watching the latest batch of Stranger Things episodes that just got released but I just ended up dropping it. I'm really getting tired of lot of these shows having bad writing alongside boring ass characters...

Not to mention the agenda pushing
 
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I've not been interested in modern tv, film, or music for years. It's shit, too much on offer, far too easily available that I miss the joy of searching it out. The more stuff becomes available the less interest I have. It's not special anymore. It's just part of the background now.
 
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i'm already done with TV since years or even decades ago. only watch mandalorian 1 and 2 but that's also years ago already.
 
party GIF
 
I'm just going to wait until a show is completed and I hear that all seasons were good.

That's me. It's just not worth getting invested in a show only to have it turn to shit 4 or 5 seasons in, or worse, start going heavy handed with some social agenda/propaganda.

I haven't watched any western "TV shows" in over 6 years and that was Game of Thrones, which I only stuck with because I had read all the books. That was basically the end for me unless something amazing comes around, but it seems unlikely unless there are major changes in the industry when it comes to who is allowed to make shows.
 
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Don't worry, we're about 3 to 5 years away from AI replacing everything. Custom slop directly into your feed forever and you'll like it!
 
Don't worry, we're about 3 to 5 years away from AI replacing everything. Custom slop directly into your feed forever and you'll like it!
Netflix is already there just without AIs help. Market tested and risk free garbage to be consumed while people do other things. If you dont pull Stranger Things or Squid Game numbers you get canceled.
 
Oh yeah, I stopped watching TV series and movies years ago.

I just play video games and watch sports (both of which are also getting worse).

Otherwise, I'll watch YouTube or old shows/movies from the 90's.
 
I think game of thrones broke me. The quality drop hurt. I don't seek out movies either once it all became samey junk food. Maybe I'm getting old and it's me, I dunno.
 
I stopped watching TV in English / Western TV almost 6 years ago. I just can't be bothered. The only modern TV I watch now is Asian, they're still making good TV.
 
I was just reading this article and it was pretty much the straw the broke the camel's back for me:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...pisodes-in-the-time-pluribus-will-give-us-18/
(We got 62 Breaking Bad episodes by the time we'll get around 18 episodes of Pluribus)

This is one of the things that's made me care less about modern shows. I'm old enough to remember when a show that only had 8 or so episodes was called a "mini-series", not a seasonal show.

I think back to shows like The West Wing which, even if I didn't agree entirely with its political messaging, I loved because they had solid writing, great cast chemistry, and good pacing and still pumped out 22 episodes a year for seven years. Sure, there were "filler" episodes but even a lot of those were well done. If they tried to do that show now, we'd get 10 episodes every two years or some shit.

Very few shows these days pique my interest and then when I find one that does I end up disappointed. The Righteous Gemstones comes to mind. I loved season 1 but season 2 was such a mess that I fizzled out around episode 6 and couldn't be bothered to come back to it.

I've always been more of a book reader and music listener anyway. My wife has always been the TV junkie… but all she does these days is watch reruns of classic Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Homicide Life on the Street that she just on a streaming service, or reruns of veterinary shows. She said she wanted to see IT Welcome to Derry, I even signed up for a holiday promo of HBOmax for her, and she hasn't even bothered launching the app. 🤷
 
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House of the Dragon S1 was the last one that I was like "Damn, this is good". Then season 2 came and it was dog shit.

Welcome to Derry was really good, tho. Definitely check it out if you havent already.
 
Sometimes I feel the same way about the game industry, how games take 4-7 years to develop now. But at least that kind of makes sense, since the scope and technology of gaming has increased so much over the years.

But what's TV's excuse? If anything, technology should make TV easier and quicker to produce. Waiting 2-3 years per season is insane.

Not sure how ads are now in broadcast. But the way they use to do TV shows is they would have sweeps period 4 times a year in a TV season to set ad rates by measuring nielsen ratings for the stations. If you go back and look at shows before streaming, they usually had their best episodes in February, May, July and November. Where you'll see plot twists, big episodes where they go all out etc. I was re-watching Highlander The Series and during the sweeps month episodes they went all out. Everything was blowing up during a 5 minute long quickening with more expensive SFX. Also cars debut in Sept TV ads to coincide with the new Fall TV season.

Everything was done in that set TV schedule and the reason why episode orders were 22-26 episodes was to make it to the magic 100 episode number for syndication which equates to about 4-5 seasons. Makes it easier for a local station to broadcast in syndication for 5 days a week for 90 days.

The shift to 2-3 year gaps between seasons in 2025 is driven by a fundamental change in how TV is produced, moving away from the "assembly line" model of broadcast toward a "mini-movie" approach. The special FX is so much better because they have time for post production. And you don't see the same 20 extras from X-Files, Stargate SG-1 and The Outer Limits 🤣
 
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