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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Dr. Bitz Ranks Every Television Series Ever...Sorta (Part 2)

Remember me? Yeah, me neither. Remember my posts ranking every (non-comedy/non-reality) show ever? Yeah, me neither. But I'll continue it on anyway.
If you forgot the rules, check them out here.

We're still near the bottom of the list. So here are more series I regret watching:

56. My Own Worst Enemy: The show was. It was my worst enemy and it's own. It's a show about the government giving spies multiple personalities. They have their domestic personality and their spy personality, but the domestic personality knows nothing about their spy personality. Sound confusing? It's not too bad. The real problem is the premise makes zero sense. The whole plan seems wrought with potential disaster. Oddly enough, that's what they get.
What does the audience get? Christian Slater portraying a spy who sleeps with his wife and then taunts his other personality about it. Awesome. We also get to see domestic Christian Slater find himself in spy situations and just whine and cry about it. Fun.
If this sounds like the show for you then you'll probably not like the order of my list. Just go back to watching your Hawaii 5-0.


55. Invasion: Here's Invasion's recipe: Take Lost, V, and Invasion the Body Snatchers. Put them into a blender on the setting 'watching paint dry' and, voila, you've got Invasion! I'll give the series a little credit. It did pick up near the end of it's first and only season. But, all in all, this was just one of the many failed Lost clones...at least this one got a full (boring) season.


54. Birds of Prey: Building on the popularity of Smallville, we get three hot girls taking on the villains of future Gotham City. Really, with that premise this show should have been historically awesome. (I call that the "Highlander Effect." I'm referring to the movie. I haven't seen the series.)
Anyway, it was fun at times, nonsensical at others, fairly boring a lot of the times and, at the end of day, rather forgettable.


53. Smallville: Oh, Smallville. I really did like it to start. My only complaint (aside from way to much Clark/Lana crap) with the first few seasons was that all the villains were small potatoes. I wanted some apocalyptic urgency. But then I started to notice something...all the characters were really, really, dumb. The plots started making less and less sense. Clark...never did anything logically. Which is a problem when you're supposed to be the greatest superhero ever.
Eventually I had to give up on the show. I did come back for a season and started to like it again until I realized it was the same old crap plus the promise of big battles that always amounted to a lot of offscreen action.
Oh, and Clark whined...a lot. Oh yeah, and Jimmy Olsen also wasn't Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy Olsen was really Henry James Olsen who was the older brother of Jimmy Olsen.
That emphasizes the show's biggest flaw. They wanted to wait until the end of the series to have Clark Kent truly become Superman except Clark did everything Superman did but simply wasn't named Superman. His character development was stuck in neutral.
Oh, and did I mention most of the characters acted really, really stupidly?


52. My Secret Identity: It was like Smallville except slightly more sensical but even less apocalyptic urgency. Also, there was more (intential) comedy. It was nothing to write home about but at least it really didn't try to be anything bigger than it was.


51. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: I love Aaron Sorkin. Sadly, his most popular and longest running TV show happens to be the one I haven't seen. But I did see this one, unfortunately.
It had some good dialogue but it lacked likeable characters and, really, isn't that the most important thing to have?
They also whined a lot. These characters are TV actors and writers. I'm not saying they have a perfect life, but it's better than most. How about they cheer up a little?
There were other things I didn't like about the show. They'd build up sketches (*cough* crazy Christians *cough*) that wouldn't live up to the hype and they would have characters keep secrets for no apparent reason.
At the end of the day, this show offered nothing compelling enough to keep me watching.

6 comments:

  1. I'd never even heard of Invasion. It was recent and it lasted a whole season? How did I miss this, it sounds like something I would at least have checked out. Curious...

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  2. @Joan: Oh, Invasion was a long time ago. Like around Lost's first or second season. It's about people being turned into fish people that look exactly like regular people.

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  3. The only one of these i gave any time to was Smallville, but we gave up after 3 or 4 seasons because it was just the same old crap over and over again. Every once in a while i see all the JLA cool looking stuff that's happening now and i feel a little bad about not keeping up, but then i just shrug it off.
    I think we gave Invasion like one episode.

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  4. How many episodes of My Own Worst Enemy did you end up watching? I recall bailing on like the second or third, but I'm not even sure it lasted longer than that. The only redeeming thing on the show was Mike O'Malley, and most of the time, I just felt sorry for him.

    I missed Invasion; if I'd had a DVR when it was on, I'm sure I'd have watched it (see also: Flashforward,The Event) but thankfully, that was back in the VCR days and I just didn't have the capability to watch/record it.

    I might be tempted to knock Birds of Prey up a few notches just cuz it did have really hot women in it, but I'm not sure what else is coming so its hard to say. And it was pretty boring, sadly.

    Oh, Smallville. So many parts of a good show littered throughout; you just couldn't ever get it all put together right. The first half suffered too much of the poor, characters-acting-dumb-because-the-plot-demands-it writing that plagued Heroes, the second half suffered because the producers were too slaved to the premise (by the time Clark was operating as a non-Superman hero in Metropolis, if the show had just put him in the costume, it probably would have been a pretty decent live action Superman show).

    My Secret Identity I missed, though I'm vaguely familiar with it.

    I love Aaron Sorkin. Sadly, his most popular and longest running TV show happens to be the one I haven't seen.

    Ha! I'm in the exact same boat.

    I think I like Studio 60 a bit more than you, though I'd never argue very vehemently on its behalf (it did have one of the best pilots I've ever seen though; unfortunately, the show peaked in that first episode). It certainly had it's problems, most notably, as you mentioned, the fact that the show-within-the-show was never shown to be as funny as we were constantly told it was. And then it got very, very soap opera-ish at the end (by which I think you had bailed).

    It was still Aaron Sorkin-ish enough though that I got some enjoyment out of even the worst episodes, and I really, really liked Mathew Perry's character, especially in the earlier episodes before the whole pain killer addiction and the subsequent never-ending whining.

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  5. It's been so long since i've seen Smallville that i can't remember why we stopped watching it. But i did always really appreciate Michael Rosenbaum. Also- it had a great theme song and score.

    I just BARELY remember Invasion- probably saw one ep. I think i saw one ep of Birds of Prey too.

    My Secret Identity- i feel like i remember that- but only because you posted the picture of it.

    Don't sell yourself short- these posts are fun!

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  6. Don't worry, I'm not selling myself short. It was more of a joke of how long it's been since I've posted. But thank you. I'm glad you enjoy them. :)

    But looking at my list for this post I realize there's a lot of short lived little known shows (except Smallville). So I'm not surprised nobody has seen them.

    And I think I bailed on Invasion halfway through its first season, but then they showed a marathon of it on SyFy for God knows what reason so I decided to see how it all turned out.

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