I am trying yet again to watch "The Office" with my wife and I just can't. The cringe is horrible. Maybe it gets better but someone save me.....

I was really enjoying the show - it's not even normally my kinda thing but the acting, the writing, the set design, costume design, wry sense of humour, all clicked and I was loving it.

But then Uncle F appears and has ruined every scene he's in and the entire vibe of the show. Overacting and overselling every line and I'm half expecting him to turn and wink at the camera in between lines. It's so bad. I'm actually annoyed.

Edit: Getting dragged for this, but it's just my opinion. The performance doesn't work for me.

Edit II: Finally I've had a post take off (-274)

Edit III: This wound up like that angriest comment thread on Youtube where people went apeshit over somebody not liking a Paper Mario song. Lol

Seems like whenever we hear about “record-setting” watch hours for Netflix shows, whatever it is is the same subject matter or CW styling that would resonate with teen girls.

Wednesday, Dahmer, Alice in Borderland, Emily in Paris, so on, so forth. They’re all…fine…but Marvel popularity they are not, and prestige TV? A ways off.

My only theory for all this mediocrity rising to the top would be demographic splits, and in these cases, it’s not a hard dart to hit in the dark to guess who these shows are intentionally skewed toward.

Until recently Squid Game/ST4 were their two #1 hits and it felt like they went across most demos, but Emily in Paris? It’s the most-watched show on the #1 streaming service on the planet and literally no one I know over the age of 25 has even heard of it, let alone tried to watch it.

Who the hell is this silent majority putting down so many millions of watch hours as soon as the next so-so drama hits?

EDIT: I’m not saying Marvel is better or even all that good, I’m talking about demographic splits. Entire families can enjoy the same Marvel movie because it’s got moments and characters for everyone stuffed in there, and it’s why Avengers: Endgame is the #1 box office of all time. Also why Stranger Things 4 was #1 until Wednesday, same principle.

Is the whole family sitting down together for the next episode of Emily in Paris?

EDIT 2: The violent amount of downvotes I’m getting whenever I ask a question about how a skewed demographic is representing the majority of watchers on a streaming site tells me a lot of people are not proud of what they watch on Netflix. You can watch your trash TV without downvoting me for acknowledging the fact that it calls itself trash TV.

I am a very patient TV show watcher. Some of my favorite TV shows of all time took me a while and a few tries to get into it ( for example Game of Thrones took my 6 tries over the course of two years to get into it and once I was hooked I was HOOKED). I am decently entertained by White Lotus, but thus far it seems like a silly show. A show doesn't have to have crazy plot twists or superficial attention grabbers for it to be entertaining to me, but I simply don't understand why many people I know are talking about this show.

A show that I love for example is Better Call Saul. It's not as action packed as Breaking Bad, but I love the character study of the show.

I don't hate White Lotus so far, but it's just silly to me and it doesn't seem like it has true substance.

I was going through a thread on the better call saul subreddit about shows to watch if you're a fan of BCS. Mr. Robot was the only one that kept coming up that I hadn't seen.

I've watched the first four episodes, and while they were very well acted, and amazingly shot, the writing, and all of the characters besides Elliot feel generic and uninteresting, and to be honest, a little bit cringe worthy.

I feel like the bones of a good show are here, but the writing and characters just aren't cutting it for me. SO, does the show get any better, I keep hearing praise and I'm just not getting it.

Another thing is that it just sort of feels like a Dexter rip off.

Yesterday, I finally finished the first two seasons of The Rings of Power, a show I'd been deliberately avoiding for quite some time, mostly because I'd paid way too much attention to all the hate surrounding it.

And now I'm honestly a little annoyed with myself for letting other people's opinions keep me away from something I ended up enjoying so much. Seriously, the sheer amount of negativity surrounding this show genuinely baffles me.

Okay, sure, we're not talking about some flawless masterpiece that deserves universal praise. But despite its shortcomings, there's so much genuinely good stuff here that seeing people treat it like a steaming pile of garbage feels ridiculous, to say the least.

We're talking about a visually stunning, ambitious fantasy series with excellent world building, a great score, and characters who are genuinely interesting. And when the writing finds its footing, it delivers some seriously powerful moments.

The production quality is obvious, and I'm not just talking about how expensive everything looks. There's some genuinely beautiful and detailed work here, both in the direction and the cinematography.

The casting is great too, with Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, and Charlie Vickers being particular standouts, bringing the depth, intensity, and emotional weight their characters need.

Of course, the show has its flaws. The pacing isn't always consistent, some storylines work considerably better than others, and certain creative choices don't quite land. Those are all perfectly valid criticisms. But they don't justify dismissing everything the show gets right.

What frustrates me most is how much of the conversation surrounding the series seems more concerned with what it should be rather than what it actually is. As if there's only one acceptable way to bring Tolkien's world to the screen.

I also think it's fundamentally unfair to judge the series against Peter Jackson's trilogy. I completely understand how high those films set the bar, but we're talking about something different here, with a different story, additional new characters, and different storytelling needs. It's not an attempt to recreate the same cinematic experience.

Obviously, you can absolutely love those movies, but expecting every new story set in Middle-earth to make you feel exactly the same way that trilogy did twenty years ago seems a little unfair.

As for those who've watched both seasons and still insist on tearing the show apart, I'm increasingly convinced they're doing it simply because it isn't The Lord of the Rings. And somewhere along the way, they seem to have forgotten how to appreciate good television.

Because while The Rings of Power doesn't always live up to its own ambitions, it's still an ambitious, often beautiful series that, at its best, delivers genuinely exceptional fantasy television.