5 ms·

I don't get reviews saying that TRoP, or some other new prestige TV series, is "terrible", or "a disaster", based on the first couple of episodes. Some really

I don't get reviews saying that TRoP, or some other new prestige TV series, is "terrible", or "a disaster", based on the first couple of episodes. Some really excellent TV series have taken more than a whole 26-episode season before they find their rhythm and get properly good. ST:TNG is a classic example, but I'm pretty sure you can come up with others. And some people are claiming that a new series totally worthless, not based on the first series, but based on the first episode? Are you kidding me? I mean, is it OK if the first episode of a series is unevenly paced, and contains too much exposition, and clunky "tell, don't show" dialogue about who the main characters are and what their deal is? No, no it isn't. We should ask that writers do better, and trust audiences to have the patience to learn who characters are through action over the course of a few episodes. But just because they don't do those things, is it really worth writing off the next 5 (or however many) seasons of a show, based on one episode? Who does that? What does anyone gain from that? OK, there's a lot of prestige serialised TV out there now, and you probably can't watch all of it even if you wanted to, so some culling is probably necessary at some stage. But does anyone really have to write something off quite so soon? You can't even give it half a season to try and get up to speed? I don't get it.

sarchertech 4y ago
People were saying the show was going to be terrible based on promo images.
- coldtea 4y ago
  And they were right too
thrown_22 4y ago
I want to know if it is worth watching a series while it's airing. It may not be fair, but I have more important things to do with my time than give mind share to mega corp projects which are poorly executed. These aren't some small teams labours of love which I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to.
narag 4y ago
I agree. The first two episodes of The Rings of Power are unbearably boring. But let's wait. Anyway, IMDb ratings are getting totally unreliable to me. I wasted hours of my life that won't come back, watching some show called The Terminal List that scored a solid eight. Carnage of Asimov's Foundation is 7.4 and that... thing, The Wheel of Time 7.1. I wonder if there's a way to see evolution of rating, for me Star Trek Discovery seasons are nine, seven, two, pass... but it's holding at 7 right now.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > Carnage of Asimov's Foundation is 7.4 The show is not faithful to the book but it has good production value, a fairly interesting story and is overall very watchable. The passing is sometimes questionable but 7.4 seems like a fair rating to me.
  - narag 4y ago
    Not faithful? More like it presents exactly the opposite ideas. Why choose Foundation if you hate every concept that the books stand for?
    - vkazanov 4y ago
      The show is kinda OK if you ignore the book, I.e. for general public. Expensive, good CG, etc. What does feel painful though is the wasted opportunity: chances are that Foundation will never get its Peter Jackson.
      - thom 4y ago
        The only way to faithfully film the book would be to make some sort of anthology series, and I don't think that format works well for big-budget prestige drama. As I've said elsewhere, might have been better to start with Prelude to Foundation, perhaps.
        canuckintime 4y ago
throw0101c 4y ago
> I don't get reviews saying that TRoP, or some other new prestige TV series, is "terrible", or "a disaster", based on the first couple of episodes. There are only eight episodes, so if two first two suck then that's a quarter of the series/seasons that sucks. The first two episodes are also 90 minutes long, so we're three hours into the story. That's as long as the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring movie: how much of a story were they able to tell in that? How much have they told in TRoP? Contrast with with House of the Dragon which has also released two episodes (out of ten). What are people saying about that? Yes, the series can be 'saved' in the remaining six episodes, but it just seems… wasteful? (of time, effort, money) … to do what they did.
- Adrig 4y ago
  Episodes are 1h long, tho.
soco 4y ago
It's about my life, about how I choose to spend the time and if the show doesn't give me a reason from the beginning, it would be pretty optimistic to think it will at some point later. I'll rather choose another one which does it right, because there's no shortage of shows anyway. Of course I don't mean it must deliver in the first five minutes, but two episodes are plenty enough. If the director/scenarist/whatever cannot build two interesting episodes out of two, that's a pretty bad average and gives me no reason to think they will get better - except the unfounded hope and comparison with whatever unrelated series you mentioned.
chipotle_coyote 4y ago
> I don't get reviews saying that TRoP, or some other new prestige TV series, is "terrible", or "a disaster", based on the first couple of episodes. The ironic thing here is that most of the reviews from critics of this show have been positive. Not necessarily wild raves, but, you know, pretty positive. It's possible that the Critics Just Don't Get It, Man, or whatever trope people will pull out to explain why professional critics should be summarily dismissed and only the users reviews are real opinions that we should listen to, but I'd argue that it's also possible that fandom in general has become entitled to the point of toxicity over the last couple of decades. After decades of good "genre" movies being few and far between and good genre television, especially fantasy and superhero, being even more vanishingly rare, now we've got it coming out of our ears and we are, apparently, really fucking pissed off that what we get doesn't match the unattainably perfect shows in our heads or something. And this isn't even getting into the way today's politics have crept in, but it's extremely hard not to notice that a substantial subset of fans angry with The Rings of Power or Ms. Marvel or The Sandman or whatever are specifically calling out changes that they have to preface with "I'm not racist, but...". I suspect if they'd made a TV version of The Sandman 20 years ago, before any and all attempts at diverse casting would be met with outrage by a loud minority, and cast a black actress as Death, the predominant reaction would have been: "Huh. Weird, but maybe she'll be pretty good in the part, let's see." I haven't seen The Rings of Power yet, and I don't know if I will, but based on most of the reviews from people who aren't in the Angry Angry Fan Brigade, I expect it to look really good, have solid casting, have somewhat pedestrian plotting, and suffer from somewhat clunky dialogue. I also expect it to feel unnecessary in the grand scheme of adaptations. But I don't expect to be some kind of affront to Tolkien fans everywhere, and I think the AAFB just needs to chill out about this, like they need to about so many other things. (For context, I feel Jackson's LotR adaptation looked really good, had solid casting, and had somewhat pedestrian direction, most notably in Jackson's inability to let any moment anywhere remain small and quiet.)
auggierose 4y ago
Well, just watched only the first episode now. Great stuff! Much better than Dragon.

sarchertech 4y ago

People were saying the show was going to be terrible based on promo images.

coldtea 4y ago
And they were right too

thrown_22 4y ago

I want to know if it is worth watching a series while it's airing. It may not be fair, but I have more important things to do with my time than give mind share to mega corp projects which are poorly executed. These aren't some small teams labours of love which I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to.

narag 4y ago

I agree. The first two episodes of The Rings of Power are unbearably boring. But let's wait. Anyway, IMDb ratings are getting totally unreliable to me. I wasted hours of my life that won't come back, watching some show called The Terminal List that scored a solid eight. Carnage of Asimov's Foundation is 7.4 and that... thing, The Wheel of Time 7.1. I wonder if there's a way to see evolution of rating, for me Star Trek Discovery seasons are nine, seven, two, pass... but it's holding at 7 right now.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> Carnage of Asimov's Foundation is 7.4 The show is not faithful to the book but it has good production value, a fairly interesting story and is overall very watchable. The passing is sometimes questionable but 7.4 seems like a fair rating to me.
- narag 4y ago
  Not faithful? More like it presents exactly the opposite ideas. Why choose Foundation if you hate every concept that the books stand for?
  - vkazanov 4y ago
    The show is kinda OK if you ignore the book, I.e. for general public. Expensive, good CG, etc. What does feel painful though is the wasted opportunity: chances are that Foundation will never get its Peter Jackson.
    - thom 4y ago
      The only way to faithfully film the book would be to make some sort of anthology series, and I don't think that format works well for big-budget prestige drama. As I've said elsewhere, might have been better to start with Prelude to Foundation, perhaps.
      - canuckintime 4y ago

throw0101c 4y ago

> I don't get reviews saying that TRoP, or some other new prestige TV series, is "terrible", or "a disaster", based on the first couple of episodes. There are only eight episodes, so if two first two suck then that's a quarter of the series/seasons that sucks. The first two episodes are also 90 minutes long, so we're three hours into the story. That's as long as the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring movie: how much of a story were they able to tell in that? How much have they told in TRoP? Contrast with with House of the Dragon which has also released two episodes (out of ten). What are people saying about that? Yes, the series can be 'saved' in the remaining six episodes, but it just seems… wasteful? (of time, effort, money) … to do what they did.

Adrig 4y ago
Episodes are 1h long, tho.

soco 4y ago

It's about my life, about how I choose to spend the time and if the show doesn't give me a reason from the beginning, it would be pretty optimistic to think it will at some point later. I'll rather choose another one which does it right, because there's no shortage of shows anyway. Of course I don't mean it must deliver in the first five minutes, but two episodes are plenty enough. If the director/scenarist/whatever cannot build two interesting episodes out of two, that's a pretty bad average and gives me no reason to think they will get better - except the unfounded hope and comparison with whatever unrelated series you mentioned.

chipotle_coyote 4y ago

> I don't get reviews saying that TRoP, or some other new prestige TV series, is "terrible", or "a disaster", based on the first couple of episodes. The ironic thing here is that most of the reviews from critics of this show have been positive. Not necessarily wild raves, but, you know, pretty positive. It's possible that the Critics Just Don't Get It, Man, or whatever trope people will pull out to explain why professional critics should be summarily dismissed and only the users reviews are real opinions that we should listen to, but I'd argue that it's also possible that fandom in general has become entitled to the point of toxicity over the last couple of decades. After decades of good "genre" movies being few and far between and good genre television, especially fantasy and superhero, being even more vanishingly rare, now we've got it coming out of our ears and we are, apparently, really fucking pissed off that what we get doesn't match the unattainably perfect shows in our heads or something. And this isn't even getting into the way today's politics have crept in, but it's extremely hard not to notice that a substantial subset of fans angry with The Rings of Power or Ms. Marvel or The Sandman or whatever are specifically calling out changes that they have to preface with "I'm not racist, but...". I suspect if they'd made a TV version of The Sandman 20 years ago, before any and all attempts at diverse casting would be met with outrage by a loud minority, and cast a black actress as Death, the predominant reaction would have been: "Huh. Weird, but maybe she'll be pretty good in the part, let's see." I haven't seen The Rings of Power yet, and I don't know if I will, but based on most of the reviews from people who aren't in the Angry Angry Fan Brigade, I expect it to look really good, have solid casting, have somewhat pedestrian plotting, and suffer from somewhat clunky dialogue. I also expect it to feel unnecessary in the grand scheme of adaptations. But I don't expect to be some kind of affront to Tolkien fans everywhere, and I think the AAFB just needs to chill out about this, like they need to about so many other things. (For context, I feel Jackson's LotR adaptation looked really good, had solid casting, and had somewhat pedestrian direction, most notably in Jackson's inability to let any moment anywhere remain small and quiet.)

auggierose 4y ago

Well, just watched only the first episode now. Great stuff! Much better than Dragon.