(no subject)

[the_rck]

I get two Netflix DVDs at a time, and Scott and I get one at a time, two different queues. Mine is mostly anime with a scattering of other foreign titles. I've been trying to add more that's in English so that I can have one DVD in English for every one that I'm going to watch subtitled. The hard part is finding things in English that I'll like that Scott doesn't also want to see. I tried writing up a list, yesterday, of shows I've loved, shows I've hated and shows I've been relatively neutral about.

It was more complicated than I expected. Each category had subcategories, and I realized that why I hated something (or was eh about it) mattered. There were a lot of things that sounded interesting in theory but that had too much violence or swearing or general ickiness for me to manage the story. There were things that fell apart narratively or that had really bad acting. There were stories that didn't work because they weren't written as stories but rather as escalating and never to be resolved incidents.

The neutral category was hardest to tease apart. Some things ended up there because, although I enjoyed them a lot, I couldn't bear parts of them or couldn't manage any episodes without someone else holding my hand. Some things ended up their because, while they were solidly entertaining, they lacked something I needed or that I saw as possible and desireable.

I'd intended to post a plea for recommendations, but I realized that the whole thing was simply too complicated. I'm simply going to try a bunch of things that sound vaguely interesting that Netflix doesn't think I'll like particularly. I added the first DVDs of some older series-- Xena, Highlander, Lois & Clark, Voyagers, The Flash and Charmed. I'd have added Hercules, too, but Netflix lists it as currently unavailable. (Of course, I've read more good Hercules fanfic than I have for any of the other shows. I suspect that Hercules would fail to live up to the fic.)

I'm not expecting to fall in love with any of these. My hope is to find them congenial and not stressful. That shouldn't be too hard, right?

I keep seeing people talking about giving up cable for Netflix and/or library DVDs or non-visual forms of entertainment. It always makes me think hard about our cable. I'm not sure we'd ever want to give it up even though our watching patterns are odd.

We might be able to get Cordelia by with DVDs. We'd need a lot of them with a lot of turnover. I could mostly manage without either TV or DVDs. I'd miss both, but books and the internet are reasonable substitutes for me. Scott.... I don't think he could give up either.

We also use an odd subset of channels. We can't switch to lower priced plans because most of them consist entirely of things we don't watch. In an ordinary week, we watch all three PBS stations, Disney Channel, SciFi, Comedy Central, Food Network, Discovery, History Channel, and whichever channel is airing Heroes. We make occasional forays to other channels for movies or headline news, and there have been times in the past when we've regularly watched shows on other specific channels (though, if we didn't have those channels, we probably wouldn't be heartbroken to have missed those shows. We'd just never have known they existed until and unless we found them on DVD). There are probably some other channels that I'd like to have, at least in theory. Pity we can't pick and choose channels.

Comments

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

I have mostly given up on TV since last year. There are shows that I might catch that I like (House, Chuck, NCIS -- I think) but I don't bother to turn the TV on for them. We do watch PBS on the weekends, and I like Masterpiece Theater or their Mystery! show quite a bit. Problem is that I don't actually like TV. I like watching shows when I want to watch them. So I've gotten hooked on buying shows for my iPod and watching them. I do have a few TV shows on DVD (either because I bought them or someone gave them to me) but they are mostly older things (First season Man from U.N.C.L.E.; first & second season Beauty and the Beast; first season Robin Hood (the one with the Clannad soundtrack); first two seasons of Buffy...) but I really don't like watching TV on DVD either.

Griffin and Leslie are pretty staid in their watching habits -- they will watch one movie over and over and over and over until they're tired of it or I flatly refuse to put it in the DVD player ever again. They don't watch much kids' tv, though I have collected Backyardigans for them. Mostly because *I* like it and can stand it.

[the_rck]

I do like watching TV or DVDs when the story is interesting enough. I'm just having trouble finding stuff in English that's interesting *and* not anxiety inducing. Of course, I kind of don't want the stuff in English to be dreadfully interesting because I don't want to give it all of my attention.

[ceara.livejournal.com]

We're DVD-only in our house. I miss the Food Network, mostly; pretty much everything else I'm content to wait until it comes out on DVD. I'd be a consumer of a la carte television, though.

[the_rck]

::nods:: Scott needs the TV on most of the time. That was one of my marriage compromises (one I generally don't mind). Cordelia likes various educational shows, and I like having the forced rotation imposed by watching them on TV.

I suspect that a lot of people would love a la carte TV subscriptions, just about all consumers would.

[cherydactyl.livejournal.com]

I miss Food network and MythBusters on Discovery, but we're working on a plan to hook up a computer as a dedicated media machine, get a direct line to our router into it, and stream media directly. We should be able to get many current TV shows this way. NetFlix carries the current season of Numb3rs, for example, and Heroes can be streamed as can some other shows. Also, I recently found out that there are legal free TV sites, including Joost (I think I am spelling that right) that I will be looking into once we have our setup and have upped our DSL speed to make it work right.

I doubt Scott would like Charmed except maybe occasionally. I enjoyed it, even when I recognized it writing could often get very hacky, especially in the later half of the series. Voyagers is campy fun and should work for you both. I plan to get the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mysteries and The Flash series to show M & S at some point. I remember being mostly underwhelmed by Lois & Clark, unless perhaps Dean Cain does it for you on an eye candy level.

[the_rck]

The series I listed are all things that Scott's either already seen or has said he's not interested in. He watched a lot more TV years ago than I did.

Admittedly, I didn't ask him about Charmed, Xena or Highlander. I just assumed.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

So what kinds of things don't you like? (Aside from violence and swearing?) Just because I think it's an interesting question.

I myself will NEVER watch the new Battlestar Galactica because of a squick problem. (Not going into detail.)

[the_rck]

I generally don't enjoy mysteries or horror. There are exceptions, but I usually like those because of other factors and in spite of the genre stuff.

Most sitcoms repel me because I have trouble when I see anybody embarrassed or humiliated.

I get cranky when stories contradict themselves or obviously lack continuity while pretending to have it (Scott has told me to avoid The Prisoner as he thinks it will make me hurl things at the TV). I don't mind something like Nero Wolfe that's set in a perpetual now, not as an occasional thing, but things that pretend to have forward momentum only to constantly snatch it away drive me crazy.

I prefer ensemble shows to shows that focus narrowly on one or two characters.

I don't enjoy stories in which everything that can go wrong does. I don't like seeing characters suffer just to suffer. It has to buy something, character development, hope, a victory of some sort and a chance that matters will improve.

Most of these are things that I can handle sometimes or that I used to be okay with. It depends on when I watched whatever it was and under what circumstances. It also depends on what things I like can be found in the show.

[ceara.livejournal.com]

This bears an uncanny resemblance to my issues with television, especially the sitcom part. I would also add, for my part, an aversion to slapstick and toilet humor.

[the_rck]

I tend to equate slapstick with humiliation. It isn't always the same, but there's a thread of humiliation in most slapstick. It's mean humor.

Toilet humor isn't amusing to me, but it doesn't repel me necessarily. It's just dull.

I remember watching sitcoms with my grandparents and liking Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newheart, M*A*S*H*, Barney MIller and All In the Family (which I thought was about my paternal grandparents. Not literally so, but Archie and Edith had a lot in common with those grandparents). I've enjoyed watching News Radio and Night Court in recent years but haven't dared re-watch any of the old series for fear that I won't be able to tolerate them. Oh, and I can enjoy Red Dwarf in small doses, very, very small doses.

[ceara.livejournal.com]

Some shows get a sort of "nostalgia exception" to my objections - like M*A*S*H. Even so, I can only watch one or two episodes at a time. Red Dwarf in small doses for me, too.

As for the lack of continuity thing, we've been re-watching original Star Trek lately, and Alistair wants to watch two discs at a time, because there are only two episodes per disc. Me, I want to watch half a disc at a time, because the episodes are great on their own, but stringing even two of them together makes one realize that the story arc pretty much hadn't been invented yet at that time, and it's a bit jarring.

[the_rck]

I think that nostalgia exceptions is the right way to talk about these things. I have those with books, too.

It makes rating things on Netflix difficult because I can't tell if I would actually love a show if I saw it now or if it's all nostalgia. I remember loving Remington Steele, but when I watched the first DVD, it didn't work nearly as well for me. Too much embarrassment. I enjoyed it. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to, and I doubt I could watch it without company.

[sterbenblumen.livejournal.com]

www.hulu.com has whole seasons of a variety of tv and cable shows. I’ve gone there to watch Firefly just recently. I don’t have tv or cable, and haven’t for more then 10 years, never was interested all that much. I ‘think’ there is another site where you can watch tv shows from your home computer, but if there is I can’t remember it.

I could give you a rec of an English speaking cable show I loved that’s about 10 years old. The first time I read a fan-fic was based on that cable show too, which was what got me hooked on fan-fic and on-line original fic.

The name of the show is called La Femme Nikita. Weiss Kreuz reminded me a lot of La Femme Nikita in some ways (I’ll relate Youji to Nikita sometimes), not only with the whole assassin and covert operations, but also with its emotional and darkish subject matter and some plot themes (nothing too graphic, and not much cussing). I loved the acting, you could tell the actors worked well together, the character Michael was just awesome (though I think I was drooling over him more than I was paying attention to how well he delivered his lines), I thought Birkoff was the cutest geek ever, the plot and characters developed in a way that seemed plausible, and every character was well fleshed out and not just filler (you‘ll see a lot of recurring small-part characters from previous seasons that connect many different pieces and pick up where they left off without missing a beat). To me, it felt like La Femme Nikita was what Wiess Kreus should have been.

[the_rck]

La Femme Nikita is in our Netflix queue as something for me and Scott to watch together. I'm concerned that I might not handle it well without backup. Until I see some of it, I won't know for sure.

[lady-of-mists.livejournal.com]

I concur with this description of Nikita! I hope that you and Scott get to see it soon.

And I'd like to say that I enjoyed Highlander and Lois & Clark, though I would say that I liked the first episodes best. (Though I always loved Amanda and Hated Richie). Charmed I find that I watch in the category of every once in a while if I get interested in that particular story -- there's an arc going on with it, but most episodes are standalone in the first few seasons, I want to say. I really liked Shannen Doherty on the show for some reason.

[the_rck]

It'll probably be a few months before we get to La Femme Nikita. There are a bunch of movies that Scott wants to see first, and we only get one DVD at a time on that queue.

(I may try to persuade Scott to go up to four DVDs at a time. He's started watching some things on his laptop, things he knows I don't care about or would rather not see at all. It might not be a bad thing to have that stuff broken out in a separate queue. Then again, I'm not sure how much there is apart from Smallville and some action movies.)