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Dec. 2nd, 2008 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI 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.
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.
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Date: 2008-12-02 08:13 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2008-12-02 08:17 pm (UTC)Admittedly, I didn't ask him about Charmed, Xena or Highlander. I just assumed.