TV Watching

[WOM]

TV Watching

Dexter hasn't grabbed me in the same 'must see' way that Sopranos, Mad Men, etc. I wonder if I'm missing something.

[Stumpy Pepys]

TV Watching

As someone living in a foreign country and still learning the language, I now have completely different prioritities for watching TV: basically anything I can broadly understand.

This usually means watching the children's channel (Sponge Bob and Vicky the Viking) and anything with German subtitiles. Usually films on the two big channels. Worryingly, these often feature Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.

[Reed John]

TV Watching

I've given up on Mad Men. I find it especially depressing, somehow.

[Amor de Cosmos]

TV Watching

TV watching, like weed smoking, is directly connected to depression for me, so I'm cautious about it. Football on Saturday and Sunday. Whatever series MC1 is showing on Sunday evening: Dexter, Generation Kill etc. The odd British cosy mystery, and a movie midweek, is what I try (and frequently fail) to restrict things to. It helps that TV during the summer, baseball aside, is unwatchable without a lobotomy — actual, or chemically simulated. The Autumn and Winter are trickier once the hockey season starts, three 'Nucks games a week ("...must resist...must resist.)I'm a whole lot busier than I was last year so it shouldn't be too difficult. Plus I reckon they're going to be seriously crap, which will help.

[Guest]

TV Watching

Dexter's all right but not really too much more than that. Someone asked me to summarise the plot for the 2 series and it took ages, which made me realise it's a bit more complicated than I thought, but still.

Mild Spoilers for s2 of Dexter

In s1 they made this big deal about how Dexter wasn't interested in sex, or love or affection, what with being a sociopath and all. So poor Darla went without. But in s2 all of a sudden he meets her off Hustle and you can't stop them shagging. The sort of excuse is that she's a bit like him, but it just leads me to conclude that ratings are the thing.

[ian.64]

TV Watching

I don't really watch all that much television, except for the stuff I really like. If I was a slave to the television, I'd be there all day physically resembling the sofa I crash on (I'm on my way there, anyhow). Besides, all I have to do is look at what's on BBC1 and ITV1 to discourage me and perhaps go and do something else worthwhile (if I wasn't such a lazy bugger). I mean, for example, BBC1. If it wasn't for the continuity-encouraging presence of The One and Eastenders (the first which is fluff and the last I can't watch and never possibly will) every night seems to be an endless parade of anonymous programmes about the emergency services, dull sitcoms, and various bollocks which appears to have been filmed in about a couple of hours and then cobbled together to fill the evening. I click on week after week and find these new programmes with banal sounding names that pop up between 7 and 10, normally called 'Air Angels' about people who've crashed on the M25 and, ohh, look, here's a couple of blokes in a helicopter to help them. This will probably be followed by a show in the same slot a couple of weeks after called 'Helicopter Cops' about people who've been speeding down the M25 and, ooh, look, here's a couple of blokes in a helicopter to nick them.

So, a few sports and films, and possibly the odd Family Guy episode, there ain't much choice in a world of choice.

[Gerontophile]

TV Watching

Lyra, when you bugger off, and we are all sorry to see you leave, can I have your job?

[beak]

TV Watching

The only thing I regularly (2-3 times a week) tune into and watch is repeats of Have I Got News For You, sadly enough.

Other than that, I might slump down for a half hour of channel flicking at the weekend, if I feel compelled to stay up late for the sake of it.

Sometimes I'll watch MOTD, but only if I know something wildly exciting that I want to see is going to be on.

Instead I use the time for gawping at the internet, playing computer games like a child (I've just got into The Ship and it's amazing), trying to remember how to make music, and reading books.

[Guest]

TV Watching

WornOldMotorbike wrote:

Dexter hasn't grabbed me in the same 'must see' way that Sopranos, Mad Men, etc. I wonder if I'm missing something.

Dexter's fantastic but it doesn't really fit in with many other TV dramas. Certainly it doesn't have the large cast of finely drawn characters, the cinema-quality looks or the measured storytelling of Mad Men and The Sopranos. Chiefly this is because it's got a lot of thriller elements (without being an all-out thriller like 24 or Prison Break) and a lot of cop-show elements (except the cop isn't a cop and when he finds the bad guy he kills him, so that's a bit different) to accommodate as well. What's more, its surprising initial premise remains central to the show - rather than accepting it's about a serial killer whom we tentatively support and moving onwards and outwards, it's more introspective, revealing new things about Dexter's character and how his mindset came about, so we never quite settle. It's also very adept at milking the comic potential of Dexter's friends and family not knowing what he and we know.

I think it combines all of these elements very well - and its supporting characters are all very well drawn too, although rather than emerging from a sea of indistinguishable faces (as in Mad Men) they retreat from bold cartoons, revealing subtleties later on. Its tone and structure are quite strange.

Lyra wrote:

Dexter's all right but not really too much more than that. Someone asked me to summarise the plot for the 2 series and it took ages, which made me realise it's a bit more complicated than I thought, but still.

Series one: cops investigate serial killer, not knowing that their forensics expert is also a serial killer. Series two: cops investigate serial killer, not knowing that their forensics expert is the same serial killer.

Mild Spoilers for s2 of Dexter

In s1 they made this big deal about how Dexter wasn't interested in sex, or love or affection, what with being a sociopath and all. So poor Darla went without. But in s2 all of a sudden he meets her off Hustle and you can't stop them shagging. The sort of excuse is that she's a bit like him, but it just leads me to conclude that ratings are the thing.

Ooh, there's more to it than that. In series two they daringly reinvented Dexter's character. In the first run all we knew was that he was unable to feel any emotion, was compelled to kill, but had converted this into brutal but well-intentioned vigilantism. Then two things happened: in the series one finale Dexter discovered a lot more about his bloodlust, and then he met Lyra (Jaime Murray off Hustle). It's not just that she's a bit like him; it's that as he realises why he's the way he is, he wonders for the first time whether he has to remain that way. Lyra offers a kindred spirit, the possibility of someone accepting the real Dexter and, conversely, the chance perhaps to change (because she superficially at least is a fellow addict who wants to help him break the habit).

All this was probably necessary for a second series even to be possible, but it was still a risk and they pulled it off, I think.