I don’t know – there’s just something about the steep curve of ridiculousness that drives me up the wall with these things.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good suspension of disbelief as much as the next man, but when I see a fragment of a minute of an hour of a day of a week in the life of Jack Bauer (the only Government agent who doesn’t need to urinate for six days), and witness another brutal family kidnapping, another complex but focused terrorist with a sinister plan, or another eloquent and dynamic President in a West Wing corridor power-dialogue… I just sigh and turn it off.
I acknowledge some of it is great writing, the stories oh-so-clever, and the cliff-hangers perfectly paced, but I can’t bear to see another hour of Benetton beauties stare dramatically at each other, following 15 minutes of ‘Last week on Lost’, most of the following ‘action’ being flashback anyway.
In watching these shows, I feel like a marionette, at the whim of the script think-tanks, forced to lose 24 slots of one hour (not to mention the water-cooler hours lost in chatting about it the next day). I don’t doubt the good writing, the story-arcs, the tension. However, I refuse to ride this train.
Lewis
PS The only shows I ever altered my plans to watch were ‘The Equaliser’, ‘The Office’, ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and ‘Extras’.