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When the thrill is gone
Once upon a time, I was a great fan of The Amazing Race. It was appointment television for me; never missed an episode. I even blogged about it, reserving a dedicated category for recaps, images of the contestants, charts showing their progress or elimination. Good times…for a while.
Then came the ill-fated “family edition” of TAR. Mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons trekking across this great country of ours. I hated it. So much of the appeal of a reality show like TAR is tied to personalities, and the personalities featured in this edition left much to be desired. Even worse, having no one to root for left a viewer for to turn attention to the location-based challenges of this particular race. Not that America is chopped liver, of course, but the series took on the sleepy sepia tint of an old U.S. history text. I had become accustomed to more exotic locales. Yawn.
So much for The Amazing Race - that season killed my interest to the extent that I purged all the old episode recap entries.
Another once-favorite, House, fell by the wayside because a promising storyline - the cranky Vicodin-addicted titular character becoming the target of an equally cranky cop’s vendetta - ended with a thud. It was the worse kind of drama: the kind after which absolutely nothing substantial changes.
The most recent disappointment was Law and Order: Criminal Intent, a show I came to enjoy for the ensemble acting. So, of course, the producers blew up the ensemble. Goodbye, Captain Deakins! Farewell, ADA Carver! What the hell? At least the Deakins character was ushered out by an actual storyline; Carver just seemed to vanish without a remark. Deakins was replaced by a new boss played by Eric Bogosian, complete with anachronistic hair style. Bluh. Color me gone.
It’s not necessarily that these shows totally jumped the shark with these flawed storylines, but that once you become disenchanted with a program, it’s hard to recapture your previous, hard-earned enthusiasm. Once you leave the House, as it were, it’s hard to muster the desire to go back in.
Which is why I fear every day for Midsomer Murders. Don’t disappoint me, Chief Inspector Barnaby!
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COME BACK TO HOUSE ON SEPT. 16TH!
I PROMISE YOU WON’T BE SORRY!
NO MORE TRITTER ARC!!
UGH…I HATED IT TOO!!
HUGH LAURIE ROCKS!!!
That made me smile this morning, Lily.
The thing is, I think David Morse was great in the Tritter role; I’ve always liked him. The plot had potential, but none of it was realized. After all of the turmoil of the storyline, though, the writers just punted - nothing changed so far as House and his relationships were concerned, and everyone just walked away. Sometimes you write yourself into a corner and don’t know where to go from there. Weird, and disappointing. I used to browse the message boards at the official show site, and I remember how irritated people were. I think a lot of them just thought that Tritter was a big jerk. Which he was. :-)
Well. Sept. 16. I’ll check it out.
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