Doing Television Wrong

[rynling]

I can read and play games for hours, but I dislike television, even on my new huge big screen. What I do with sitcoms and anime is to watch about five minutes per day of a handful of shows through an app on my game machine before I start playing. I can sit through five minutes of anything, and in this way I can more or less keep current and not be that hipster who never watches tv.

Hannibal, though. Each episode is an hour long, meaning that it takes me two weeks to watch one of them, and it's even more time consuming in that for every five minutes I spend watching it I spend at least ten minutes sitting there afterwards getting angry about how stupid it is.

I understand the fandom for Sherlock, because Sherlock is witty, beautifully produced, and a lot of fun; the central OTP has fantastic chemistry, and the supporting cast is brilliant. A sizable portion of the Sherlock writers and artists moved to the Hannibal fandom over the past year, and I don't get it. Are we watching the same show? Are they seeing something I'm not?

This is why I'm deathly afraid of watching Doctor Who. Hannibal will finish its run and the fandom will move on, but I don't want to risk becoming one of the people who hates the source text for an always-fandom. I already have enough trouble with my feelings about Star Trek.

Comments

[renegadefolkhero]

Hannibal is weird. I watched a few seasons because I like Mads. The writing is often terrible (I think it was the season 2 finale that made me spit in anger) and the characters often behave stupidly, but I found some of the shots and imagery interesting. Unfortunately, the problem was as often as it was interesting it was gristly/disgusting/nightmare fuel.

Doctor Who is kind of intimidating because--where to start? I watched a few episodes with the 9th doctor and never got into it.

[rynling]

Does it get better after the first season?

I appreciate the gory stuff, which I agree is fabulously well filmed and designed, but...

It feels sort of like the henshin sequences in Sailor Moon, where the producers decided to put all their money into one thing and then use it over and over again. If you see a totem pole made of human corpses once, you're going to be seeing it at staged intervals over the rest of the episode.

Also I can't understand a word Mads Mikkelsen is saying. He speaks really softly (bless him, that gorgeous man), while Hugh Dancy emotes. I had to keep turning the volume of my tv up and down before I finally gave up and switched on the subtitles.

The Hunt was a real head fuck (and the dog gets shot wtf no), but I liked him a lot better in that role. Word on the tumblr is that he's going to be in the new Star Wars, which is excite to the max.

[renegadefolkhero]

Season 2 was when I started to get really annoyed with the writing and the finale turned me off completely. I haven't watched season 3.

They had Gillian Anderson and Mads and everything, I just wanted to shake them.

The Hunt was one of my favorite movies that year. I left Star Wars and took the kids with me to my mother's, I'm so irritated with the franchise as a whole, but I would be willing to watch some of the upcoming films under certain conditions and Mads is probably one of them.

[rynling]

Thanks! Good to know.

I'm still with Star Wars, but it's taken a lot of therapy.

[rynling]

Also En Kort En Lang, just putting that out there.

[renegadefolkhero]

I... have no seen that. A problem which clearly should be remedied.