The Worst of the Best
May. 3rd, 2008 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatHere's a meme-style game I just recently thought up, which for lack of a better title I call "Things You Dislike About Things You Love." Basically, you list some things you enjoy (I ended up listing seven, but I don't think the number should be set in stone; it's cool if you think of more), and then mention an aspect of each that you don't like. You can be creative with them, but try to go with something that's more of a general trend than a specific item. For instance, don't choose a particular episode of a TV show, or a particular song by a band. That might also make (and probably is) a good meme, but it's not what I'm going for here.
1. The Simpsons - The overabundance of jokes that simply consist of Homer being seriously injured. Sure, these are funny occasionally if done cleverly (everybody loves the fall down Springfield Gorge), but I think too many episodes will have a five-minute scene of, say, Homer being electrocuted in lieu of any dialog or plot development.
2. Futurama - Yeah, this is a nerdlinger criticism, but I kind of wish they were more consistent about the level of technology. I don't mind things like the Professor using an overhead projector or a dot matrix printer, because those are funny. I mean like how there are episodes where the characters don't know what wheels are, even though we see a bunch of them in other episodes.
3. XTC - That they apparently can't just get together and record an album every once in a while.
4. The Oz Books - One issue that tends to make my head ache when I think about it (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but still) involves animals. We're told a few times that all animals in Oz can talk, and that no animal ever dies (with the occasional exception to this latter item). Yet we still see predators eating other animals, and people eating meat. Some of this meat does appear to grow on trees, but The Lost King of Oz gives us a case of a cook planning to kill and cook a goose in the usual way. So we have situations where people and animals apparently have no qualms with eating other sentient beings, and of animals that are presumably still alive while being cooked or devoured. It gets a little messy when you think about it, doesn't it? Then again, the idea in the Chronicles of Narnia that it's not okay to eat talking animals, but it's perfectly all right to eat non-talking animals of the same species, also comes across as rather messed up (and more elitist than in Oz, but then Narnia seems more elitist in general).
5. "Weird Al" Yankovic - One thing that comes to mind especially with his recent work is that he seems to think the word "midget" is inherently funny.
6. They Might Be Giants - The demise of Dial-A-Song. I mean, I understand why they had to shut it down, but it still sucks. Also, they no longer seem to have much interest in doing themed concerts, and I never got to see any shows back when they did (well, aside from a Flood show).
7. Role-Playing Video Games - I've mentioned this before, but in the spirit of the meme, I'll repeat myself. It bugs me when there's a big, long, unskippable bit of dialog before a difficult battle, which probably means you'll have to sit through it a whole bunch of times. I had that problem with the Valentina and Dodo fight in Super Mario RPG.
If anyone else wants to perpetuate this, go right ahead. I imagine it will go the same way as anything else I've attempted to start, though.
1. The Simpsons - The overabundance of jokes that simply consist of Homer being seriously injured. Sure, these are funny occasionally if done cleverly (everybody loves the fall down Springfield Gorge), but I think too many episodes will have a five-minute scene of, say, Homer being electrocuted in lieu of any dialog or plot development.
2. Futurama - Yeah, this is a nerdlinger criticism, but I kind of wish they were more consistent about the level of technology. I don't mind things like the Professor using an overhead projector or a dot matrix printer, because those are funny. I mean like how there are episodes where the characters don't know what wheels are, even though we see a bunch of them in other episodes.
3. XTC - That they apparently can't just get together and record an album every once in a while.
4. The Oz Books - One issue that tends to make my head ache when I think about it (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but still) involves animals. We're told a few times that all animals in Oz can talk, and that no animal ever dies (with the occasional exception to this latter item). Yet we still see predators eating other animals, and people eating meat. Some of this meat does appear to grow on trees, but The Lost King of Oz gives us a case of a cook planning to kill and cook a goose in the usual way. So we have situations where people and animals apparently have no qualms with eating other sentient beings, and of animals that are presumably still alive while being cooked or devoured. It gets a little messy when you think about it, doesn't it? Then again, the idea in the Chronicles of Narnia that it's not okay to eat talking animals, but it's perfectly all right to eat non-talking animals of the same species, also comes across as rather messed up (and more elitist than in Oz, but then Narnia seems more elitist in general).
5. "Weird Al" Yankovic - One thing that comes to mind especially with his recent work is that he seems to think the word "midget" is inherently funny.
6. They Might Be Giants - The demise of Dial-A-Song. I mean, I understand why they had to shut it down, but it still sucks. Also, they no longer seem to have much interest in doing themed concerts, and I never got to see any shows back when they did (well, aside from a Flood show).
7. Role-Playing Video Games - I've mentioned this before, but in the spirit of the meme, I'll repeat myself. It bugs me when there's a big, long, unskippable bit of dialog before a difficult battle, which probably means you'll have to sit through it a whole bunch of times. I had that problem with the Valentina and Dodo fight in Super Mario RPG.
If anyone else wants to perpetuate this, go right ahead. I imagine it will go the same way as anything else I've attempted to start, though.
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Date: 2008-05-04 02:06 am (UTC)I agree with you about 1, 2 and 5 too. Although I think the thing that annoys me most about The Simpsons is when they have a first act that has absolutely nothing to do with the following two acts of the show --- this has happened increasingly the past few series and whilst it sometimes means we get some great jokes that may not have had a place before, I wish they'd spend more time trying to incorporate them more smoothly.
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Date: 2008-05-04 11:51 am (UTC)Thanks!
It seems like, in recent episodes, the first act never has anything to do with anything else, except for a brief transition at the end. Sometimes it's actually better than the main plot, though.
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Date: 2008-05-04 07:04 pm (UTC)