TV series gone awry
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This is my peeve. There are many like it but this is mine.
So, TV series where the producers or showrunners donât seem to like, or care about, the original material. There have been several of these so obviously Iâm pretty subjective about what was done âbadlyâ or not.
The reason I remembered to post, and the latest culrit, is Resident Evil. Itâs gotten horrible reviews. The director has openly stated he hadnât played any of the games in the genre.
Before that it was Halo. More or less the same deal; Master Chiefâs helmet doesnât seem to stay on (and amusedly the interwebs are aghast about how often his butt is shown, which is probably a different type of peeve) but even the story has diverged⌠significantly from the original material.
Before that - pardon my teeth grinding - it was Wheel of Time. Thematically it was a mess; integral parts of the mythos were changed drastically or barely included, character relationships were introduced or chopped apart, and the showrunner stopped listening to Brandon Sanderson after the first 4 episodes - there are reports heâs distancing himself from the show now.
I donât understand why companies like Amazon would go through the expensive process of purchasing a license for an existing fandom then hire people who want to do their own thing. If that thing (whatever it is) is good to begin with then what kept them from launching under a new brand?
What makes the waters extra murky is people jumping into the debate with unrelated issues of their own. For example I donât mind or care about the added racial diversity into Wheel of Time; go for it, but give me a story that makes sense. However a sizable part of the complains end up being borderline racist and it makes me feel dirty to have those folks agreeing with me. Dammit.
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@Arkandel I made it 10 minutes into Resident Evil and turned it off. It was horrible, I didnât understand the world (because it had nothing to do with the games) and I guess that makes sense now if the showrunner had never played them before.
I liked Wheel of Time, but I also didnât read the books.
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I actually hadnât read Wheel of Time before it became a show and decided to start reading the books at the same time as I watched the show. Iâve done that with a few series recently that were made into the TV shows.
The books are usually better, obviously, because you can go in depth more with the characters. With WoT, I did not enjoy the first book. It seemed like LotR rehash, step for step - only not as entertaining, and it bored me. After the first book, WoT got better once it didnât parallel with LotR quite so neatly.
So I didnât mind that the TV show changed the story. I think they also wanted to avoid all the parallels. They just didnât do it well. It seemed very chaotic and all over the place. There wasnât cohesion and for a story, that is bad, especially if you donât eventually bring it all together by the end of the season. Things that happened seemed pretty random, just coming out of nowhere, forcing the viewers to just accept âMAGIC!â or âMONSTERS!â as the reason. I donât care about the casting, but the story needs to make sense and the charactersâ motivations need to be rational (at least to them).
There have been other shows that changed the stories from the books. Some are done well. Some arenât. TV has a particular format and that requires adjustments. So I get buying a license with the intent to change the story, especially since some book licenses are VERY cheap. But it is a gamble and you have to do it well. In the case of WoT, it just wasnât done well - mostly in the story. They spent a whole lot of money and came out with a scattered mess. Costumes seem nice. CG is on point. Acting could be better. But overall, it just doesnât come together the way you want it to. You want it to capture your attention and not let go. It doesnât. Its just something cool to look at if youâre bored.
It wasnât horrible. But it wasnât great. And the money they spent was for great. If I was in charge of the show, I wouldnât renew it based on the cost. Iâd have expected a lot more for what was put into it. As a viewer though, Iâd keep watching, even if it is ultimately pretty disappointing.
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
I donât understand why companies like Amazon would go through the expensive process of purchasing a license for an existing fandom then hire people who want to do their own thing. If that thing (whatever it is) is good to begin with then what kept them from launching under a new brand?
The logic seems to be something like, âWell if this product was good enough to be a TV show in the first place, then it already would be one, so we need to fix it.â
At least, thatâs in cases where the creative team is demonstrably contemptuous of the source material (looking at you, Snyder). Sometimes thereâs just production fuckery like Netflixâs stock tanking and shows losing their budgets, or actors not being available, or S&P demanding rewrites of an episode you have to finish RIGHT NOW, orâŚ
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@Warma-Sheen said in TV series gone awry:
There have been other shows that changed the stories from the books. Some are done well. Some arenât. TV has a particular format and that requires adjustments. So I get buying a license with the intent to change the story, especially since some book licenses are VERY cheap. But it is a gamble and you have to do it well.
The way that I like to think of it is this.
Any medium adaptation will come with changes. Robert Jordan could afford to spend 50 pages discussing the intricacies of Saidar in multiple books but itâd be boring as hell to watch 10 minutes per episode getting schooled in the native magic system. Some characters and arcs need pruning as well; even names might have to be changed because theyâd sound the same when spoken out loud. All that is fine.
What the goal should be is respect to the original material. As in, showrunners and directors who at least seem to like the stuff theyâre adapting. There was zero doubt in my mind when Peter Jackson removed Tom Bombadil from the Lord of the Rings saga that he did it respectfully. And he was right; even though there were ripple effects (the sword Merry used later on was custom-made to hurt the Witch-King) that didnât get explained, adding a 20-25 minute side quest which barely affects anything else afterwards would have made no sense.
However at no time could a fan look at the LotR trilogy and reasonably think âwell, this guy wanted to do his own thingâ. Everything about the movies smelled like Tolkienâs work.
Thatâs the gold standard. Getting someone whoâs excited not to do their own thing and slap another creatorâs label on it but who loves the material enough to bring it over onto a different medium.
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Game of Thrones, Just to get it out of the way, since it was such an egregious recent example of creators rushing to get through with a series so they could get started on their (evaporated) Star Wars opportunity. Why, guys. Why.
But since Iâm here, Iâll call out Lost and Heroes for squandering things that were really cool ideas by either endlessly refusing to open the mystery box (Damn it, J.J.), or just having absolutely no idea what to do with a premise once itâs gone on for more seasons than expected.
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
Any medium adaptation will come with changes. Robert Jordan could afford to spend 50 pages discussing the intricacies of Saidar in multiple books but itâd be boring as hell to watch 10 minutes per episode getting schooled in the native magic system. Some characters and arcs need pruning as well; even names might have to be changed because theyâd sound the same when spoken out loud. All that is fine.
As the worldâs biggest Stephen King fan, I think the biggest reason most of the movies based on his books have sucked is because they stayed faithful to the source material, without seeming to understand that film is not novels, novels is not film, and sometimes you gotta change things around to make them work.
Also, cut the weird pederasty on general principle, and hire someone to touch up the dialogue so it sounds like humans talking instead of characters monologing.
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@Solstice said in TV series gone awry:
Game of Thrones, Just to get it out of the way, since it was such an egregious recent example of creators rushing to get through with a series so they could get started on their (evaporated) Star Wars opportunity. Why, guys. Why.
Iâve never seen a franchise swirl down the drain as fast as Game of Thrones did.
Before season 8 there were warning signs but despite it all expectations were⌠through the roof. Genuine excitement. T-shirts, memorabilia, watch parties set up in bars, trending YouTube streams of videos taken from those parties to catch fansâ reactions to each episode. It was seriously the biggest, most successful TV property on the planet.
Then season 8 hit and it killed the show. It was as dramatic a fall as Iâve ever seen.
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Purely in the circles I travel in, I remember a lot of people being too shocked to even be angry at how goofy seasons 6+ of Supernatural are.
But they kept watching it, so more fool them, I guess.
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@Arkandel You could really tell when they ran out of George R. R. Martin material and started going for the lowest hanging fruit.
And then when they decided they were done caring and made all the women characters suck.
(ETA: Except Sansa, she stuck the landing)
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@Solstice said in TV series gone awry:
But since Iâm here, Iâll call out Lost and Heroes for squandering things that were really cool ideas by either endlessly refusing to open the mystery box (Damn it, J.J.), or just having absolutely no idea what to do with a premise once itâs gone on for more seasons than expected.
Iâm a big fan of The Leftovers and the HBO Watchmen mini-series in part because I feel like you can see Damon Lindelof actually learning from and applying lessons from Where LOST Went Wrong
. I remain sort of a LOST apologist but it definitely did a lot of shit that annoyed me and was narratively shaggy in ways it couldnât cover for as time went on. -
The last few episodes of the Battlestar Galactica âre-imaginingâ. Iâm still angry about how they squandered it all so very very quickly at the end there. It was such a lazy ending that didnât meet up with any of the show that had happened before it.
I read an analysis where someone said that the way that the writing team came up with ideas was âput it in because itâs cool and weâll figure it out later!â and then they got to âlaterâ and they hadnât figured it out.
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@Snackness said in TV series gone awry:
@Arkandel You could really tell when they ran out of George R. R. Martin material and started going for the lowest hanging fruit.
And then when they decided they were done caring and made all the women characters suck.
(ETA: Except Sansa, she stuck the landing)
Yeah. I think itâs because some characters had a narrative they could fake, either through cool moments (Daenerys flying on a dragon wrecking shit) or raw acting (Gwendoline Christie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau had excellent chemistry).
But they couldnât set up the moving pieces at all. Characters like Littlefinger or Lord Varys require setting up before they can shine. They need to see moves ahead of time, which means there have to be moves for them to see.
Instead they died just to wrap up their arcs before the series ended.
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@Solstice said in TV series gone awry:
But since Iâm here, Iâll call out Lost and Heroes for squandering things that were really cool ideas by either endlessly refusing to open the mystery box (Damn it, J.J.), or just having absolutely no idea what to do with a premise once itâs gone on for more seasons than expected.
While I donât blame the writers for striking, the fact that they did strike contributed a non-zero amount of reason why every show got weird and stumbled a bit.
Also the massive delay between parts 1 and 2 of a season contributed to studios selling each half of a Boxed Set at full price, which is extra grievous and proof we should have started eating the rich years ago.
@Rathenhope said in TV series gone awry:
The last few episodes of the Battlestar Galactica âre-imaginingâ. Iâm still angry about how they squandered it all so very very quickly at the end there. It was such a lazy ending that didnât meet up with any of the show that had happened before it.
They were amazing and I love them all. Just the outright zaniness of the sudden turn into crazy, it hits as fast as the âsuddenly vampires!â in From Dusk til Dawn, but also hits multiple times for different reveals.
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True Blood was terrible from the start, but at the beginning, it seemed to have a real awareness of how cheesy it was and lean into that. I made it five seasons, but after that, it felt like it had gone so far into character flanderization and needing more ridiculous things that I was done.
Basically with the death of the one character at the start of the last season, just left a foul taste in my mouth.
Iâm okay with cheesy dumb vampire stories, but apparently I have my limit.
ETA: All that said, âI LOVE YOU JASON STACKHOUSEâ is perhaps my favorite moment in the whole series.
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My husband recommended Boston Legal and in the first episode
SPOILER (where is the little crossed out eye for hiding stuff?!)
William Shatnerâs character is screwing the wife of a client
End spoiler!
And I feel like that is too on brand for Shatner that this can only go downhill from here.
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@Solstice said in TV series gone awry:
But since Iâm here, Iâll call out Lost and Heroes for squandering things that were really cool ideas by either endlessly refusing to open the mystery box (Damn it, J.J.), or just having absolutely no idea what to do with a premise once itâs gone on for more seasons than expected.
Lost: I might be in the minority but I loved that they did not explain it all. As the writers talked about when people flipped after the finale, the story was about the characters, not the island. Part of the beauty of the show (from how I saw it) was that the island was explained each step of the way as the story progressed by the characters that knew about it. When we met characters who knew more about the history, we learned more about the island. By the end, we learned a crazy amount of stuff about the island, but people still wanted to know more. It wasnât enough to show that there were immortal beings who lived on the island for thousands of years who didnât fully understand what the island was, but people still expected that they should get all the the answers. I guess people wanted a user manual for the island and were aggravated that they didnât get one. I donât think any explanation would have been good enough to satisfy people. Some things are better left unsaid. This was one of them. Ultimately, I think people ended up being annoyed that the show didnât turn out to be what they wanted it to be instead of enjoying the show for what it was.
Heroes: I think they did know what they wanted to do, but the turnover in the writersâ room caused them to keep changing course and that just led the show to go nowhere. A truly disappointing missed opportunity. The thing I remember most about that show is that Sylar spent an entire season just riding in a car on a road trip. An entire season.
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@Rathenhope said in TV series gone awry:
The last few episodes of the Battlestar Galactica âre-imaginingâ. Iâm still angry about how they squandered it all so very very quickly at the end there. It was such a lazy ending that didnât meet up with any of the show that had happened before it.
I read an analysis where someone said that the way that the writing team came up with ideas was âput it in because itâs cool and weâll figure it out later!â and then they got to âlaterâ and they hadnât figured it out.
I am still angry about this. The dude who created and wrote Babylon 5, arguably one of the best sci-fi series in the last 30 years managed to screw up a series so badly. I canât watch BSG past season two. I couldnât take it seriously.
And then it justâŚgoes off the rails. I was already checked out at the Fat Apollo part, and the end just whatever shred credit I had given it finally just slid out of my head.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament said in TV series gone awry:
@Rathenhope said in TV series gone awry:
The last few episodes of the Battlestar Galactica âre-imaginingâ. Iâm still angry about how they squandered it all so very very quickly at the end there. It was such a lazy ending that didnât meet up with any of the show that had happened before it.
I read an analysis where someone said that the way that the writing team came up with ideas was âput it in because itâs cool and weâll figure it out later!â and then they got to âlaterâ and they hadnât figured it out.
I am still angry about this. The dude who created and wrote Babylon 5, arguably one of the best sci-fi series in the last 30 years managed to screw up a series so badly. I canât watch BSG past season two. I couldnât take it seriously.
Iâm not sure if you think J Michael Straczynski made BSG or Ronald Moore made B5 but neither of those things are true; the person who created Babylon 5 did not work on BSG.
