Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
Tonight on Medium Cool, let’s talk about Deception. Well, sort of. Allow me to explain.
Deception does not bother me in books, but I have a really hard time watching when a character is being deceived by someone they trust. I don’t mean deception like we see in The Sting, or deception related to political intrigue, or deception we might see in a mystery or a crime novel.
It’s deception between people where a character trusts someone who is just using them, or is out to hurt them in some way. It’s just hard to watch. In a recent show some nice lady trust the (apparently) nice couple she had just met, but I was sure they were very bad people, and I was right; it did not end well.
I think I feel more connected to what I’m watching when I’m on the treadmill (does that sound crazy?) so that may be part of it. The screen is just inches from my face, and for some reason my mind doesn’t wander when I’m watching on the treadmill, as it often does while watching or listening to something when I’m not on the treadmill.
Does pretty much everyone have something that is hard for them to watch on screen? Or is it just me? (Prediction for comment #1: “It’s just you.”)
Assuming it’s not just me, what is it for you? Is it about personal relationships, as it is for me? Bad acting? Bad accents? Playing fast and loose with history in a show that is about a real person or event? What’s your pet peeve on the silver screen, or in a series?
In case it really is just me, we can have an alternate topic. Do you ever find yourself yelling/talking to characters on screen? I definitely do that a lot more when I am watching a show while on the treadmill. Tell us about the last time you did that. What was the show, what was the situation, and what did you say? “Don’t get in the car!” “Don’t drink that; he’s trying to kill you!”
More importantly, do they listen to you? They never listen to me! And I have a pretty good track record. When you talk to the characters to warn them, are you usually right?
Seth
I think I know the scene you mean, assuming it was from the show in the picture. I stopped watching one night because I knew what was coming and it disturbed me. It took a couple of days for me to get up the nerve to get through the scene.
I had to have a friend fast forward through a specific scene in The Boys involving the Deep and his “friend.”
I guess I have the same issue with violations of trust.
eclare
I am not sure this is totally related, but the best movie I have seen about deception is House of Games. Decades old, some of the acting was not great, but the plot was perfection.
narya
Violence, even in the most stupid movie; I have graphic nightmares. I also don’t like horror/scary movies. And, finally, film adaptations of books I know and love, if they don’t capture my own reading of the plot or characters.
Walker
I absolutely cannot watch characters being shamed or becoming mortifyingly embarrassed. Something I developed when I was young and cannot get over. It kills a lot of “comedies” for me.
WaterGirl
@Seth:
Violations of trust. That may be the phrase I was looking for, not exactly, but close.
The scene where I literally pressed pause and walked the last 5 minutes of my treadmill time without watching anything – and I NEVER do that – comes later with a young woman with a person in a position of trust, and while you don’t know exactly what’s coming, you know it’s not good. (Trying to be discreet with no spoilers.)
I get back on the treadmill tonight, so I guess I’ll find out what happens. But it will be hard to watch.
WaterGirl
@eclare: This will be a very loose Medium Cool, so you’re good.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Thanks! Never been cool before, but if you say so!
NotMax
As Alfred Hitchcock sagely confided to Ingrid Bergman, “It’s only a movie.”
;)
WaterGirl
@narya: I have never seen Jaws, or any of the Halloween movies.
I saw Psycho when I was young-ish, and that’s the last scary movie I intentionally watched. I mean, I like mysteries, etc, but slasher movies, nope.
There are two wonderful movies, both with Audrey Hepburn so I sometimes confused their titles, that are at the edge of scary stuff I can watch. But they were both so excellent. One is Wait Until Dark, the other is Charade.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Alan Arkin played a very menacing criminal in Wait Until Dark. It was a far cry from his character in The Russians Are Coming.
Edmund dantes
I really struggle with shows where the cringe behavior is the butt of the joke. Someone that is just being earnest or somewhat just being themselves and it is held out as something to laugh at.
I struggled a lot with Michael Scott’s character on The Office at times in certain scenes.
Omnes Omnibus
When a serious, expensive movie gets little details wrong. For example, if they have a soldier in a dress uniform and their medal ribbons are in the wrong order or the movie takes place in the 2000s and someone is wearing a WWII medal. You can look that shit up on the internet. Or a movie set in 1963, that has songs from 1969 or a car that wasn’t introduced until then. It’s not hard to get it right. If you get a lot of the little things right, I find it easier to take the leap of faith on some of the plot implausibilities.
Tehanu
@Walker: I absolutely cannot watch humiliation and embarrassment, even when richly deserved, whether it’s a fictional character or a real person. I’ve been known to get up and leave the room rather than watch. The other thing I can’t watch is summed up in the phrase “too much injustice.” I can read about these things, but seeing people squirming, or being mistreated because of bigotry — ugh.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: They were all scary and menacing in that move! GREAT moving, though.
The birds was also a scary movie that left a mark.
lollipopguild
@Geminid: ‘Emergency! Emergency! everyone must get off of street!” Arkin was very underated as an actor.
JR
Pretty much the entirety of A Simple Plan.
WaterGirl
@Tehanu: Yeah, part of my problem is that I don’t just watch something, I somehow unconsciously put myself in that person’s place and think about how I would feel. My mom used to tell me I cared too much and had too much empathy.
Better that than too little, I think. :: shrug ::
WaterGirl
@JR: Say more?
WaterGirl
@lollipopguild:
Was he? Everyone I know thinks he was very good.
Kent
One of the most cringe-worthy deception movies I have ever seen wasn’t a thriller at all, but a RomCon: “You’ve got Mail” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I could barely stand it because the whole movie was premised on a romantic deception that Hanks was pulling over Ryan.
I actually like deception plots in spy thrillers such as the Night Agent from which the pic in the post is from. But I can’t stand deception in romances. Makes my skin crawl. Almost always it is the guy deceiving the girl in some fashion and then he eventually gets away with it. Yuck.
NotMax
Deception?
Catch Me If You Can, though IMHO a case of the whole turning out to be less than the sum of its parts.
Dunno if they comfortably fit in but coming to mind as well are two older films wherein the lead actress portrays a male waif, Veronica Lake in Sullivan’s Travels and Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett.
Also, plucking from the past, A Successful Calamity and The Young in Heart.
Yutsano
The Truth about Cats and Dogs tried to be a cute premise but it definitely hasn’t aged well. It was made before online impersonation became such a big thing (the radio/phone is the stand-in for the Internet) and so plays off as romantic but now it’s just creepy.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
At least tell us what show you’re talking about.
crimson pimpernel
@Walker: I couldn’t agree more. Is it me or is mortification and embarrassment of characters more prominent in recent comedy?
@Walker:
JR
@WaterGirl: The movie is one long stream of lies, backstabbing, and double crosses. Plus the steady degradation of its protagonist. Incredibly well done but a hard watch.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Jaws wasn’t scary. It’s thinly veiled Moby-Dick with Robert Shaw as Ahab and Roy Scheider as Ismael.
That said, I found Raiders of the Lost Ark scary.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Oh, sorry. The Night Agent. The image up top is from that show, too. I think it’s an excellent show.
Citizen Alan
@Edmund dantes: I couldn’t watch the British one at all. It made me too uncomfortable.
oatler
By chance the Movies! channel is showing noir today, including “Born to Kill”
NotMax
Kind of, sort of reverse deception, an oddity (second story in a twin feature), when a Hollywood agent must take pains to conceal that the author of a boffo screenplay about sex and desire is a mere child of eight.
Steeplejack
I have a big problem with the treatment of rape in movies and TV. It’s very rarely handled well (what would handling rape “well” even be?), and there’s almost always a pornographic undertone to it. Especially bad when it’s treated as just a plot point or something to get the narrative moving. So I tend to avoid those movies. Boys Don’t Cry is a great movie, but, goddamn, that was the limit for me.
Miss Bianca
The movie Fargo punches all my buttons for what I hate most: a focus on hideous people perpetuating an escalating amount of hideous violence and terror on hapless people, and then oh, yeah – buzzsaw porn.
Yet some people think it’s brilliant. They have their reasons, I guess.
geg6
Gratuitous and cartoonish violence in fiction, a lack of likeable characters and almost all animation.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
Jaws is great. You should try it.
Kent
@Miss Bianca: Fargo is brilliant because Francis McDormand and William H Macy were soo good. Not because of the violence.
Reboot
@Walker: Same here, even when the characters bring humiliation on themselves–say, by pretending to be rich when they’re actually a waiter, like in Priceless (English-language version of Hors de Prix).
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL. I was watching Doctor Blake Mysteries the other day (Australian, set in the 1950s), and there was a brief one- or two-second closeup of somebody’s wristwatch. The second hand was not sweeping but ticked like a quartz watch. Buzzkill. Just use a watch with no second hand; they were common back then.
NotMax
@Miss Bianca
Although there is by necessity violence involved the ever building parody of the premise exceeds that in spades in Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.
;)
zhena gogolia
@Kent: it’s based on The Shop Around the Corner. When James Stewart does it it’s charming.
I can’t stand cruelty to animals
Karen
I cannot stand Mary Sues which are heroines that every body loves. She’s so perfect, all the boys love her and the only problem she has is which of the many boys should she choose. She always ends up choosing the boy next door, who has loved her from a far. Does anyone else have issues with that?
And btw, Charade and Breakfast at Tiffany’s were great Audrey Hepburn movies.
Baud
No movies with dogs being hurt.
zhena gogolia
@Karen: Charade is kind of scary in parts but I’ve watched it a thousand times. Including in the theater when it first came out.
Sure Lurkalot
@eclare: House of Games is a very good movie and I thought the performances by Leslie Crouse and Joe Mantegna were excellent. What makes me not want to see it again is the odious David Mamet is associated with it.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: right. It’s always the cheap device of bad horror movies. And I guess some “comedies” that I would never watch
WaterGirl
@Karen: I am trying to think of a movie of that sort that I might have seen. Can you name some names?
NotMax
@Baud
Marking you down as a definite no on Old Yeller, then.
//
zhena gogolia
@Sure Lurkalot: Lindsay
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: and To Kill a Mockingbird
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: That can’t be a name correction because it’s not in all caps. :-)
What or who is Lindsay?
edit: never mind, I see the answer above.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
The Twilight series
Sure Lurkalot
@zhena gogolia: Yes, Lindsay Crouse, damn me, thanks for the correction!
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I loved To Kill A Mockingbird.
I adored my dad, but I also wanted Gregory Peck in that movie as my dad.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
The overused fershlugginer theme music may qualify as the mother of all earworms.
Brachiator
In general, I think that anything is permissible in fiction if it is done well.
However, I enjoy some sci-fi shows, especially some current Star Trek series, but I hate the phony insistence that canon and lore must be rigorously followed. To me, this is restrictive and reductive nonsense.
I see some so-called fans jump through hoops to try to explain something as though it is “real history” that was clearly an expediency or a story point that has not aged well or reflects the beliefs when the show or story was originally done.
I particularly detest claims about canon or lore when it is used to rationalize racism or sexism or homophobia.
I also tend to stay away from shows that burden the protagonist with emotional problems or other deep character flaws because this supposedly will make them more relatable.
One more rant while I am on a roll. I get tired of female characters who I am supposed to like because they are strong. This is not the same thing as interesting or complex. Women are incredibly shortchanged in TV, movies and novels, but telling me that a character is “strong,” by itself tells me nothing.
Also, I like the new Perry Mason series on HBO, but it bothers me that they came close to depicting him as a hapless sap, a loser with all kinds of personal baggage that made his transformation into any kind of good lawyer unbelievable. So far, they are making it work, but you can see them piling on the doom and gloom.
Glidwrith
Once my children were born, I couldn’t stand any shoot-them-up violence, or bloody chunks (that was borderline even before), never enjoyed the buckets of blood horror flicks, didn’t even bother with Game of Thrones and shut down The Boys when the first five minutes has splattered someone’s brother.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
As a child did you ever dress as a ham for Halloween?
;)
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: The All caps come when the mistake has been done 10 times
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: I haven’t watched Perry Mason, Season 2 yet, except for the first one or two episodes. I was surprised to see him working for the wrong side on a case, screwing the poor sap. Or so it seemed in the episode I watched.
Does it get better?
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: I thought you meant to kill a mockingbird what do you have against Elmer Bernstein?
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Ah, I will update my code book! :-)
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Another incredibly minor one that I always notice and that drives me nuts: a chessboard should be set up with a white square in each player’s right corner (h1 and a8). And the queen always starts on her color (d1 and d8).
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
STRZOK!
:)
Kristine
@Walker:
I’m the same. It makes me really uncomfortable.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: No, I did not. And your comment flew right over my head, I do not understand the reference.
Baud
For some reason, in modern cop show shootouts, the cops always have pistols and the bad gays have machine guns, but still lose.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Theme from Charade is so by the book insidiously saccharine it puts Muzak to shame.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: People’s varying reactions to Fargo are a good example of the concept of “sensibility.” Some people like the movie, some don’t at all, and I expect the two groups fairly consistently disagree on other cultural artifacts. It’s not like one is wrong and the other right; they just possess different sensibilities
I think I see this in musical tastes. For intance, I think there is a certain kind of person who likes the group Steely Dan.. They’re mostly white and male, but the taste seems to go beyond demographics; it’s an attitude.
I wouldn’t be surprised if liking Steely Dan is a good predictor of liking Fargo.
WaterGirl
@Baud: LOL. That doesn’t bother me, in terms of making it hard to watch. But I notice that, too, and it does seem rather silly.
The good guy who wasn’t expecting the ambush has a pistol and maybe one extra clip. The bad guys have dozens of machine guns, yet they always get shot.
*I don’t know why the good guy cops don’t keep some serious firepower in their vehicles, because this always seems to happen. You would think that after the first few times, it wouldn’t be a total surprise.
columbusqueen
@Omnes Omnibus: Seconded. Also can’t stand bad history, accents, or costumes. Kidman’s accent in Cold Mountain is an atrocity, & I can’t watch the 1940 Pride & Prejudice because the costumes are so, so wrong.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Scout is dressed as a ham for part of To Kill a Mockingbird.
WaterGirl
@Geminid:
Not for me. I like Steely Dan but not a Fargo fan. So that’s an N of 1.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Ah, I had totally forgotten that detail.
Karen
@WaterGirl: Bella from Twilight though it’s the formula of most Halmark movies.
Kristine
People being menaced in their homes. Last House on the Left kinds of movies. No interest in watching even a minute. They bury the needle on my Nope Nope Nope meter.
Kristine
@Baud: I get edgy as soon as I see a dog in a movie. That said, loved John Wick. But I usually leave the room during that scene.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Thank you for getting this social science project off to such a great start!
NotMax
@Kristine
If the words “GET OUT” materialize before my eyes on the wall written in blood all you’d see is a NotMax-shaped hole in the front door.
:)
narya
Most Coen brothers’ movies are a no for me–I haaaaaaaated Barton Fink–but, oddly enough I actually liked Fargo, I think because McDormand’s character is the moral center of the movie. The violence is telegraphed such that I can close my eyes for the bloody bits.
W/r/t shaming characters, it’s the main reason I cannot watch Sacha Baron Cohen, or whatever his name is. Even if he’s shaming or mocking someone w/ whom I disagree, I really hate the deception at the heart of it.
As several have noted cruelty to animals is right out. Just nope.
I will also note that I hated House of Games, if I remember correctly; I saw it a million years ago.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
But they blaze away, throwing four or five shots at a time at some guy hiding behind a car. Then 30 seconds later they’re like “I’m out!” Yeah, you are, dumbass.
Steeplejack
@Karen:
Glad you mentioned that, because I erased my “Lay off the Hallmark movies” comment.
WaterGirl
@Karen: Never watched twilight. I have seen some Hallmark movies. My expectations for Hallmark movies are so low, and they are often saccharine sweet and annoy me for other reasons.
Now that I have read your comment, they can annoy me in a new way! :-)
zhena gogolia
@Kristine: I hate those too. Even if Humphrey Bogart is involved.
schrodingers_cat
I found the Oscar winner RRR unwatchable and the glowing reviews it got from American critics cringeworthy. The regressive subtext of the movie went straight over their head.
WaterGirl
@Kristine: never watch the creepy movies. But yeah, even on TV shows the being menaced in their own homes is distressing.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: I knew you would appreciate that. :-)
Four more people, all answering the way they want, and that’s enough for the NYT and other establishments to run with the results.
zhena gogolia
@narya:
I have failed to watch many, many Coen movies. That said, I love O Brother Where Art Thou; Hail, Caesar; and Burn After Reading.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack:
Literal LOL at that.
narya
@zhena gogolia: I also liked Burn After Reading! That was fun.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Yep. There is some surprising, but satisfying complexity to this season.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Where do you stand on The Big Lebowski?
Karen
@zhena gogolia: Was Raising Arizona a Coen movie? Either way I loved it.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
In his own words, Wyatt Earp on carrying six-shooters.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
Loved it. The woman police officer was the rare but of decency in a very flawed and ugly universe.
PaulB
I’m happy to hear that I’m not the only one. I absolutely cannot watch anything that causes me to cringe. I’ve seen a few clips of The Office online and I just cannot watch even those clips all the way through. I have never watched, and never will watch, the series. The discomfort I feel is simply too much for me to handle.
I also feel that way about practical jokes, which I regard as cruel, and any “reality” shows that specializes in humiliating critiques, participants set up to fail, participants that are routinely embarrassed or humiliated, etc.
Some of my distaste may come from the fact that I’m autistic; I genuinely don’t know. I just know that it’s not for me.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: I liked it too. Great ensemble cast as well.
kalakal
Things I most dislike in films/TV are gratuitous violence and I really don’t go for gore at all. Preposterous depiction of firearms whereby it’s a cartoon, being shot is horrible it’s not the Black Knight “It’s only a flesh wound. Cruelty to animals. Emotionally humiliation of characters.
I enjoy spy/crime/ conspiracy films where deception is key eg House of Cards (UK version, Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax view, Charade, House of Games ( I was so disappointed when I found out about Mamet), Edge of Darkness, and hands down the tensest, scariest film I’ve ever seen Don’t Look Now.
Nothing to do with deception but a really big dislike is comedy that only just fails for me. If I don’t find something funny fair enough, If I like it Yay!, it’s when I very nearly find it funny that I get irked.
Oh and anything to do with computers is (nearly) always risible
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Only made it 15 minutes in.
schrodingers_cat
Night agent was a good yarn. I enjoyed it. It began better than it ended. It became more and more implausible as it proceeded.
Le Carre’s Smiley universe is among the best where it comes to spies, lies and deception. Night agent is not in that league but was still quite enjoyable and binge worthy.
zhena gogolia
@Karen: Yes. I loved it when I saw it, but not sure I’d like it now.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Did you watch that song from Devdas that I had linked?
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Yes — didn’t we then discuss it? You explained the plot to me.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@kalakal:
Oh hell, you’re not kidding. Just looked him up, from his Wiki page:
He’s completely lost it
NotMax
@PaulB
Broad (no pun intended) office comedy TV series with minimal to zero cringe?
W1A, Drop the Dead Donkey, Remember WENN, WKRP in Cincinnati and Dreamland (aired in the U.S. as Utopia).
While not a comedy, The Hour is also pretty good.
kalakal
@NotMax: Drop the Dead Donkey was wonderful
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: Okay, glad to know that.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Yes of course, I did. I am beyond tired right now. I think I need a nap!
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I’m always in the market for your videos! They are spectacular.
I’m about to watch Tom Jones with my husband so will be off the blog for a while.
Mel
It’s really hard for me to watch shows where kids or teenagers are in imminent danger. It just twists my insides into knots. “Yellowjackets”- oh my god! I just couldn’t watch it, even though everything about it was stellar. Leftover protective instinct from my teaching years, I suspect.
Watergirl, my hubby has a terrible time with shows featuring deception as a driving force in the storyline, as well. The only series of that nature that he has ever watched all the way through was “The Riches” (Minnie Driver snd Eddie Izzard in the leads).
Shana
@WaterGirl: Charade is terrific
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. I loved, loved, loved Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Both the TV series and the recent movie adaptation.
billcinsd
@WaterGirl: Nor me. I like Fargo but don’t like Steeley Dan
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Brachiator: oh yes [Tinker, Tailor]. Alec Guinness was perfect as George Smiley.
A study in betrayal, not just deception. Also teaches all you need to know about intelligence.
JoyceH
@crimson pimpernel:
It’s not just you. That’s why I avoid modern ‘romantic comedy’ – because no one seems to be able to write genuinely witty comedy anymore. Same for novels. I love Regency romance, but I like the CLASSIC Heyer-style Regency, where the comedy is comedy of manners. I won’t even buy a modern Regency that’s advertised as comedy, because I know it’s going to be pratfalls a la Bridget Jones, and gaaah, I just hate that.
JoyceH
@Omnes Omnibus:
Something I see a surprising amount on television and in movies, and it’s not at all difficult to get right – a character is knitting, and she’s got needles and a ball of yarn, but the piece that’s already been ‘knitted’ is obviously and blatantly crochet! This is not hard! SOMEONE on the staff of that show knows how to knit and/or crochet and knows that everyone who can do either one is going to notice the difference. If all you have to be the work in progress is crochet, hand the character a crochet hook, how hard is that?!
Frankensteinbeck
@crimson pimpernel:
From my observation, it’s on its way out. Its heyday was the sitcom generation. Really picked up in the 80s, became ubiquitous. I loathe it. Utterly. Can’t watch someone make a fool of themselves, it causes PTSD issues. So, I’ve noticed that it seems to be fading out of fashion recently.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Wristwatches in toga flicks.
:)
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: I had no idea they had made movies and a TV series of that show.
WaterGirl
@Shana: I cannot argue with that!
WaterGirl
@billcinsd: N of 2!
Fraud Guy
Social embarassment scenes, especially in comedies. At home, I often walk away to do something else during those scenes, and at the movies, will go to the restroom or concessions for a quick break.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WaterGirl: WG are you saying you haven’t seen the BBC production of Tinker, Tailor?
You must go watch it at once!
Smiley’s People too.
prostratedragon
@Karen: Yes it was. My favorite of theirs. Also liked Fargo quite a lot, and Joel’s Macbeth, but not a fan in general.
Wyatt Salamanca
@eclare:
I second that. You should also check out The Spanish Prisoner starring Campbell Scott. Steve Martin delivers a solid performance in a dramatic role. It’s written and directed by David Mamet and yes I also mourn the fact that he’s gone over to the dark side.
@kalakal:
I like your conspiracy film list. I’d just add The Conversation.
I’m also a big fan of heist films, ie Le Cercle Rouge, Rififi, Odds Against Tomorrow, The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Heist, and The Score, which inevitably involve one or more characters deceiving or double-crossing their fellow conspirators in order to get a larger share of the stolen property.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Gambit [showing my age].
WaterGirl
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I have not. Where is that available? I do have Acorn and the other british steaming service whose name escapes me at the moment.
Maxim
I like both Steely Dan and Fargo.
The embarrassment / humiliation stuff is so popular now that it’s become known as cringe humor, and I can’t stand it. I tried to watch Schitt’s Creek because so many people I know love it, and I do love David, but so much of the show’s humor turns on social awkwardness. I can suffer through one half-hour episode at a time, very uncomfortably, and then I have to take a break. So eventually I gave up.
Succession and Dead Ringers are similarly unbearable for me in that their whole focus is awful people being awful to each other. It’s a different flavor of cringe.
Animals being hurt is right out. I didn’t know about John Wick before I watched it, or I wouldn’t have.
Continuity errors bug me. They don’t make me stop watching, but they make me complain loudly. Recent example: a man passes in front of the camera wearing nothing but a speedo-type bathing suit. A few moments later, he’s dead — and now magically wearing a t-shirt as well.
I can frequently guess what’s coming when I’m watching a show, which means I am also frequently remonstrating with characters about what they should or shouldn’t do. To be fair, it’s not always warning them; sometimes it’s because they’re making bad decisions (unrelated to their safety) and I’m annoyed with them.
BretH
Needless exposition. Especially characters telling things for the sake of the viewer. Like when they have planned a breakout or heist and in the elevator on the way to get started one says “remember, once the power is cut we have 45 seconds into the monitors’ backup power kicks in”. Like they haven’t gone over that 1000 times in planning.
Fans of the Night Agent (me) I think would love The Night Manager with Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
You’ve Got Mail was panned by my paper’s movie critic. He said Tom Hanks’ character was manipulative, and Meg Ryan’s was plain stupid.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WaterGirl:
IMDB says available on FreeVee
as well as several other options.
DVD is from Acorn, I don’t know whether they stream it.
no comment
Scenes that are hard for me to watch are usually difficult for me to read about as well, although it depends on how much detail there is in the descriptions. My imagination can get pretty graphic. Yet concrete images on a screen can stick in your mind. How well I can handle the visuals is usually related to how well (or how poorly) I’m doing emotionally IRL, even if the scenes are completely unrelated to problems I’m having currently or have experienced in the past. It all draws from the same emotional energy, and when I’m out, I’m out.
I don’t remember having any problems with Fargo the movie, though I probably looked away during the woodchipper scene. I agree with those that said the smart female officer made it watchable. I had problems with Fargo the TV series. It had a young, smart female officer that was putting the pieces together faster than her colleagues. However, the violence in the show caused me to stop watching before I found out if she solved the case.
With pet peeves, I don’t have enough knowledge in most areas to know if something is scientifically or historically accurate. I remember getting annoyed watching the movie Bloodwork. The plot involves a person murdering people for organ harvesting and a detective trying to stop it. At some point, the movie suggested that you could determine whether a donor organ was a match solely by knowing the person’s ABO/Rh factor blood type. The movie did not suggest that any additional testing was being done.
I don’t think I’ll be watching any documentary or docudrama about Theranos. I’d just get pissed off at both the scammer and those being scammed.
The Lodger
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Thanks for the Mamet info. Christ, what an asshole.
sab
@Fraud Guy: My husband finds them funny. I am on the autism spectrum, and I don’t find them funny at all.
Tony Jay
Totally with you all on the humiliation/cringe aversion, especially when there’s an aspect of bullying to it. I feel their shame and unless there’s a pretty good in-universe chance that guilty heads will be popped like cherries down the line, I just can’t bear it.
On the topic of The Office, though, I haven’t seen the American version, but the British original gets around the cringe factor in a pretty clever way. The David Brent character Gervais plays is a cringe-machine who serially humiliates himself by trying to inhabit a role (the cool, funny, talented entertainer who everyone stops and listens to) that he doesn’t even begin to have the ability to fill. Normally that would be a hard pass for me, but what’s also clear about Brent is that under the rickety shell is a pretty nice guy with the same self-doubt and fading dreams of every single other human being in his position. When he stops pretending and just becomes unashamedly himself it’s a moment of genuine triumph and a cathartic release that makes everything that went before it worthwhile.
In fact, now that I think of it, that’s a theme running through a lot of Gervais’ best work; people should just be themselves and not try to be something they’re not, even when it appears that being something you’re not is the way to get on in life. The Office was about a confused guy approaching middle-age in a mundane job who basically wanted to be Ricky Gervais. Extras (so funny) was a what-if story riffing on the idea of what would have happened if Gervais had tried to make it in acting, ended up making The Office as a typical British sit-com and became the worst kind of short-term ‘star’. In both cases, the main character was so much better off just being themselves, as were the supporting characters, even the arsehole ones like Finchy and Lee.
TL-DR: I’m only okay with cringe if it’s taking the story somewhere, cringe for its own sake is yack.
Jake Gibson
@Karen:
Yes It was Coen.
I hated it. Coens are really hit and miss for me. Sometimes I can’t really explain why.
Liked: Blood Simple, Fargo, O Brother, Lebowski.
Hated: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Intolerable Cruelty
Jake Gibson
Oblivious stupidity is my cringe.
Basically anything Will Farrell is involved in. To me it is completely cringy and not funny at all. I can’t laugh at stupid.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: I like Steely Dan and hate Fargo. Not sure what that does to your theory.
ETA: For the record, I also found Tinker Tailor Solider Spy – both the book and the movie – to be a dead bore.
evodevo
@Brachiator:
Me too…one of my all time favorites…for those reasons. And Bill Macy…especially in the last scene…should have gotten an Oscar…
S Cerevisiae
My problem with Fargo is that the accent is Iron Range/UP a lot more than Fargo
wonkie
I’m watching The Power and mostly I see it as a fascinating exploration of “what if.” However, there is one character who annoys me so much that I find her scenes unwatchable. One of the female leads is a woman who routinely dismisses the needs of her family members while retaining a vision of herself as a great wife and mom. Her response to her family is always to brush away their perspectives and to be hurt when they get mad. I just want to yell at her. I hate to see relationships collapse. I want people who love each other to also be supportive and understanding of each other. There’s all kinds of stuff in the show–violence, sex abuse, rightwing hate, sexism, abuse of power, etc which I can handle with no problem but the disintegration of family because of the blinkered buttheadedness of one member really gets to me.
Caveatimperator
My media pet peeve is audience surrogate characters.
These take two similar but not quite the same forms:
-In a work that’s ostensibly about some unfamiliar group, you make your protagonist or another major character a quote-unquote “ordinary” character from outside that group.
-Your protagonist is poorly fleshed out in a way that is designed to allow the audience to personally see themselves in that character.
Why do I hate this trope? Because it’s lazy and treats the audience as stupid and incurious. A good writer can put you in the shoes of a character who is unlike you, and make you feel empathetic towards their wants and struggles. And mature, thoughtful readers and viewers will be receptive to that.
The Big Bang Theory is an example here. The series moves away from this over time, but it’s obvious early on that Penny is the audience’s reference point character. It makes it clear that the show is not about living in geek culture, but looking at it from the outside, and the way the show uses Penny makes the creators’ intentions clear.
It can sometimes work in science fiction or fantasy, but that’s also because the challenge in those genres is creating a completely new frame of reference for what’s familiar and what’s unfamiliar. You could take Fry out of Futurama without crippling the show, but his presence doesn’t come across as problematic in the same way because aliens and robots aren’t real.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: Interesting about Tinker, Tailor…