dgw

VIP

9

Average season rating: 8.181818… (not that I needed to run the numbers; I could have guessed it was about 8 :grin:)

Frasier and its predecessor, Cheers, together made up a large portion of my early exposure to television sitcoms, so it's only natural that I would find them nostalgic. Having watched the bulk of both shows in their entirety over the past 6 months or so, I have a much greater appreciation for the writing. Goodness knows that's doubly true for Frasier, which leans heavily on verbal wit—humor that was occasionally hard for me to grasp even at *gasp* almost 30, let alone when I was a lad of 10.

Between the two, though, I much prefer Frasier to Cheers. Despite arriving at superficially identical series ratings due to Trakt's enforced ten-point scale, the underlying numbers reveal the truth. I average episode ratings to get season ratings, then average season ratings to get series ratings—and my season average for Cheers came out about 0.55 points lower (7.63… to Frasier's 8.18…). While both shows are certainly funny, I'm clearly drawn to the more intellectual humor of Frasier. I'd expect nothing else.

Since Frasier also has much less of the tedious "will they or won't they?" type of running plot upon which Cheers loved to rely, that's once again exactly as expected. There were "clunkers" in both shows, yes, but Frasier seemed to have fewer of them.

Overall, this is really just a completely different show, even though it stole a beloved character from a Past Master of Situation Comedy and moved him across the entire North American continent. The "theft" was justified. I hope the recent resurgence of rumors and entertainment news coverage concerning a sequel or reboot develops into a real show. Time will tell.

Average season rating: 7.6
(Adding up my over 200 individual episode ratings by hand would be much too tedious.)

I'd give this show two different ratings if I could—one for the original cast, and another for the "shaken up" cast following Richard Dean Anderson's departure. While there were more casting changes, the big shift in SG-1's ninth season was the only one that really felt like it changed the show's core feel.

Putting mathematical averages aside, rated alone, I would give the first eight seasons a solid 8.5 or 9 (out of 10) just on the basis of the main characters and their interactions. That even includes the one season with Corin Nemec instead of Michael Shanks, because Jonas was just as delightful a character to watch as Dr. Jackson. Of course the early seasons had some growing pains in developing both characterizations and continuity, but taken as a whole the show was just fun to watch then.

As for the two seasons after the show's soft-reboot, I'd award maybe 6.5 on a good day. Season 9 in particular felt like the first season again, in that the writers had so much work to do building relationships between the old and new characters. It was growing pains all over again, only this time there was none of Jack's cheek to distract the viewer and no Daddy Hammond to watch over the team. While I did eventually come to appreciate Vala as a character—she came a long way from her flat, annoying, guest star role in the eighth season—neither General Landry nor Colonel Mitchell ever reached even the same galaxy of appeal as the characters they replaced.

Overall, I do still very much thing that SG-1 is worth watching in its entirety. Those last two seasons are fine if one approaches them as a new show (and I've seen bits and bobs about that being the original intent).

Average season rating: 7.0

While I could get a more accurate read on how I felt about the series overall by averaging my 110 individual episode ratings, that's far too much work to do manually when I'm supposed to be relaxing with some entertaining TV.

Community is an absolute roller coaster ride, on multiple levels.

First, because of the obvious: As with any sitcom, the "funny quotient" and other aspects of writing quality fluctuate greatly between episodes. Some will have you struggling to avoid falling off your chair; others will have you struggling to stay awake. This is expected.

Second, because of stylistic touches: When Community dives into a conceptual episode, it goes deep. They don't necessarily all hit, but even the ones I don't like (whether because I dislike the genre being spoofed, or the alternative production style, whatever) must be respected for their commitment to the gag.

Third, because the show's entire tone shifts from year to year, mostly in the latter seasons. Honestly, once I got past Season 3, most of the remaining episodes were a bit of a slog. This seems to be a common sentiment among fans—one that the show itself lampshades, especially when it comes to the "Year of the Gas Leak" (Season 4). I'm fairly completionist about my TV, and it takes a lot to make me drop a show midway, but if Season 5 hadn't shown some improvement I very well might have bailed early. A few scattered oases of "the old Community" kept me going through the end.

Finally, the show started switching out core cast members about halfway through. Between failing to work out some offscreen drama involving a certain actor, losing multiple actors to outside career and family constraints, and temporarily replacing the series' creator as showrunner (you guessed it, that was Season 4), Community spent most of its latter half trying to reacquaint the audience with its characters every season. That's not an easy task even in the best circumstances, and it was made harder by the show's season length getting slashed almost in half around the same time as cast members started being replaced.

Make no mistake, though: The show is good… at first. It's worth watching. Early Abed is still one of my favorite characters, but so is Professor Hickey—and until halfway through, there is no Buzz Hickey.

If you're not a completionist: You'll do yourself a favor if you just watch the first three seasons, maybe hand-pick a few of the highest-rated episodes from the latter three seasons just for flavor, and then skip to the Season 6 finale (which, despite the unevenness of that final season, is fairly solid).

If you want the bad and the good together: Go ahead and watch it all. You'll probably find stuff to like in the "bad" seasons, like I did.

If you're a completionist: You'll probably muddle through just as I did. Once you're into Season 4 and beyond, be ready to take however much attention you usually devote to watching TV and give half of it to something else: work, a game, a book, etc.; or do what I did and use Community as a backdrop for eating lunch/dinner.

Rating statistics on a per-show or per-season basis would make a great Trakt feature, though. Maybe even a VIP perk?
At any rate, there's a VIP forum thread for it: https://forums.trakt.tv/t/average-ratings-for-seasons-entire-series/1902?u=dgw (please vote if you can!)

Average season rating: 7.6

I can't help but think that Atlantis would have been better off if its continuation film(s) hadn't been canceled. That was a major advantage in SG-1's favor, beyond having double the episode count.

In some ways, though, it might have been the better decision not to continue. Atlantis never quite managed to capture the same feeling of adventure that SG-1 had in its heyday. It's telling that my favorite characters (except for Ronon) weren't even part of "the team" that went out on missions every week. There was actually a ton of potential for character dynamics that went undeveloped because we almost never got the kind of "home front" episodes that really showed who SG-1's members were outside of their jobs.

Atlantis also never developed the individual characters to the same degree as SG-1 had in the same amount of time—which, admittedly, is a reasonable prerequisite for developing dynamics between characters. Flat characters can't riff off each other nearly as well—and Atlantis is chock full of flat character archetypes:

• Tough-guy soldier — two of them, really
• Arrogant genius
• Magical/mystical foreigner
• Doctor cinnamon roll

They don't seem like real people, except for (maybe) Rodney. It's really hard to relate to them most of the time, which was not an issue I had with SG-1. (Anyone I've not listed above is because they were even more forgettable than these.)

In short, I can understand why the show's ratings declined enough that it got canceled. Still worth the ride, but probably not a rewatch.

Well, since I didn't rate anywhere near enough episodes of this show to do a proper average, I'll gut-feeling it.

Leverage, I award you a solid 9/10 rating.

It's not for the writing. There's lots of corn and cheese, and plenty of plot holes big enough to fly the Spruce Goose through, but the characters are so, so worth it.

No member of the core cast is annoying—already a feat, compared to many long-running ensemble-cast shows. Every single one of the five makes you appreciate their presence. Even when they're pulling off the most bullshit heists, the interpersonal relationships hold the script together and deflect the viewer's attention from whatever plot armor the writers used.

If anything, the one wish I have is that we'd gotten to know Eliot better. Well, and that he hadn't wound up the odd one out, relationship-wise, since four of the five were paired up by the finale (Parker and Hardison are so adorable). Nate's backstory plays a pretty big role in the big-picture arc of the show, and we find out plenty about almost everyone over the five seasons. But I'm left with the feeling that Eliot kind of got the short straw, somehow.

When I started watching The Last Ship, the second season had aired about four episodes. Of course, I watched from the beginning. In just four days, I was caught up and eagerly awaiting the next episode each week. The show started out that good, avoiding the cliché of a weak first season. It came out fighting, just like its heroes. That fighting spirit continued all the way through season two, too.

My enthusiasm stayed strong through the break. Trying to find another show like this proved futile, however. I had no choice but to wait for season three to begin, and once it did I watched each third-season episode as soon as possible.

The Last Ship has five seasons, however, and they are not all equally great.

The visual effects in this show were never amazing, I'd say. They mostly stayed out of the way—not award-worthy, but not glaringly fake, serving the purpose and carrying the plot forward with the appropriate battle excitement. Season three, though, brought a subtle dip in quality that morphed into some pretty terrible CGI by seasons four and (especially) five. The effects no longer blended in, but called attention to themselves by not quite fitting into the show's visual world.

I was even less amused by the slideshow-like slow-motion effect used in a few fifth-season episodes, wherein normal-speed footage was simply played back at just a frame or two per second. The director(s) might have chosen that style, but I would disagree with that creative choice. However, if the relative lack of shipboard action in the later seasons was any indication, the show's budget was cut pretty dramatically by that point. (Having the U.S. Navy run a destroyer for the film crew certainly wasn't free of cost.) I wouldn't be surprised if the production simply didn't want to invest in a high frame-rate camera for proper slow-mo.

If all I had were technical/production gripes, though, I wouldn't be as disappointed as I am in the latter part of The Last Ship. Far more than the obvious cuts in spending on shipboard locations and visual effects, the real let-down was in the quality of the scripts.

Understanding that The Last Ship was originally based on a novel doesn't really help explain why the show's writing quality declined. The series never really followed the book's plot, merely using its setting as a loose template to create a new narrative. But, where the first two or three seasons felt tightly written and thought-out, the last two seasons in particular felt thrown together and haphazardly constructed. The fact that seasons 4 & 5 were filmed around the same time gives a clue as to how rushed the writing process must have been, and I'd say it really is evident from the final product.

In the end, I just wish I could find even one other show like The Last Ship's first 2-3 seasons. Underneath the Michael Bay explosions and chest-pounding American patriotism, the real draw of this series was in the naval strategy and tactics. It was a lot like watching the Defiant fighting in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Dominion War arc, except the technobabble referred to real systems used on American ships right now instead of sci-fi technology—and of course, the ship was navigating in the ocean instead of space.