Depressing shows (1 Viewer)

How the hell do you guys sit through TV like the Handmaid's Tale or Black Mirror?

Good stories. 

Entertainment.

Black Mirror rules and I will fight you. 

Don’t worry there’s probably a new season of Fuller House coming soon

I actually haven’t seen Handmaiden’s tale, and Black Mirror is completely hit or miss for me, but I feel like “depressing” shows is just a different way to describe realistic shows. It’s a harsh world and sometimes we need to be reminded that everyone’s situation isn’t the same as your own. The Wire, for instance, is an incredible piece of storytelling. I tried to get my wife to watch with me, but after Wallace mentions he had never heard the sound of crickets before because he had never left the projects, she was out. 

Her mentality: life is already tough, I just want a happy story.  From that, I can only conclude that you are my wife, so why are you on this message board right now?  

bosoxs45 said:

How the hell do you guys sit through TV like the Handmaid's Tale or Black Mirror?

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Usually on my couch. 

Black Mirror is sensational.

Those comfortable in their own skin enjoy exploring their depths and doing so pays back by rounding one's edges. I fear younger folk's lack of immunization against fate & frustration has shallowed them.

It's nice to know I'm not a mindless numb moron?

It seems hard to broad-brush Black Mirror.  I've seen about half the episodes.  Some are great, some not so great, one I turned off midway through.  

Add Making A Murderer to that list. 

those are both very well made.

I'd have a much harder time sitting through crappy, typical tv. depressing content or not, I find ####ty art to be way more depressing than well made stories dealing with heavier issues.

I had a tough time with Black Mirror end of last year. It was depressing and my FIL has just passed and I was worried about everything since my company just got bought. I had to stop watching because it was a tough period. It was also two really wrenching stories, White Christmas and White Bear. I’ve watched all of them since but I had to put it on a shelf for a while. Amazingly easy when things are going well but man it’s easy for me to understand how people could have a tough time. I’m just glad it was just a temporary stressful time.

bosoxs45 said:

How the hell do you guys sit through TV like the Handmaid's Tale or Black Mirror?

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There are shows like this for us and shows like "Keeping up with the Kardashians" for you.

Man in the High Castle is hard for me to watch.  It just feels heavy.

wikkidpissah said:

Those comfortable in their own skin enjoy exploring their depths and doing so pays back by rounding one's edges. I fear younger folk's lack of immunization against fate & frustration has shallowed them.

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In what way? Millennial troubles are well documented: trouble finding jobs, expensive housing, huge debt, etc. As for the younger generation, I don't know, many of the ones I now live tough lives. Drama at home, parents with drug addictions, growing up with social media and 24/7 news to put kids face to face with every world tragedy on a daily basis, active shooter drills in school. I just had a student who graduated in June shot and killed a couple weeks ago. His dad died the same way 15 years ago. Maybe in Beverly Hills life is cushy and easy, but I suspect it was just as smooth 30 years ago as it is today. In most parts of the country, life isn't easy.  

Maybe it is me,  but the best shows are depressing. Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Sopranos, etc. Those are all really dark shows when you think about it. I mean they are fun at times, but mostly it's death, drama and disappointment. 

Ilov80s said:

In what way? Millennial troubles are well documented: trouble finding jobs, expensive housing, huge debt, etc. As for the younger generation, I don't know, many of the ones I now live tough lives. Drama at home, parents with drug addictions, growing up with social media and 24/7 news to put kids face to face with every world tragedy on a daily basis, active shooter drills in school. I just had a student who graduated in June shot and killed a couple weeks ago. His dad died the same way 15 years ago. Maybe in Beverly Hills life is cushy and easy, but I suspect it was just as smooth 30 years ago as it is today. In most parts of the country, life isn't easy.  

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I can actually use a couple of "depressing" Netflix shows to answer your question. A friend talked me into checking out Atypical, an autism sitcom. At first i over-reacted to the show in a bad way because my first professional experience in the psych biz was with autistic teens and i have been at odds with the way they are educated & integrated ever since.

Eventually, though, i came to realize that Atypical is in many ways a brilliantly conceived and written show. It understands comedy, family, love in ways most sitcoms don't. But i still had problems with it. I realized that, like a lot of Netflix shows, its flow chart was too dense, too many things were happening at once. Since i've written comedy for over forty years, it is anathema to me to miss jokes and even worse to shorten story/character-development arcs when there is so much more dough in lengthening them, but Atypical was skipping a lot of humor in order to keep the interpersonal drama dense. I had noticed a similar problem in Ozark - too many things happening at once, cramming two seasons into one, which makes less financial sense than artistic even.

I found my answer to why in Atypical's Season 1 closer. There were two moments in the ep that were so unforgivably cruel, callous and cavalierly dealt with that i automatically concluded the season could not be resolved without them being addressed, so i assumed they would be the cliffhangers. I was wrong - showrunner Robia Rashid quite cleverly, if unsatisfyingly, had all the story lines resolved and the characters smiling on the shelf by show's end. And it was then i realized I have been away from society too long.

In my world, NO WAY can the utter shaming of a teenage girl, as the autistic lead unwittingly did at the beginning of the episode, have a short recovery arc. It is an impossibilty. But here it wasn't. WHY THE #### NOT?! I reverse engineered it and realized - EVERY problem i had about the show is that not one character ever resolved any of their problems nor got to the heart, the moral center of even the most important matters. They tossed their identity into the fray, it got observed, reviewed & returned by everyone in their lives and on to the next. Didn't matter if everyone was doing that at the same time, cuz the most anybody was going to react was a wisecrack a "that's not me, that's you" shrug and a swipe left. That's why each character was more the sum of their distractions, their eccentricities, their defenses than their strengths or beliefs. Everyone's a ****, so i'll be one too and so will he and so will she and we'll all shrug off each other's dickishness over&over&over and that's life.

No, it is not. Stop the world, i wanna get off.

I think they can be good.

One of the most depressing shows I've ever watched is that Tig Notaro show on Amazon called, "One Mississippi". Just brutal and in general I like dark humor. But that show kind of crosses the line of finding humor in dark situations to bashing you over the head with misery. Maybe it got better after the first few episodes, I'll never know.

Shows like "Always Sunny in Philadelphia", "Hello Ladies", and "Arrested Development" are pretty much sad sets of characters having sad things happen to them but they are all enjoyable to watch.