(I sometimes suspect that the ability to watch unlikable characters is varies depending on whether the Atlantic is on your left or on your right. It would explain the lack of success Seinfeld had over here, for instance.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: And what does that say about you, hmm?
(I sometimes suspect that the ability to watch unlikable characters is varies depending on whether the Atlantic is on your left or on your right. It would explain the lack of success Seinfeld had over here, for instance.)
That's why I dont watch the new BSG: after watching the miniseries and first four or five episode a couple of times, I really hated everyone. Really, I hoped they all died for wasting my time. No one was even intresting.
What's strange (or mabye it's just me) is that all the shows I really like (Farscape, Firefly, DS9, etc.) involve characters that I liked either right away or that showed some real intresting traits from early on.
While I'm in the minority, I never liked Sienfeld at all.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I'll grant you some of them, but Del-Boy? How was he unlikable? Even Rimmer was someone to be pitied rather than someone to be despised. And in those shows there were other characters to balance them out. In Seinfeld (and possibly nip/tuck, although I don't watch it) most if not all of the cast are unlikable at the core.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Lee: So your thesis is, no unlikable characters in British fiction? Heatchcliff? Darcy? Francis Urquhart? Arnold Judas Rimmer? Del-Boy Trotter?
Sounds like a pretty daft statement to me too...
Fiction? How about just comedy??
As you said - Rimmer, Mr. Brittas, Basil Fawlty, Blackadder, Patsy Stone, The entire news room on Drop the Dead Donkey, etc. etc.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Okay then, Mr Smart-Arse, YOU explain why the British didn't love the Best Comedy Ever from the US?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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"As you said - Rimmer, Mr. Brittas, Basil Fawlty, Blackadder, Patsy Stone, The entire news room on Drop the Dead Donkey, etc. etc."
Are we talking about characters that are intentionally unlikeable? I'm not familiar with those last two, but all those other characters are meant to be assholes. That's the whole point of them, the purpose they serve on their shows. I mean, where would be the humor if David Brent was a rather pleasant fellow who spent each episode volunteering at a local charity?
See, I thought the conversation was supposed to be about unintentionally unlikeable characters. I mean, clearly the characters on "Seinfeld" are not meant to be hated. And yet, clearly, some people dislike them, anyway. I really don't think that's what the writers were going for.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I disagree about that. I think the characters on Seinfeld are supposed to be seen for exactly what they are: Selfish, petty and obnoxious. But they're so much so, that's it's funny. Also, the series didn't really start out with them that way. They were all fairly likeable early on. You know, before Elaine started having dogs killed and George started not minding when people died.
quote:Originally posted by Topher: Its not British humour. Thus, British people don't like it. QED
Clearly not, as Friends and Frasier and Cheers and the Simpsons and others are all (or were) extremely popular in the UK.
Brent is different from, say, Rimmer, in that he doesn't actually realise he's an arsehole. And he's not, really. He's not intentionally malicious. He genuinly thinks he's a really nice bloke. Rimmer is an actual arsehole, but he's also a sympathetic character because he's had an appalling upbringing and a miserable life.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I think the reason the British didn't like Seinfeld (not that I watched it myself, ther urg to go out and hurt someone was to great afterwards) is that it was half an hour of them complaining and over analising the situation to death. We don't belive you have a right to wine endlessly: You put up, shut up, or do something about it. Dave Lister, ambition of a chicken vindaloo: did he complain (much) about being the last of his shipmates alone 3 million years from Earth? No, he asks the ship to turn around and head back, in the vague hoe that a beach still exsisited wheer he could farm goldfish, eat curry, and drink beer.
Only fools and horses is about standing on your own 2 feet and trying in the face of adversity and inflatable sex toys. And that is why most of us like the new Galatica, They may not be perfect, They maybe caught in a fight slightly less nasty than Saturday night in Romford high street, but they are not giving up.
-------------------- Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...
"Brent is different from, say, Rimmer, in that he doesn't actually realise he's an arsehole."
Yes, but that's not the point. I'm talking about the difference between a character who was specifically written to be annoying (which Rimmer and Brent both are), and a character that the writers didn't try to make annoying, but whom you find annoying anyway.
Registered: Mar 1999
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