Ready for it? Here you go: Stop it.
Case in point would be the Lost In Space remake, which gives us a new iteration of the Robinson family: “Stranded light years from their intended destination, they find themselves battling a strange new alien environment and also their own personal demons.” …Enough with the personal demons, already. It was exciting thirty, forty years ago. Now it’s just boring. “Hey, John Robinson is a rotten father and Maureen pops pills and probably sleeping with Major West while Judy fumes and either Penny or Will is gay and Doctor Smith… is unchanged, because he’s going to get all the good lines anyway.” And I shudder at how the robot’s going to look.
[pause]
The pain. The pain of it all.
Moe Lane
PS: I know. It’s cheaper to film six people being awful to each other than it is to film them fighting a new monster of the week every week. Also: yes, Lost in Space was in fact find of awful, although the movie had its dubious charms. But it’s the principle of the thing.
Love that Newhart episode, I agree about the drama thing. Especially obviously contrived drama. Hollywood can get back to me when they are making a “Schlock” movie that does justice to the i.p. (or something equivalently awesome) Until then, I consider Hollywood morally and creatively bankrupt, and have no interest in seeing much of anything they are putting out.
I don’t understand it, but a lot of people love shows about horrible characters being horrible to each other.
I’m pretty sure that particular market is glutted, but then, I don’t watch much TV anymore. At least partially because I’m not going to spend time with characters I actively dislike.
(Also because most TV writers aren’t very clever. If I can diagram the course of the season after watching the pilot, including the “twist” cliffhanger at the end, then I’m not going to waste my time. Ditto if the pilot actively insults my intelligence.)