How far

[mrissa]

We were talking at lunch about Buffy fans, into which category none of us falls. And some of them quite reasonably recognize that Buffy is a matter of individual taste, that some people like it and some do not, but others insist on knowing which episodes one watched and then protesting (no matter what episodes are up for discussion) that that wasn't one of the really good ones.

So it makes me wonder: how far would you go to get at a good show or a good book or even a good fragment of stuff?

I think that most of us will read past a bad first sentence, paragraph, or even chapter if someone we trust has given us reason to believe that the book will be a good one and worth our time. I think, on the other hand, that anyone who wants me to read the ninth Robert Jordan book, on the theory that it will get "really good" very soon and I just read the first bad eight, is smoking crack.

But where's your personal middle ground? A mediocre episode of a television show your friends swear is great? A boring first book of a trilogy that's supposed to be really fascinating in books two and three? How far will you go to get to "the good stuff" before your internal critic decides that the payoff can't possibly be worthwhile? Say for a TV show or a book: when does the off switch get used or the book get sent back to the library? And is it different if you paid to rent a movie/buy a book/get into a movie in the theatre? Is it different for music? How much of your time is worth waiting for the big payoff without little payoffs in the middle?

Well?

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Not very far at all, esp. for TV shows. I've tried to learn to like TV shows that other people were convinced I'd love, but it only turned my initial disinterest into active dislike. The spark is there or it isn't, and if it's there I know it immediately.

It was there for me with the X-Files and Roswell, but not with Buffy or Xena or Smallville. It was there with News Radio, but not with Seinfeld. There with The Simpsons, but not with Futurama. That doesn't even make sense to ME; I can't imagine anybody else being able to predict my tastes!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about initial disinterest being turned into active dislike. When I have strident evangelists for various TV shows clamoring at me about how much I'd really truly love it if I only gave it a chance, I have a hard time maintaining neutrality on the topic. Buffy is a good example: no spark there. It and I did not get along. (I have said often that I can only stand to watch Buffy while reading Nabokov, and vice versa, and it seems to be true: each engages a part of my brain that would otherwise get annoyed with the other.) But I have no contempt for most TV shows I don't watch; Not My Fandom, Not My Problem. I had a hard time not getting sneery at people who wouldn't stop gushing about Buffy for awhile there, though: the show was no worse, but a portion of its fans were just obnoxious.

Sometimes I even don't try to recommend a TV show just because I know it'll sound like I'm doing this. My mom felt that The Simpsons encouraged kids to misbehave and disrespect their parents, and I don't really feel it does as a generality, and I also think that there are all kinds of things she'd love about it. But I know that if I say, "Oh, you just saw one of the early eat-my-shorts episodes; you'd really like the one where they were making fun of Maya Angelou and Tom Clancy and Amy Tan all in the same three-minute spot," I'm going to sound like I refuse to see reason on a favorite show. So I let it go.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I'm curious as to when in the series runs you tried The Simpsons and Futurama. Mostly because liking one but not the other seems odd, and that might be a possible explanation -- a lot of people who started The Simpsons in the middle probably would have hated it in the beginning. And a lot of people who hated it in the beginning eventually came around, for that matter. I don't think that method would work with Futurama.

Not trying to push anything, I'm just trying to figure out something about how this stuff works, in hopes it will help me deal with all the whedonists.