by Larry Brody
I don’t watch a lot of TV these days, but when I do watch, I become very committed. I don’t watch anything twice, but that one time…ah! I savor every minute, giving each episode 100% of my current attention span. When Larry Brody watched TV he’s definitely in the moment.
This week, I’ve dropped three shows from my commitment list. Instead of soaring as they once did, they’ve been flailing around for weeks, and I can stand the agony of their dying spirits no more.
Here they are, three TV series that for all I know will continue to go on for decades to come, but which for me have lost all vitality. They are existences without essences. Zombies walking all over without their souls.
LEGION: I loved the first 3 episodes of Legion for the same reason so many critics and fans (including my #1 Favorite Writer John Ostrander as he expressed his thoughts HERE), the fantastic look of the series and the mindfuck it gave not only the heroes (and villains, as it’s turned out) but the audience as well.
However, the last few episodes have just been more and more of what’s become the show’s same-old-same-old, and instead of feeling more intrigued, or even as intrigued as I was at the beginning, I’m getting bored at the limited bag o’writing and cinematography tricks.
Besides, the damn show keeps giving me nightmares! And at my age I’ve got enough bad real memories to terrify me and sure don’t need to be overwhelmed by fake ones.
(See, if you’ve been watching Legion you know what I just did there…the whole fake memories thing, I mean. If not, well, that’s not nearly as spoilery as it might sound. We know by the end of the pilot that the fakery is afoot. Which is why now the whole business is just a drag to me.)
SHADES OF BLUE: I was all gung-ho about this series its first season. Loved the less-than-perfect 
(to say the least) lead characters. Loved hating the even more less-than-perfect villain who thought he was so much better than they were.
But now that we’re into Season 2, everyone’s total lack of comprehension of even the most basic ethical values of human behavior, combined with the way the characters’ limited intelligence seems to have slopped over onto the writers, creating an overall storyline that lacks the slightest bit of credibility or sense of even “TV reality” has finally gotten to be too much for me.
It’s with great sorrow that I say avoir to Jennifer Lopez, who is always so wonderful to look at, but saying good-bye is much better than her character probably would do to me. No, Shades isn’t giving me nightmares, but it has reminded me of my longtime aversion to being shot by beautiful women and then – no, I’ll stop here before I do get too spoilery.
NCIS:
Buh-bye Legion and Shades of Blue. Maybe your makers can take comfort in the fact that I’ve also decided to abandon my formerly favorite bad, bad, bad-but-so-what? TV series ever. That’s right, I’ve had it with NCIS at last, after 13 1/2 seasons, of which that last half feels, well, it feels like it’s been going on even longer than all thirteen years that preceded it combined.
Leroy Jethro Gibbs walking around smiling? WTF?
