and all the ways of sharing opinions with others online, how much more critical people are these days of television shows and movies. It seems like everyone with an internet connection these days see themselves as television or movie critics, going overboard in trying to paint themselves as an "objective" observer and not a fan boy. It's like they work so hard to not let themselves enjoy a show, but instead are watching with a critical eye for production value, writing, acting and other things which, by criticizing, them, they can highlight their intelligence and sophistication at being able to see these things.
At the risk of sounding like the old guy that I am, when I was growing up, we had 3 channels, plus UHF available to us, with no on demand possibilities. If it was 3 p.m on a weekday, and I wanted to watch TV, I had to choose from Emergency!, Love, American Style, or the Young and the Restless. So I watched Emergency!, and I loved it because it was all I had.
Now, with everything available to us, everyone dissects shows to death. It seems to kind of take the fun out of watching, if you're looking to criticize the production value, the acting, the writing, how faithful the show is to the "canon," etc.
I'm going to go a bit out on a limb (but not that far, I think) and blame Star Wars fanatics for starting this. Am I wrong? For instance, I saw Star Wars in the theater as a kid when it came out in 1977. It was the greatest movie I'd ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. I waited for what seemed like forever for Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to come out, and I loved them, too. I didn't scrutinize the movies for faithfulness to the Star Wars canon, for acting or writing inconsistencies, etc. I watched it to enjoy the story as it was told to me.
I was an adult when the other episodes started coming out, and I've always just watched them for what they are - stories on a big screen. I knew of the complaining people were doing, but it didn't make sense to me - these were Star Wars movies and I like Star Wars.
Now we get to things like Wheel of Time. I'm a huge book fan and have been reading the series over and over since about 1991. It's by far my favorite book/story/narrative of all time, and I've spent many, many hours reading and listening to it. I sort of understand but sort of don't understand all the book-readers-turned-critics who are now overanalyzing the television series.
Normally, that would be background noise to me and I would ignore it. But in today's media reality, I have serious concerns. For instance, look at a series like Firefly. One of the best series to have been canceled after one season. Due to mishandling by Fox, and ratings (which I think were artificially depressed due to the mishandling), it was canceled after one season.
I am deathly afraid of something happening to Wheel of Time that would prevent the entire series from playing out, because I know the final season would be amazing. But then I see hypercritical supposed book fans making concerted efforts to give it the lowest ratings, due to their inability to understand that a visual medium is far different from a written medium for telling a story (i.e., can't get over changes - just for the fact not everything is the same as the books) or simply just their own prejudices and biases.
It's not necessarily those ratings, but the fact that perhaps someone who has never read the books might be dissuaded from watching the television series. If that happens enough, then perhaps Amazon would lose patience and pull the plug too early, before the audience has a chance to grow into the show. Fortunately, the show seems to have been a huge success, and a long run seems likely, but the fear was certainly there.
I have done some fiction writing in the past, and I know how difficult it is. The pure arrogance of all of these keyboard warriors sitting back in their basements, critiquing Rafe and the series with such illuminating language as "woke garbage" is offensive to me. Everyone thinks they're a television critic. Many who have never read a television script, much less tried to write one. That's my opinion of them - I won't dwell on it and will move on, as they actually occupy only a small part of what I care about.
Another series that comes to mind is Cobra Kai. Is it an artistic masterpiece? Probably not. And to be fair, the professional critics seem to enjoy it. But I've seen some people who appear to be hyper-critical of it, and unable to enjoy it for what it is - just a cheesy, fun show that brings a lot of nostalgic memories back to those of us who grew up in the 80's and 90's. I'm happy the critics aren't as vocal as they seem to be on Wheel of Time, but I think Cobra Kai embodies what television should be: entertainment.
I guess I'm just out yelling at kids to get off my lawn at this point. I'm kind of sad for the people who are so caught up in themselves that they feel the need to try to view entertainment through the eyes of a critic. They're really missing out on the enjoyment of just sitting back and losing yourself in a pretty cool story.