So this is not new, but I'm starting to wear down and I don't know if it's just me changing or if a lot of people are feeling the same way.

Specifically the best examples of popular, painful entertainment that I can think of right now is The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Both have been on multiple seasons, have good followings and have always been violent shows. I watch GoT and keep up with it, I only check in on WD occasionally and for finales.

Here is my problem, even given that you know what you are in for when you put on these shows, I find that they are getting excruciating for me to sit through whole episodes. It's not the violence, it's the level of pain and torture that is going on to characters that you are supposed to like. There are scenes where I have to get up and walk away. The WD season finale was brutal in 1st person and no one knows who that person was yet.

In early seasons when you saw such action for the first time it was shocking and note worthy. Now the unbelievable beatings, rapes, burnings, losing of body parts, infanticides and too many other nasty things to name are not original and keep piling up. I had already more or less abandoned the WD, but now I am never watching another one, although I would like to know who got it.

If this stuff keeps up on GoT, I'm afraid I am not going to make it long enough to see the winner. If I had an issue with graphic violence that would explain it, but I don't. I am having an issue with plots that only seem to exist to get to an overwhelming amount of graphic violence against the "good" people. I watch these shows for enjoyment, but I now find that I am dreading them. Since GoT has usually 3 or 4 jumps per episode, some main character is always getting chopped up. It's no fun.

I know what you mean. A little violence never seemed to bother me before, but recent shows like American Horror Story, Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy just seem to be over the top. Sons of Anarchy was the worst, it seemed like the last few episodes they decided too many people were still alive and the had to kill them all off.
The finale of the WD was too much as well, one of the beloved characters is gonna have his head smashed in.
I don't feel it so much for GoT, this is a violent medieval era and this stuff used to happen in real life.
I guess the answer is to watch less of these shows, they are bringing a prequel of Sons of Anarchy to TV - I won't watch it. I may be done with American Horror Story too. Bates Motel is getting close. I still want to see how Walking Dead and Game of Thrones play out.Don't know what I'll be watching - I find sitcoms unbearable.

I somewhat agree. The concept of 'gritty realism' has been replaced with over-the-top, gratuitous violence in a lot of cases. I stopped watching WD after one season (not the first) as it was relentlessy depressing and gratuitously violent. It was not remotely realistic. It didn't help that I rapidly found I couldn't care less what happened to any of the characters. I had a similar problem with the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and kept finding myself constantly hoping that the Cylons would finally see the light and put what remained of 'humanity' out of my misery

Game of Thrones is similar but at least I can find one or two characters that I come close to caring about along with someone more that I fervently hope will meet a well deserved, gratuitously violent end (that part has got me a little bit concnerned though).

The worst offender for needless violence recently is the Netflix Daredevil series. Season 1 was pretty bad but Season 2 took things to an entirely new level. I'm still not too sure why I kept watching it. I dread to think what the 'Punisher' spin-off will be like.

I will probably watch Game of Thrones to it's illogical conclusion but I am finding it increasingly hard to find new series to watch that are entertaining. Ones that start quite well (at least for me), have a tendency to start taking themselves way too seriously then veer towards 'gritty realism' at a frightening rate. Examples being 'Arrow', 'Flash' and 'Marvel Agents of Shield'. I may be giving up on all three in the near future.

I like a bit of good, Sunday afternoon escapism to let me escape from the drearier aspects fo real life. I dont want or need to have anexagerrated version of real life shoved down my throat in the name of entertainment. Now where did I put that collection of Tex Avery cartoons

My wife and son loves "Bates Motel". My son likes "Dexter" and "The Walking Dead". I just am getting too old to see people in pain as a form of entertainment. It goes back to the horror movie debate- What is horror and what is torture porn?

I am down to Big Bang Theory and The Goldbergs for regular television viewing. I have been told that "The Flash" is pretty light and "Legends of Tomorrow" compared to "Gotham" and "Arrow" so I may watch them someday.

Well I have to say tonight's Bate's Motel had a happy ending, considering it was the season finale.

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:
I have been told that "The Flash" is pretty light and "Legends of Tomorrow" compared to "Gotham" and "Arrow" so I may watch them someday.

The Flash certainly started light, one of the characters even said something along those lines during one of the crossover episodes when comparing life in Central City to that in Star(ling) City, but it is getting increasingly serious.

Legends of Tomorrow is something of an oddment. It is extremely close to being one of those programmes that is so bad it is funny but it keeps slipping back into being just plain bad.

All this violence on tv is perfectly ok but god forbid a weather presenter wearing a dress, now that will have the emails rolling in.

As with anything, you get to the point where it just becomes too much

In the mid-1980s, you had The Dark Knight Returns comic book, and now for the past 30 years, there is this mentality that every comic book, every movie, every TV show has to be gritty, realistic and violent, with morally ambiguous and confused characters

Anything other than the above is old fashioned and uncool, apparently

The likely next "big thing" will be "Preacher" on AMC and it will be ridiculously violent and then duplicated by others trying to get in on the action. Movies and TV are highly derivative from that which has been successful already, and this stuff sells. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

I haven't had any problems with the Game of Thrones TV show, but I will say, reading book 5 (the most recently published one one, and the basis of much of Season 5) was a real chore for me for the exact reasons Raven outlined. It just seemed liked every character was in terrible jeopardy throughout and then it ended with Jon Snow being stabbed to death, which is fine, I guess, but unlike TV viewers who had to wait a matter of months for his resurrection, book readers have been left with the taste of that for around 5 years now.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
As with anything, you get to the point where it just becomes too much

In the mid-1980s, you had The Dark Knight Returns comic book, and now for the past 30 years, there is this mentality that every comic book, every movie, every TV show has to be gritty, realistic and violent, with morally ambiguous and confused characters

Anything other than the above is old fashioned and uncool, apparently

Batman is a special case, for sure. Throughout his history going all the way back to 1938, the character has repeatedly been initially cast as a grim avenger of the night until he was deemed too dark at which point the colorful and wisecracking Robin is added to lighten Batman up. However, this eventually leads Batman to be considered too "bubblegum", at which point Robin is jettisoned so that Batman can become dark again.

I think with regard to these types of comic books and comic related movies, it just gets to the point where it all becomes the same.

On one hand, maybe that's what people want. I looked at a list of the Top 300 best selling comics per month, for 2016, and Superman is not even in the top 50 anymore. Guess he's not cool ?

On the other hand, I was reading some discussion on one board where someone was complaining about the tone of the James Bond films for the past 10 years. They said that they are sick of the brooding hero with the personal problems, that they want a return to the character of the 1960s-80s who was heroic and not conflicted as to what he was doing.