Wow, two readers have responded to inform me that after Season 2, SFU starts to suck. Here's my take on it:
I just started Season 3. Right after (SPOILER ALERT) Nate has surgery and they jump seven months forward and he's married to insipid Lisa. I like Lili Taylor, but I wish they'd quit typecasting her. I keep expecting her to whip out a guitar and start strumming and singing "Joe lies! Joe lies! Joe lies!" So Nate is a baby-drunk dullard and David and Keith are always fighting (break up!) and Claire is doing the crematorium guy with the questionable taste in tattoos and Brenda is gone and Rico is a judgmental, whiny dick 24/7...hmm, I guess the interesting story line where I am right now is Ruth's friendship with Bettina. I like the show because it has art and death and those two tropes are interesting to me. I've had a wicked fascination with the funeral industry since I spent the entire week my grandfather was on view hanging out with the friendly staff of the funeral chapel and milking them for stories about crazy mourners (that shit does happen).
I really loved and identified with Brenda until she turned into psycho sex addict. I question the writer's need to make every character hit rock bottom at some point--not everyone's life is like that. I predict that things will look up in Season 4 after Lisa gets knocked off and Nate gets back with Brenda.
I am a fan of soap operas, so I don't find the comparison off-putting. If I could pull it together to get back into GH, I would, but for now, I am committed to the SFU characters, no matter how unpleasant they be come.
Posted by Zerd at July 16, 2007 07:19 PMI think the main problem is that "the writer" is actually a team of writers that came in to replace alan ball, who was less involved in the show as time went on. I think the show suffered noticeably as he stepped back. it seems to me like all of these different people writing the episodes were trying to one-up each other with the drama, and that made everything so over the top. you can really see it in the opening deaths, which just get more and more absurd and convoluted as time goes on, irritatingly so.
Posted by: cm at July 17, 2007 05:16 PM