I was watching football with my dad in 1999 when CBS ran a promo for their upcoming
Survivor TV series.
Boy was I jazzed! This looked tailor-made for an outdoorsman like me, who, well, sometimes needs to "survive"
some sketchy nature scenarios.
I eagerly awaited the first episodes in 2000, and was initially delighted:
CBS dumped a bunch of excited contestants on
Pulau Tiga and the contest for survival was on!
Except it soon became clear that it wasn't really about survival skills at all...it was more of a soap opera
with contestants voting against one another...being sneaky was more the game, than survival.
I gave up after a few episodes, and haven't watched any of
Survivor in 20 years.
In early 2015 a guy I know--and respect for his knowledge of history--told me to check out
The Man in the High Castle on Netflix. He knew that the (alt history) concept would really appeal to me.
And it did. For much of the first episode. But pretty soon the concept took a back seat to that
soap opera style drama again.
I hung in there for maybe 3 episodes, on the treadmill, hoping that it
would re-focus on the fascinating "what if?" of the premise. Sadly it didn't. So, another show that I had high hopes for, devolved to the sort of soap opera drama that Americans evidently crave...
In 2017 or 2018 I was at a gal-pal's house, and noticed some gorgeous landscapes on her TV.
I asked what it was, and she said "It's a Kevin Costner show called
Yellowstone...it's cool."
I said something like: "It's beautiful...it looks very much like where I was just camping!" Intrigued,
but no longer having cable, I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes, to see that it only had a rating of
about 50%
(which is an awful score, by RT standards) and the summary said:
"Yellowstone proves too melodramatic to be taken seriously, diminishing the effects
of the talented cast and beautiful backdrops." 
Which, in my terminology, sounds like "TV even turned my beloved Yellowstone into a cheesy soap opera." Some day I may still get around to it (I
try to keep an open mind)...but for now I have maybe 50 hours
of 4K Yellowstone video...of bears, wolves, bison, waterfalls, mountains, etc., so I think I'm better off
watching those.
I acknowledge that the problem is
me: Clearly most people
want soap opera (God, I've read 100
headlines--in "news" sections of the 'net--about the current
Bachelor, and some guy named 'Matt' ?!?)......and it just seems like much of pop entertainment can't avoid going there. I
do love BBC
Planet Earth (old & "new"), esp. the 4K stuff...
On a more positive note, I finally binged
Fleabag (an astonishing 100% on RT!)
...and it
did feel original...
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is my new crush!
(and the entire series can be viewed in under 5.5 hours!)
