SanguinePar

Jumping the shark was a—metaphorically and in one case literally

Or two cases, if you’re familiar with the work of Barry Zuckercorn, Attorney at Law.

Modern classics like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Community, and Bojack Horseman are notorious for “starting slow” and are often recommended with a disclaimer like “Give it a few episodes; I promise it gets good!”

This is a bit of a falsehood though, IMO.

Those shows (although I’ve never really watched BH) all ARE good from the start, as a rewatch will invariably reveal.

It’s just that the worlds they conjure sometimes take a while to get used to. But once used to them, those early episodes are often absolute gold.

The Wire in particular has absolutely nothing to apologise for in any of its first few episodes (or indeed virtually all of the other ones) but for someone unfamiliar with the Baltimore drug markets and the hierarchical structures within and around them, it took me a few episodes to get up to speed.

It’s not that it “gets” good after a few episodes. It’s just that it might take a few to realise just how good it is.

That’s true, but it doesn’t negate the point you are replying to.

That’s a different argument - yes, things were worse in the past than they are now. That doesn’t mean that things won’t get worse than they are now in the future.

From a personal point of view, I agree, but playing devil’s advocate, really the chart should be flipped so that the left/rightness is shown that way and the dates are on the vertical axis.

It’d also be good if the time periods matched, and if there was a source for the data.

lefties are much more likely to commit suicide than righties.

That’s interesting (and tragic, obviously).

The idea that it could be an environmental thing (pressure to conform in a right-handed world, the schools and church stuff you mentioned) is quite compelling.

On the other hand, the increased prevalence of genius, and alcoholism, suggests maybe something genetic (or whatever) - like left handedness might go along with certain inherent psychological traits, which might also tend more towards self harming behaviour.

I know nothing about any of this stuff beyond a general interest, so I’ve no doubt it’s a lot more complicated than that (and/or that this is just correlation rather than causation in one direction or another) but it’s interesting regardless.

Fair points. And, of course, I’ve never been in a US hospital, so they may be like Xanadu in comparison :-)

UK hospitals have been excellent in my experience, though I’ve obviously only seen some of them.

Plus, although our system is very different from America in theory, our government has, for decades (especially under the Conservative Party), been undermining the NHS through cuts, market-based policy decisions and creeping attempts at privatisation.

If the NHS was supported the way it deserves to be, it would be even better than it already is.

Fair enough. As I said at the start, it was just the impression I had - evidently not the case :-)

I don’t think that’s true though - these are the IMDb ratings, which remain open, and didn’t exist when the episodes came out.

Indeed but I’m questioning the scores themselves in S1 and S2. Put it this way, I didn’t think that those seasons were considered almost as good as most the next 8, I would have expected them to be mostly in the 6.8-7.2 range.

Fair enough - I’m not as familiar with the earliest seasons, so it was more the impression I had than a definite opinion :-)

Maybe the last episode before a season break or something?

For anyone wondering the top rated episodes here, all at 9.2 are:

S5E2 Cape Feare
S6E6 Treehouse of Horror V
S6E25 Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One
S8E2 You Only Move Twice

And just as I was finishing that, I noticed that one episode has a 9.3, d’oh!

S8E23 Homer’s Enemy

I’m not disputing that The Simpsons declined in quality, but I do kind of question the high scores for the first season or two.

I’m not a superfan or anything, but my perception of the show was that it took 3 or 4 seasons to really get good?

Ah ok :-)

Yeah, I know what you mean, it is a bit odd. I’m not sure why Orkney and not Shetland. Doubt it’ll ever happen tbh!

They’re just part of Scotland. Although the nearby Orkney Islands (also part of Scotland) have recently flirted with leaving the UK and becoming part of Norway.

The final shot of that episode is absolute comedy gold.

No.