I have given up on Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, when I realized that the sniper in tonight’s episode could have shot every single team member save Garcia and I wouldn’t have cared.
How can the spin-off be so mind-bogglingly bad, when the original is so good? Spin-offs and originals sometimes vary in quality, for example it’s always a contest which CSI I like best this week. They can also differ in tone, for example Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures are all very different from each other and particularly Torchwood seems to have divorced itself drastically from its Doctor Who origins from season 2 on.
But I’ve never experienced a situation where I liked the original show and flat out hated the spin-off.
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But I’ve never experienced a situation where I liked the original show and flat out hated the spin-off.
Well, I have: I loved the original CSI from the beginning, but CSI – Miami is below every standard for me. Where the original tries to achieve a maximum of suspension of disbelief by showing only plausible technology (well, at least at first glance), Miami is centered to action and the gadgets are most of the time laughable stuff that seems to be made up by a 12-year old James Bond fanboy.
Okay, but I love Buffy and Angel. 🙂
I liked CSI Miami all right for a while, but it’s been getting more and more ridiculous. The episode shown in Germany two weeks ago or so was the worst yet. The entire cast gets poisoned with halon gas – which is non-toxic! And the two characters who don’t get gassed act like idiots as well, running into the gas-filled lab without any protection instead of dialing 911. By comparison, the original CSI has been getting better of late after a couple of weak seasons. New York is probably my favourite, because I like the characters best and it’s not completely preposterous.
And I always preferred Angel to Buffy before I suddenly got sick of both shows towards the end of their run.
And I always preferred Angel to Buffy before I suddenly got sick of both shows towards the end of their run.How dare you! 😉 No, I think both shows had lots of weak moments. I hated Glory, Riley and Faith, and some subplot were plain stupid. But on the other side there were great ideas in both shows. I was really sad when it all ended.
CSI – New York is good. Maybe I like the characters more than those in the original CSI, although NY has a tendency towards implausible tech-gimmicks.
Talking about spin-offs: Have you ever watched the X-Files spin-off “The Lone Gunmen”? I’m not sure if it was ever on German TV but I seem to remember that it was boring.
My main problem with Buffy was that I never particularly liked Buffy herself, though I liked many of the supporting characters like Willow, Xander, Spike, Giles, Tara, Oz, etc… I actually did like Faith, but Glory was just plain awful and Riley had no real presence at all. I liked the characters in Angel a lot more – even Angel and Cordelia were better in the spin-off than in the parent show. I still stopped watching during the whole evil Cordelia’s supernatural pregnancy storyline. Before that, the parallel world storyline that introduced Fred almost lost me as well.
CSI New York definitely has the better characters and all three CSIs tend towards implausible tech gimmicks at times, though none quite as blatantly stupid as Miami. In fact, one of my main problems with the original CSI was in the beginning that though the cases were good, the characters were so bland I couldn’t even remember their names for a long time. They all have developed personalities by now, including the various lab techs, but it took several seasons to get there. Even CSI Miami had stronger characterisation for a long time, because whatever other flaws Horatio Caine may have, lack of personality is not one of them.