At The Medium Is Not Enough, we – by which, of course, I mean I – have a somewhat long-term policy regarding reviews of shows. Even the worst shows can get better after a few episodes, and of course, the best shows can get worse, too. So I hold off for a few episodes before stating for definite whether a show is worth expending valuable time on.
I started off with the third-episode verdict system: this uses The Carusometer, the most powerful and certainly the most egotistical TV quality system in the universe, to measure just how good a series’ first three episodes are before declaring whether they’re fit for human consumption. Look at Heroes: not exactly brilliant for the first two episodes but started to take off (literally) after three.
But there are some shows that still don’t find their way by their third episode, so I came up with the fifth-episode verdict system: if the show looks like it could get better, I wait for another two episodes before passing it over to the penetrating, darkly shaded gaze of The Carusometer.
But I’ve noticed that some shows still don’t get the hang of life for a few more episodes. Look at Torchwood: good start, absolutely dire middle, much better from about episode eight onwards.
Now there’s no way I’m hanging on watching some of these shows for their full eight episodes: one episode of Ghost Whisperer was enough and I couldn’t even last one minute of Angela’s Eyes. If I dumped them by episode three, there’s a very good chance they’re going to be awful forever. Yet to avoid possibly missing a good TV show that only finds its feet at the last moment, we need some system to pick them up.
So today, I’m instigating the launch of the Random Episode Carusometer, complete with not terribly impressive graphic I whipped up in Illustrator in less than an hour.
Continue reading “The Random Episode Carusometer: Painkiller Jane”
