Hostages : Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

There are so many posts on here going on and on about how awful the show is. But these people continue to tune in week after week. What kind of sense does that make? If the show is so awful, just stop watching! Why continue to watch and then come here to complain about how much you hate it? No, it's not the best or most realistic show ever created, but it's not as bad as some people are claiming. It's just a TV show, just something to watch on a Monday night if you don't want to watch Blacklist. No need to take it so seriously.

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

you're really stupid if you assume women can't drive or that white people can't dance.

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Arijana - Treregoblue is an idiot. Just put him/her/it on ignore like I did. People like that have nothing better to do than troll random forums posting ignorant nonsense. Don't dignify their ignorance with a response.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

So true and I totally agree with your post. Why watch a show that doesn't interest you

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?


I did quit watching the show but saw all episodes except for the 10/28/13 episode. The reason I watched it so long was because I wanted to see how much worst it would get. The show was / is written so poorly it was funny to watch. When I stop watching a show I usually stop posting messages about the show, but I may be tempted to make comments about what other people write.

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

^This.

Truer words have not been spoken.

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I think the message is just because physicians make a lot of dough, it doesn't mean they're smart. In fact, according to the scripts, physicians are one dimensional humanoids incapable of understanding anything that does not involve cutting someone open or injecting a chemical into one's body.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I like watching it and making fun of it w/ my husband! But I don't come here and complain.

It is a HORRIBLE show but at this point I enjoy watching the train wreck!

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Only way to enjoy it, yep.

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I'm not watching it any-more.
I just saw the 1st episode and realised it's just another crap show which couldn't last more than 2 episodes, any normal intelligent individual can see this, hence the reason I came here to clarify what must take up the other episodes.

Sadly it seems there is nothing more than what's already shown. Honestly, a person would have to be on drugs, retarded, or unemployed to even bother going further than episode 3.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Well said! Craptrayal is a hot mess, only unintentionally entertaining. If you aren't into laughing at how bad an awful show is, then there is no reason to watch it. And the ratings for this hot mess concur!

Get ready for the AXE!

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

It's hilarious. It rivals The Following.

"Soylent white is semeeeeen!"

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I think it approaches that total piece of crap the Event. Yep, I went there.

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

LOL.My husband and I absolutely love this show..don't care what anybody else thinks. It's entertainment I don't really care if it's realisticafter all there are no super heroesrobotsvampires or fairytale people and yet these are some of the highest rated shows on TV. I don't care about the ratings and I will continue to watch until it goes off into oblivion!! I mainly love Dylan McDermott so I'll watch anything he's in good or bad.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Yes, there is a category of people who will always find something nice in any crap only because they are such positivists who are trying to see everything in the best light :) Luckily, I do not belong to this category, and I am not going to waste my time for these series, because there are many other TV series that are really worth watching!

Big thanks to the critically thinking people for their comments in this board, you are helpful!

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Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I agree with your statement. I didn't think that I would like the show as much as I do because "how long could a hostage situation go on"? But I think the plot twists have been pretty good and the actors do a excellent job. It's funnymy roommate hates the show because he doesn't think the plot is realistic enough but yet he loves comic book movies and shows like Grimm.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?


I just saw the 1st episode and realised it's just another crap show which couldn't last more than 2 episodes, any normal intelligent individual can see this, hence the reason I came here to clarify what must take up the other episodes.


Yep, I did the same and after so much time has passed since then and then just now seeing it promo'd in a commercial break, I just had to see what in the hell kind of people could still be watching this disaster. Like a morbid curiosity I guess.
I assume lots of others do the same, especially when it gets advertised all the time like it's hot sh!t by the network.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

You're an incredibly ignorant kid to say such a thing after only watching the pilot. The show got 10x better since the pilot, it's ridiculous. Now the only think left to decide is if you are a borderline retarded 12 year old or a troll.


It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

You're an incredibly ignorant kid to say such a thing after only watching the pilot. The show got 10x better since the pilot, it's ridiculous. Now the only think left to decide is if you are a borderline retarded 12 year old or a troll.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

What do you have Tourette syndrome buddy? Or do you always repeat everything you say and do in life exactly three minutes apart?

Ah, look another faceless random shythead lobbing unintelligent insults blindly on IMDb at someone unprovoked, what a surprise. I've love the "kid" thing coming likely from some little geek that, by the look of your blank hidden profile, spends his time rating gay porn, I literally must have socks older than you,lol.

I come to your shows board weeks ago and leave one comment and bounce and you think I'm the troll? Are you mental? You need to get out more, maybe get some better ventilation in your mom's basement, stop banging your sister, get some professional help, some medication and of all things make sure to piss off. You people are like house flies, smash one and two pop up.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

You need to think of some better insults next time you try to prove you're not a kid, kid.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I watched because it wasn't bad at first. But it became more ridiculous as it went along. I've kept watching because there was some quality in the first episodes and have hoped that the quality would return.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

What particularly don't you like?

Note, please don't say anything about realism. This is a *beep* Hollywood TV show, it doesn't need to be real. I heard no one complaining about the ridiculousness of Breaking Bad. Realism does not contribute to the quality of a fictional work.

All of my family thought the show got WAY better as it went on, with all of the interweaving plotlines.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Asking for plausibility is not asking for realism. Breaking Bad worked rather coherently in the universe it was set. That is good writing. Hostages does not. It started out extremely constructed and the whole assassination plot got more and more implausible - it just would not make sense to pull the thing through in the way the team attempted it, even in the cheap fictional universe they created for themselves, where each family member just has contact to one other person who could get suspicious, a president is always surrounded by the same three persons and never has to work and a team of four people is enough to provide 100% surveillance over four independent targets.

"It is fiction, everything is possible" is just a bad excuse for lazy writing. The moment one writes a character, he has to act like a human being with that character and not just like a puppet doing what a script says in order to get from situation A to B (which in the case of hostages most of the time happens in a straight line). A situation has to play out after the rules one has set for that universe. Hostages fails at this point too often.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

You barely explained why it's implausible, but I'll reply to what little you addressed.


where each family member just has contact to one other person who could get suspicious


I don't understand.


a president is always surrounded by the same three persons and never has to work


Why do you think this? I don't see it implied in the show?


a team of four people is enough to provide 100% surveillance over four independent targets.


I'm not sure the correct term is "targets", but I understand what you mean. That's why they had the GPS trackers installed. All you have to do to keep track is look at a screen. And for the doctor, you just have to keep track of everything they are doing, of course, this isn't even a criticism because the show addresses this many times where they either removed the trackers or in the case of the doctor, did other things to throw them off of tracking her. You're right. For 4 people it's hard to keep track of 4 other's daily lives. Yet, Duncan was trying to drive this point home since the beginning:

"We are in this together. If we do not succeed, we die. If you tattle, we die. If you raise too much of a ruckus, we die. There is no way out. Things are already in motion and you are already apart of this. It is too late to turn back for us, even."

I think a better question would be "Why do they need to track them at all if Duncan is relying on the fact that they are smart and realize if they do anything stupid they die?"

And to that, I would simply say that it's a safeguard. A safeguard from them doing anything stupid. And in fact, the script shows this, because the family does some stupid things. And when you're under those conditions, it's totally understandable. Kill or be killed? Including your children.

Now they are trying to strike a balance and trying to not be killed while not killing, which we anyone could see would be the solution in the end, but the ride was definitely enjoyable.

I see no implausibility here.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Just think of all the people who would suspect something is wrong when your family gets kidnapped and none of you would be allowed to go anywhere except school or work. This series tries to make one believe that the son has not other contacts than his drug dealers, the husband just his affair, the mother just her sister and the daughter just her boyfriend - in all of those cases their single contact to the outer world is also their dark secret btw. Plausible writing?

The president never does president stuff. Like politics. He is just sitting around in back rooms with the same three people and his wife all the time, waiting to talk about his operation or that NSA thingy. That is all. 24 hours a day. I see that those are the topics relevant for the series, but good writing would actually manage to show that he is a busy guy, explaining why he can't keep an eye on the things, including the matters of live and death. The show leaves here - and in many other cases - the question why people act like they do to something not defined, which of course one could come up with but what I want the writers to come up with and not just fans who try to love the show (just to look back in a few years and realizing that they just fooled themselves into liking it by what they imagined around it).

The balance of not killing nor getting killed which indeed could be an interesting part is practically anihilated by the idea of the girls boyfriend getting killed. In front of her eyes. Without her showing any reaction. That would be the moment a person breaks down, creating the subplot of the shocked girl who cannot talk to anybody for the next few days. And there you have the answers to both questions directly back to back: Why do people keep watching? Because there is potential and ideas to explore. Why is the show completely implausible? Because it fails to explore those questions. Instead it is really badly constructed and keeps falling over its own long legs on its butt all the time.

Another example of that kind would be that secret service guy, who just realized that there is a big conspiracy with probably some of his closest people involved, then lets one of those guys drive him back and does not get suspicious when that guy stops the car in the middle of nowhere. That might seem plausible when you see people as mere bricks building a story. But good writing means writing plausible characters. One can hardly pretend that such a scene makes sense at all.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Wow, this was really well thought out and well written! This is a rare time when I have nothing to counter with. I agree that all of what you said were major shortcomings with the show.

But I still found it enjoyable, and with a few tweaks like you mentioned, it could have been awesome.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

To see a disagreement end like this is commendable and utterly disappointing. I expected more from you two. Really.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Ahahahaha. Good one!

Actually, I DID NOT even realize that was the same person I was arguing with! I thought it was someone else, because THEY actually made sense, compared to the last messages I responded to. =P

So yeah, I agree with pretty much everything they said in their last message, but the others I still somewhat disagree with. For instance:


the whole assassination plot got more and more implausible - it just would not make sense to pull the thing through in the way the team attempted it


I don't think the assassination plot as a whole was implausible. We were just having a little mind storm the other day about how a president could even be assassinated in this modern society. To be honest, there aren't many options. Somehow getting the president's surgeon to do it is one of the few ways it CAN happen in today's modern world. Even the other way they tried to do it with the sniper in the van was totally implausible in today's world. (that whole episode was pretty iffy)

I think the main plot point of taking the president's surgeon hostage was pretty great actually, and not implausible at all. There were just little side points that can easily be changed that were implausible, like the ones he and I mentioned. How hard is it to drop a line about the family's normal life every episode?

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Exactly, it's not the best series I've ever watched but it's definitely not the worst. It's entertaining and if people hate it so much stop watching.

Why do you keep watching Hostages?

In every episode they find a new way to make the show more ridiculous. It is fascinating to watch each subsequent episode be worse than the one before it. It is now a really bad comedy.

Re: Why do you keep watching Hostages?

^This.

Re: Why do you keep watching Hostages?

What particularly don't you like?

Note, please don't say anything about realism. This is a *beep* Hollywood TV show, it doesn't need to be real. I heard no one complaining about the ridiculousness of Breaking Bad. Realism does not contribute to the quality of a fictional work.

All of my family thought the show got WAY better as it went on, with all of the interweaving plotlines.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

show becomes better and better. New characters, everyone is involved, and nobody knows a thing making me wonder who really is pulling all the strings here.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

But the ratings keep getting worse and worse! Down to a PITIFUL 1.1 now. OUCH! No wonder they've pulled the plug on Craptrayal and are just burning it off now. A dud like this doesn't deserve to still be airing, IMO.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

why do you keep watching good shows instead of new ones? Same reason

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

If I hated this show I would not watch. But this is a story with a beginning and an end. I must see how this ends, even if it's a stretch.

flowercat.gif
"Long days and pleasant nights"
King

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

This is in reply to kindred122's original question: I think I watch it compulsively to try to figure out just exactly why it's so bad. By that I mean: what went wrong with the writing of the show, and where exactly it went wrong.

All the shows mentioned in this thread Hostages, The Following, The Blacklist are technically very well made. The production, directing, editing, set design, etc. are all quite accomplished, and even the acting is good for the most part, considering the material the actors have to work with.

The problem is with the writing. They try so hard to give the show such realism & naturalism in so many ways, and then the story goes off the deep end, and is utterly preposterous.

A big part of the problem is: they try to cram too much story into every episode. The networks appear to be terrified that viewers will change the channel if the hour isn't jam-packed with more plot-twists and melodrama than a 1980s Mexican telenovela.

Any one of the things that happen in Hostages a murder, a disappearance, a close-call during the President's surgery would be enough to warrant a full 2-hour feature-length film, especially including an extensive police investigation. They try to pack all that story into every episode. They burn through a lot of scenery. And that's what makes the writing suffer. This is even more true of The Following and The Blacklist.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

I don't watch it, not at all!

The show is made to mirror a possible real life situation, admittedly it's one which is so highly improbable that it borders on statistical impossibility. The issue doesn't lie in the far fetched story written to portray some deluded sense of realism, it's the utterly ridiculous decisions made by the characters in equally ridiculous situations.

Why not just make a show where lemmings attack sharks, each episode can show these assaults in new and unbelievable ways which, inevitably, always fail in visually horrific scenarios. Now that's some truly mind numbing garbage I could (possibly) watch for more than an episode.

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

What particularly don't you like?

Note, please don't say anything about realism. This is a *beep* Hollywood TV show, it doesn't need to be real. I heard no one complaining about the ridiculousness of Breaking Bad. Realism does not contribute to the quality of a fictional work.

All of my family thought the show got WAY better as it went on, with all of the interweaving plotlines.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

Just to see how low they can go actually. It's a science experiment.

For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco

Re: Why do you keep watching if you hate it?

What particularly don't you like?

Note, please don't say anything about realism. This is a *beep* Hollywood TV show, it doesn't need to be real. I heard no one complaining about the ridiculousness of Breaking Bad. Realism does not contribute to the quality of a fictional work.

All of my family thought the show got WAY better as it went on, with all of the interweaving plotlines.

It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alienor it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320
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