wildly inconsistent episodes

[christmas]

I was thinking about my favorite episodes and how my opinions were formed about a LOT of said episodes: I watched the 12AM repeat on Comedy Central and fell asleep during the first hour.

For the most part when I got around to watching the entire episode they'd hold up. Which made me think that perhaps one could determine the quality of an episode just from watching the first half of it. But I DO have one episode that I consider to be wildly inconsistent: DEVIL FISH.

DEVIL FISH has one of the strongest opening 30 minutes of any episode ever while the rest is much less spectacular. It's been a while since I've given it a fair shake, but DEVIL FISH is a unique example to me of an episode that is particularly unbalanced. I expect episodes to have peaks and valleys as it progresses scene-to-scene, but for the most part I can easily categorize which episodes are particularly good and which episodes are particularly not. DEVIL FISH stands alone.

Do you have any episodes that you find so inconsistent that you find it frustrating?

*NOTE: I can come up with a small handful of GOOD SHORT/EH MOVIE examples, but I'm intentionally steering clear of those for this thread. But don't let that stop you.

[leeharveyosmond]

aw man, devil fish is kind of a minor favorite of mine. it admittedly isn't top notch all the way through but there's a number of moments throughout the remaining hour that make it worth the watch. heck, two of my all-time favorite "blink and you'll miss 'em" riffs come from this one.

i'd say giant gila monster is pretty inconsistent for me. some parts are really annoying, a lot of it just does nothing for me, other moments get me laughing pretty good and it never really settles down in the end (the skits are pretty good at least). i think a lot of joel episodes from this era are like that.

[CrowTrobotfan92]

In terms of what, riffing?

If that's the case, I found Horrors of Spider Island really dragged with the jokes.

[Afgncaap5]

Feb 12, 2018 22:13:44 GMT -5 CrowTrobotfan92 said:

In terms of what, rigging?

If that's the case, I found Horrors of Spider Island really dragged with the jokes.

You know, I'm gonna agree on your movie pick even if I have different reasons. It's been probably literally over a decade since I've watched it (I always wanna put in something else), but Horrors of Spider Island was a weird thing for me.

Like... it had a *huge* number of jokes and riffs that I absolutely adored, and others that I remember as thinking were pretty good even if I didn't like them. Having said that, there were also a lot of dead spaces where I didn't particularly care for much of anything. I think most of this is more because the movie was just that bad than because of the quality of the riffing, but this was an episode where I really couldn't tell how it'd be from moment to moment.

Having said that... it's probably high time I watch this one again. Maybe I'll have a new opinion!

[continosbuckle]

This thread reminds me of another thread here, or perhaps a thread on Satellite News, about movies that became less fun after certain characters died. I remember mentioning Devil Fish, which was a lot more fun when Beery Guy was on the scene and the Brains played off his overacting. After the movie killed Beery Guy, his wife, Mumbly Girl and the villains, we were really only left with the bland leads and it simply wasn't as much fun.

I also mentioned that Giant Spider Invasion suffered from this after Ev and Dan Kester got killed. And certainly Horrors of Spider Island lost a lot of character interaction after Gary and Linda died. After that, we were left with a bunch of women who basically had nothing to say to one another.

Sidehackers had a similar, much more ugly, issue after Rita died.

But there are also plenty of movies they did like Hobgoblins where the filmmaker appears to have an idea of how to start a movie but no idea how to end it. I'm not saying that Hobgoblins was any good in its first half, but it did seem to have some sort of focus that the latter half lacked.

[Diet Kolos]

I made a big deal out of it the first time I watched it, The Loves of Hercules.
The first quarter of the episode is really good. The last half is complete garbage. And the last 10 minutes are utter trash.

[mrsphyllistorgo]

A good question, and one that fluctuates for me depending on my mood.

For instance, for a long time I was pretty meh on Last of the Wild Horses. I liked the conceit of the Mads in the theater and so on, but the movie didn't do much for me.

Then I happened to catch a rebroadcast on Comet (where I rarely watch eps because of the editing to shove more commercials in) and it just hit my funny bone perfectly. I've rewatched since then and it has definitely changed for the better in my eyes.

My latest project is watching episodes I haven't seen for a long time while I'm exercising. Definitely grown to appreciate a lot of them more.

[Caedmon]

Phantom Planet. The riffing starts off very strong for the first 30 minutes or so, but then just kinda peters out for me after that. 

It's been a while since I've watched it, but if I remember right, The Unearthly is another episode that starts out strong (the riffing on the two shorts), but then becomes very 'meh' once the movie starts.