I tried watching SWAT and found it tiring, since almost every episode ended in some kind of action set piece takedown. Done on a TV budget, those setpieces tended to be underwhelming. The show being in a theoretically realistic setting started to clash with the team getting in so many high profile gunfights.

I just don't think the formula exactly works. There's two directions it could go to be great. One, turn it into The Shield with some quality drama and running plots with heavy themes. Two, turn the city into a Robocop/Predator 2 type over the top hellscape with absurd overarmed gangs of cackling thugs roaming the streets, and acknowledge the absurdity of weekly giant gunfights by folding into the setting.

I doubt the show runners are brave enough or interested enough to do either.

Yes. It's probably an even more interesting experience going in blind to the universe because you have no idea which characters are safe, or the bigger directions of certain plot points.

The Vice President's brother!

It gets comical how the characters say that phrase so much instead of using his name, for audience benefit.

I appreciate each season changing things up with a different central conceit. As absurd as the Central American super prison and spy craft seasons were at least the show kept changing instead of spinning its wheels.

I am asking, sincerely, what they see in it and how they don't get distracted by the gravely, old sounding voices. It is difficult to find these people.

I suppose there is a business argument to be made, but I'm more curious about the audience perspective. Who are these 2 million viewers? What do they like about the show? Do many of them actually even care and rewatch new episodes or is it just background noise?

I don't think this comic exactly applies; I'm not commenting about people not knowing some bit of trivia. Even if you didn't grow up with the classic Simpsons, I don't know how you can't notice how old and stiff all the main cast sound. Marge sounds older than the voice acting for her mother in classic episodes.

My question is genuine when I ask who is watching these new episodes. Are they people who grew up with the classics who are somehow hanging on? Are they a new, younger audience? Either way, I don't see what the appeal is. The older audience knows the classic episodes, and the younger audience seems to have many choices for animation that seem a lot more in step with them and without a distractingly aged main voicecast.

I don't know who is still watching new episodes. Obviously someone, because the show keeps going, but I just don't get it. Occasionally I see some youtuber say "Actually the show is good again." and I check it out and never even get to thinking about the plot because all the voice acting is like a punch in the face. All the characters either sound distractingly old with their original voice actors or they sound totally wrong with new ones.

I actually think season 2 of Prison Break was a perfectly natural and well done (for the intended tone) continuation of the story. I know people snarkily point out the title doesn't strictly apply anymore, but I think convicts on the run from a manhunt fits. The show was from the beginning always a political conspiracy thriller baked inside of a prison story anyway.

The following seasons get increasingly absurd, but they are enjoyable in a silly way.

While season 2 of The Mandalorian had the distinct flavor of introducing executive producer mandated spin-off hooks, I still found it quite good overall. The finale was the perfect ending to the Mando and child storyline.

The perfect ending. We didn't need anymore after that ending.

Everything Mando related after that has gone totally off the rails by undoing that ending, and the show has become a parody of itself.

I think around season 3-4 the writing on the show got high on its own supply, as it were. The dramatic, maudlin moments that felt like the writers really thinking it was the peak of writing were just so overwrought to me. The show has gotten away from that, and by season 6 and 7 all the interpersonal drama and depressing tendencies of the main cast are pretty much gone. The show still has dark premises and lots of over the top moments, but it has stopped lingering on "deep" moments. I think it is much better for it. There is a new main cast character which works for the better, and the rest of the family integrates into the adventures more.

Seeing all of that "2020s stuff" in the poster is giving me really bad vibes. It gives me the same feeling as the Futurama cryptocurrency episode, where the commentary was late to the punch and delivered by writers either out of step with the subject or with the original show. I know KOTH was a premise about an old fashioned guy dealing with encroaching modern times, but it was written genuinely. The poster just cramming so many things in at once worries me that will trying too aggressively recreate that original premise by slapping the most bleeding edge topics into it.

I gotta go with my man Ice-T on Law & Order: SVU. While the writing does him no favors in making his character seem slow on the uptake, his acting usually consists of loudly talking in a monotone that feels like it was too loudly mixed in ADR even though it's not.