Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gammateam 2745 days ago
House of cards: filler by season 3 and the last season turning into an incoherent mess to deal with the accepted but voluntary PR response of axing the main character, out of all possible responses.

Orange is the new black: loses all forms of ‘conflict’ as a literary device by season 3

And these are the flagship titles!

Low bar

Edit: since downvotes pause my ability to post for hours so I cant even respond, the only point is that this is what a Netflix fan can expect to experience from any show they get into. The “good” shows have the above experience, no matter what the rationale or external pressure was, and then there is everything else which is even worse.

4 comments

Firing a serial sexual harasser of his own coworkers is more of an HR thing than it is a PR thing. You simply cannot keep someone like that employed; it's way too much of a legal liability. Also, many people would refuse to work with someone like that entirely, out of principle.

Maybe they should have canceled the series entirely instead of continuing on without him, but keeping him employed on the show was never an option.

As someone who worked at one of the large networks, I disagree with you when you state that it was more of an HR than PR thing.

I can assure you the types of behavior that these male actors were accused of were no secrets, neither at my company nor in the industry. Nobody did anything about it, and it wasn’t until it blew up into a fire storm thanks to social media that these companies decided the best response from a business sense was to suddenly pretend we are on a moral high ground and sever these relationships. It was fear and about saving image.

Otherwise, the response would have been to deny and secretly pay off accusers while maintaining relationships with the Kevin Spaceys of the world.

If it an HR/legal issue, he could be brought in as a contractor.
That wouldn't change anything. If a company knowingly chooses to bring a sexual harasser into your workplace, and you get harassed, the technical employment status of the harasser won't matter when you file your lawsuit against the company.
OITNB is one of their first originals, and I wouldn't call it their best work.

Here's a list of their best work, IMO:

  - Stranger Things
  - Narcos
  - The OA
  - The Haunting of Hill House
  - Marvel series. All of them!
  - GLOW
  - Ozark
  - Altered Carbon
  - American Vandal
  - 13 Reasons Why
Also good:

  - Atypical
  - Love
  - Flaked
  - Maniac
  - Master of None
  - Chef's Table
  - Making a Murderer
This is by no means a complete list, you can find that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...

I tried to skim through it and provide my own short lists of what I really liked, so this is just one person's opinion.

Orange is the New Black and House of Cards were the first two originals that I watched, and I remember liking House of Cards, although it is very slow, but I stopped watching OITNB after the second season.

Flagship titles? Is that really an important thing for Netflix?

The thing is (like Amazon & Hulu) is that they have no advertisers, hence publish no viewing figures for anything.

We really have no idea what's working for them and what isn't.

For HoC I swear that was the third or fourth "president" show I watched that used the Mercers as a major plot device.