Despite the occasional taunts from my cohosts, I’m not a complete contrarian who avoids popular things because they’re popular. I just don’t feel any pressure to see, read or listen to things when they’re red-hot cultural icons, and often it’s because there’s just too much hype. It would be nigh-impossible for, say, ‘The Walking Dead’ to have been as good as the fandom would have had me believe, and when I did start reading it, I was impressed, but not transformed. The same goes for many high-profile movies and TV shows. ‘The Mandalorian’ was really good and I’m glad I watched it, but it had a hard row to hoe in terms of overcoming the gushing praise, leading us to today’s short-falling query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) will likely never seeing ‘Breaking Bad’ simply because it was held up for so long as a paragon of peak TV, asking: What bit of pop culture do you love, in spite of it getting too much hype?
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Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Yes, many inappropriately grimdark things have happened in the years following this series, both Batman-related and not, because of the success of it. But it is Frank Miller near the height of his storytelling mastery paired with an inker that complemented his pencils strongly and a colorist that elevated and set the mood perfectly. It is a compelling tale told by masters of their craft at their prime.
Hype almost always causes some pushback from me. Considering, Mandalorian really did it for me, its almost everything what I like about Star Wars and almost nothing I don’t.