The Best Years (2007– )
6/10
Writers should steal from this show...but then you'd have to watch it.
26 December 2011
I bought this series at a DVD blowout for (cheap), for two seasons. I was hyped! Something new and I love getting quirky cancelled shows for my collection of failed series.

Then I watched the first episode. I sat back and thought "Just my luck: I never would have watched the second episode if I had seen this on T.V." Unfortunately, I had opened the DVDs so no returns. I was determined to get hours of entertainment for my money! I stuck through the bad all the way to the end, and actually found some good.

I think the really good part of the show was lost on its audience: the changes from, shall we say, Santa's Nice to Naughty List and back. Sure, everyone appreciates some of the witty lines (not many, but the ones in there have made their way into my conversations... it's not like anyone has seen the show so no one knows I'm stealing). However, the real intelligence of the series lies in how the heroes and heroines would be the put-out or even victims one week, then the next week even deserve the observations from their comrades in story lines over fluid refreshment: "you do know you're the @$$h0le in your story, right?" (pretty sure that was a direct quote; if not, it is definitely something everyone with real friends will hear after a 'debriefing' at some point in life.) Yes, the "evil" trouble-makers would have reasons, and the saints proved to be less than saintly; we know this. More importantly, the protagonists would be honourable one week and downright mean or selfish the next, making all sorts of wrong decisions. That is people, that is life and that is certainly university. It is a lesson the younger people could have used and us older people could have used a reminder. Mostly, I just like how it actually reflects life.

However, this show should have been cancelled. It was overly dramatic from the beginning. That can be okay, if you just commit to the idea that sometimes people end up in extreme circumstances, but then humongous events would just drop from consciousness where they would, in reality, form the basis for very different behaviours. I found myself wanting to scream at the screen (because writers and producers can hear you through the television) "you just established why that character wouldn't do that!" Also, the characters they lost from the first season to the second took away from the show; I hope they lost the actors to other projects, because they were seriously wrong if they thought that was a good writing decision.

Bottom line: the show had a lot of potential but decided to never live up to it. Oh, wait, maybe that is many university students... nah, the show was written by adults: they could have done much better.
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