The Tudors Sucks
I felt that it was really important to title this post “The Tudors Sucks” for two reasons: first, The Tudors really really sucks; second, when I google “The Tudors sucks” nothing comes up! Am I the only person on the internet who thinks The Tudors sucks? With the amount of suckage going on in this show, somehow I doubt it, but where are all the naysayers? This show blows, people! I’m almost done the first season, and I still don’t care about any of the characters. So why do I keep watching? Mostly so I can get angry about how much this show sucks.
Things that suck about The Tudors:
- Any scene starring Henry VIII, played by the getting-less-sexy-with-every-episode Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Meyers takes a rather complex figure and makes him totally one-dimensional. He seems to equate intensity and passion with crazy eyes and shouting. Meyers as Henry should be carrying the show, and he’s just not.
- The dialogue. Most scenes could be better played with some creative grunting and gesturing. King mistrust other king. King want divorce or get violent mad.
- Ham-handed character development.The moment when The Tudors officially lost me was the set up in Episode 4 where, after a hilarious near-death experience where Henry gets stuck upside-down in a giant mud puddle, he tells Cardinal Wosely something like, “Everything has changed since I almost died. I have to get serious about having a male heir now.” I feel like good writing and acting could have probably conveyed that without having to explicitly state it. There is a lot of plot and character progression that has to be explained rather explicitly.
- The sex scenes are boring and the screen time could be better spent toward remedying the aforementioned lack of character development. Heaving bosoms are great and all, but if I don’t care about the characters, I don’t care that they’re getting it on.
- The political strategy scenes are boring, poorly executed, and painful to watch. Clearly everyone else is here for the heaving bosoms so why not just get back to them if you’re going to bungle the serious parts.
- The entire show is boring. This is coming from a person who loves period dramas and movies with slow pacing. If there were contests for length of attention span, I would win medals. How did they make a show that could bore even me?
- Displays of masculinity. Long scenes of jousting, hunting, and arm wrestling. Boring, boring, and boring.
- Too many characters that you never learn anything about before they get killed off. Like William Compton, who began having an intriguing homosexual affair with Thomas Tallis in Episode 5, only to be killed off by the sweating sickness in Episode 8. Don’t worry, Tallis got about 10 seconds of screen time to cry at his grave. Thanks for setting that up, writers.
- Not doing more with Natalie Dormer. The actress who playes Anne Boleyn is super hot and does things with her eyes that would make Tyra proud. She deserves a hat tip for being the only kind of compelling character on the show, but still struggles through the bad writing.
- Sam Neil. I liked you a lot better in Jurassic Park.
- They cast singer Joss Stone as Anne of Cleves for Season 3. Really?
I’m not even going to get into historical inaccuracies, mostly because the show has too many other problems before the issue of historical inaccuracy.
The Tudors sucks. Are you with me, yay or nay?
September 5, 2008 2:29 pm
Liam said:
Link to this comment
Are you entirely sure you and m’lady Beth aren’t the same exact person? Because, frankly, you hate too many of the same things for precisely the same reasons as her, and I’m starting to get suspicious.
We watched about a Tudors-and-a-half before giving up. And she LOVES period drama. AND Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. It was sooooo slow. And not measured and well-paced slow, not Mad Men slow. Boring, faux-serious, ‘look-at-us-aren’t-we-a-nice-period-drama-so-we-have-to-be-slow’ slow.
And yet the CBC acts like they pulled off some sort of mad coup for getting it.