Although I’ve flirted with other movie and TV sites, I keep coming back to imdb even though I find it difficult to navigate and I hate all the crap they try to throw in my face. Their iOS app has become unusable as far as I’m concerned, so I stick to their web site, and as long as I keep my ad blocker up to date, I can manage.

Over the years I’ve developed my own method of rating movies and TV shows. Basically, if I like something a lot, I give it eight stars. That means it’s probably something I’ll want to watch again at some point. To get nine or even ten stars it has to be something extra special, so there aren’t too many nines and tens in my rating history. Although as it happens, I will give a show like Buffy or The Wire a ten even though their individual episodes are mostly eights; it’s in the aggregate that they win that top rating.

Then again, I have a tendency to dock a show a point or two if it does something that annoys me. So even if overall I’ve enjoyed an episode, if it depicts gratuitous smoking (i.e., not related to the plot), I’ll shave off a point. Yes, I know that actors are always looking for something to do with their hands, but by this time they should have learned to avoid smoking unless it’s needed for the plot. Needless to say (at least I assume it’s needless to say), if a show was produced before, say 1970, or is set in that timeframe, I might overlook a smoking actor.

It often happens that I don’t finish watching a movie or show. In those cases, I’ve developed the convention of rating it a five. Sometimes this happens because I’m just pressed for time; other times, I might not be in the mood for that particular show. And often I come back to it months or years later and end up enjoying it and re-rating it.

Then again, sometimes a show will begin with a long lingering closeup of the lead character smoking a cigarette. In those cases I nearly always stop watching, rate it a five, and never come back. If you can’t find a better way to introduce your main character, your show isn’t for me.

Because of my “five” convention, it’s rare that I give a rating less than five. But it does happen. Still, four is usually as low as I typically go. Even a really bad show or movie usually has something a bit redeeming in it. So I find it difficult to understand why I see some many people handing out one star ratings. Especially to episodes of shows that they apparently otherwise like.

Case in point, the recent season of The Brokenwood Mysteries.

I confess that since Mrs. Marlowe is no longer in the show (she hasn’t appeared since Covid, so I hope the actress, Elizabeth McRae, is ok, but I can’t find any information on her), the show has lost its most colorful character. The recent season was a bit uneven, and I noticed that I was a bit out of sync with the average ratings; I was giving it sevens, while the average was eight. But then in episode five I thought it got some of its old flair again, and I gave it an eight, only to notice that the average was 6.8.

So I delved into some of the reviews. Big mistake.

The plot of the episode was split between the mystery, which was a bit better than usual, and the personal story of the lead detective, which I enjoyed. Now I noticed from many of the reviews that some viewers didn’t care for the soap operaish cast of the story. Fair enough. In a case like that I would have docked it a point. Instead of an eight, I would have given it a seven.

Nope, not these guys.

They all gave it a one star rating.

One review even said, “Great mystery, terrible subplot.” And gave it a one.

I mean what’s wrong with these people?

I know. In the scheme of things, how people rate TV shows is not very important. But still.

What is wrong with these people?

BTW, all those negative reviews and ratings were balanced by folks claiming it was the greatest episode ever.