I've been thinking for ages about putting something like this up so people could forge lifelong grudges against each other and display their bad taste based on nothing more than 'it was boring' or 'I watched one episode and couldn't get into it', but thought better of it. Glad someone else did though. Anyone posting things in here should back up what they say in detail. For instance, off the top of my head:
Bob Dylan. Mid-sixties Dylan is great but he stops being musically interesting after that so the weight really falls on his songwriting, which is definitely patchy from then on. Every few years he'll bring out a pretty good album that people treat as if it's the second coming because it's so good in comparison to whatever series of embarrassments he's dished out in the few years before. And he's been awful live for decades and remains the single worst pop or rock star actor in history - a staggering achievement given the breadth and lows of the competition.
Shawshank. It's a good film, maybe the most good film ever made, in that it's well shot, performed well and hits the right emotional beats to get an audience reaction. But number one on the IMDb list? There isn't a shred of greatness about it, anything that's fresh or original or that says anything about the human condition that's deeper or less cliched than you'd get in the average episode of Glee. And the book is better. The convicts would also have just smashed a nerd like Dusfresne's teeth out if he'd threatened to bite down. Still far better than The Green Mile, but probably around Gump territory in terms of quality.
The Clash in the 80's. 70's Clash is good to fantastic, but half of Sandinista is almost unlistenable and a further quarter would have maybe scraped on to a B-side of the earlier albums. Combat Rock is a mixture of pub rock that would have been critically mauled if it had come from a less 'credible' artist, and tuneless, funkless, sonic experiments that forge a direct link to the horrors of BAD. And Bankrobber, coming from Joe 'son of a diplomat' Strummer, is one of the fakest anti-establishment songs ever written.
Mad Men. Great production design and pathos aren't enough to equal depth, especially when the constant despair and effort to portray every triumph as hollow or virtually meaningless renders the show monotonal, and practically every character is a one-dimensional postmodern cliche. It's pre-swinging 60's so it's obligatory to have a slick suited, semi-alcoholic alpha male, a bored housewife, closeted gay character and oblivious wife, faux beatnik, misogynistic representatives of the old guard, etc, etc, etc. It scores points for not being campy but it didn't deserve the plaudits or thinkpieces it got.
Feel free to disagree with these, but anyone who's mentioning the likes of Citizen Kane, The Stones, The Wire or Pulp Fiction should have something substantial to back it up with.
