2021 Round Up Day 24: YOUR SECRET PLEASURE

I don’t really know if it’s so secret but this 100% goes to So I Married An Anti Fan.

Look. This show is technically not good. It is technically a grandiose trainwreck among trainwrecks. But oh my gosh was it *cathartic.*

Quite often I will deliberately try to lower my expectations for a show so that in the inevitable event that it burns me, I will, at least in theory, be less disappointed. This doesn’t always work, because I am very invested in the art of storytelling overall, and will always desire and crave Good Stories, and so when I can see where a show goes wrong, or where I wanted it to be better, that hope for something better tends to lead to disappointment anyway, because I still want to find that one more story, one day, that doesn’t suck.

Alternatively, this can turn to anger towards a show’s utter lack of respect or regard for its craft, if it manages to suck that extra much.

So, it’s very rare for me to actually have no true investment in a show- and still like it… and still keep watching it…
That is, I can DROP your show, because I stopped caring about it, and not care as much about it going off the rails because of that.

But to have no emotional investment in a show to the point where it could do ANYTHING? And I wouldn’t Care? Where I can watch no matter how bad it is, no matter what technical or metaphysical crimes it commits, and it DOESN’T ANNOY ME? And my hyperanalytical brain DOESN’T go insane watching it???

That is very, very rare.
And its name, is So I Married An Anti Fan.

I do in general have about 1 or 2 of these watches a year, that I call “Trash Loves”*, that meet the criteria of “not giving a shit about how bad it is” to various degrees, but I think Anti Fan meets the criteria probably the most successfully so far.

It was an entirely sublimely cathartic watch.
It is objectively terrible and technically awful and I love it; Everyone changes motivation 5 times an episode, the main OTP go from Madly Toxic and Dysfunctional to the Only People In The Room That Communicate literally Overnight, for no reason, the side characters are all loathsome, there is no true character development or central theme, the dialogue is cringey, the acting awkward, the directing 10 years old, the show dramatically and inevitably forgets its own premise, the ending is WEAK and drags and is dumb and there is a birth secret AND an unearned redemption arc AND a double truck of doom, and it is- ~amazing~- because I had zero emotional investment in it.
A masterpiece in “so bad it is good”; I looked forward to it every week.

.
.
.

*Secret Royal Inspector and Joy was in this Trash Love category until they killed Bead Boy. It may remake this list if and when I stop feeling bitter towards it… Big If.

(also please this helmet scene asdfghjk)