experimentation: Mindhunter (2017), The Librarians (2014)

Trying new shows, sometimes by recommendation, sometimes just if the summary sounds interesting. The first few minutes are usually rough, but you try to withhold judgement, give it some time to develop. A little bit of choppy acting is OK; it takes time even for good actors to really find the character.

Think of the first season of Babylon 5 or even Star Trek TNG. Everything was so new, but they found their way and your investment paid off.

Mindhunter promises the early days of police forensics and profiling, but the dialogue is so jarring I feel like I'm watching Twin Peaks.

The Librarian offers fantasy and adventure, but seems to be kludged together out of old worn building blocks.

Both seem formulaic, but different recipes. Librarian is on TNT, and seems to be made out of extremely worn Hollywood cliches of mainstream TV. Mindhunter is made out of the new cliches being created by Netflix. Not as easy to pin down, but increasingly recognizable. The stodgy main characters who's actually kind of a perv, the overly self-aware dialogue, the bending-over-backwards strain to tag whatever cultural space-time point they've chosen to set the show in, and the occasional idiom that contradicts it.