MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > IMDb's TV ratings are a joke.

IMDb's TV ratings are a joke.

posted 5 years ago by samoanjoes (52129)
21 replies | jump to latest

There are so many problems with it.

First, there are way too many mediocre shows that are an 8.0 or higher. It might be a result of my second point.

Second, you can vote for a new show that is only a few episodes in. For example: when Westworld was only 4 episodes in it was an 8.9. Fans of the series didn't love the second season and now going into its third season it's now an 8.8. Too many people gave it high scores when it first came out that it's going to take a lot more ratings to bring the score down.

Third, how can you even rate a show? Should you give a score for every episode then average it out by the end of the season? Do you give a score at the end of every season and not the individual episodes? Do you wait until the end of the series to give it a score even though if you rated every episode individually, it wouldn't average out to the final score you gave it?

I think that's why the TV scores are all over the place and that's why you see so many shows with high scores.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 5 years ago

Westworld Season Three premieres 2020. And I loved Season Two.

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

That was a mistake. It should have said "going into its third season". Anyway, I know a lot of fans were disappointed with season two.

[–] SomeCodhopper (76) 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

I'm aware that you can rate individual episodes. It doesn't factor into the overall score. Personally, I don't think you should be able to vote for an entire series until it's completely over Even if it lasts 20 years. I'd be okay with rating every seasons. But it's ridiculous that you can vote for a new show only a few episodes in.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I feel the same about reviews and TV shows. So someone writes a positive review during the show's first season which is actually good. The show then goes down hill, should that review still carry much credit?

Not to mention obvious studio shills writing glowing reviews for TV shows and movies. It just makes it worse when you do watch something that is rated highly and find out it isn't so great after all.

The other thing that is inaccurate is the show run's. So a show goes from say 1985-1990. Then they decided to bring it back in say 2005 but IMDB will just write 1985-2005. That is not accurate there was a whole 15 year gap between end and come back.

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

It's like Arrested Development. It was a 9.0 after the third season. Years later it's been rebooted and has had two new seasons that fans hated and it's now an 8.8. Two out of five seasons have been negatively received and yet it still has a high score like that.

The show Chernobyl just started and it's currently #1 on the top 250 shows. That seems almost insulting that a new show that just started can come in and be rated higher than something like The Sopranos.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Although a viewer based rating system sounds great in theory the problem is most people will see something as "Awesome=10" or "Crap=0" or possibly "It's ok=5".

Not to mention how many of these reviews are the shills and staff of the show or movie? That god awful all female Ghostbusters started off rating in the 7's and 8's from memory after the initial wave of die hard SJW's finished rating it a 10 the majority votes started piling up and it dropped to what is now a 5.2.

Same with TV shows, give it some time and Chernobyl will drop as well. Same thing happened with "Chambers" a really bad show which started off rating highly now has dropped to 6.6.

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

Although there are problems with both the movie and TV show ratings, I can get a more accurate assessment of a film because it's a review of a single two hour film compared to a multiple episodes of multiple seasons.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

That is true. The problem though is the shills. I recently watched "American Warfighter" as it sounded interesting and was rated 8/10. Well the film was absolute shit. It became obvious that the reviews and ratings were by friends and family, the crew etc. After a few weeks the rating dropped a great deal and is now sitting at 4.8.

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

I've seen that quite often, mostly in the reviews though. When I start to get skeptical of 10/10's, I click the username and see that they just signed up within the last few days.

[–] Nirvana (271) 5 years ago

Its all fake. Dont trust a thing on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes. Its all bullshiet

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I've noticed many films get high ratings on RT.

[–] Nirvana (271) 5 years ago

Yeah RT is super bogus. Makes IMDB seem legit

[–] Knish (1721) 5 years ago

It's true that the ratings are too high for a lot of tv series. Some say it's because if you don't like a tv show you simply stop watching and rating it and if you like it you keep watching and rating.

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

Yeah, I feel like that's definitely a reason. For a movie, if you don't like it, you finish watching it and give it a vote considering most movies are less than three hours.

[–] BillHicksFan (10203) 5 years ago

I feel the same

[–] GlenEllyn (21162) 5 years ago

Grade inflation??

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

I'm sure a little, but I think it's just fans who love it at first and couldn't be bothered to re-vote after further seasons got worse.

[–] GlenEllyn (21162) 5 years ago

I bet you're right.

[–] slimone (7996) 5 years ago

The ratings seem pretty accurate to me.

[–] samoanjoes (52129) 5 years ago

Currently on the TV top 250, "What We Do in the Shadows" is in the last spot with an 8.4 rating. An 8.4 on the film top 250 would be at #66. A lot of the shows there are still on as well as a lot of them being within it's first two seasons. These shows have already received a lot of votes so further seasons which may be mediocre, would hardly dent the score.