I don't know how the writers for this show got the idea that what makes for compelling characters are people who are distant, cold, self-centered, bitchy and basically unlikable. I'm four episodes in and already losing empathy with most of the characters. Maybe the malevolence of Hill House will spare me and take all the characters by episode five.
Seriously, what assholes.
Hhhm, "likability." I always have to ask what is that? Wonder why the Sopranos, Seinfeld, The Godfather, Patton etc. never followed this "rule." I think I got it. Seems like a safe, padnering way to present characters in a way that doesn't make you think.
Shows of a higher standard don't care about pidgeon holing themselves that way and want to portray their characters for who they are, and they're all the more complex and real for it. Besides, I found each character brimming with empathy. They didn't need to be "likable" for the show to excel at it.
"Shows of a higher standard". Yes, because that's what this was. High brow art, right? What with all of its HBO-esque needless lesbian sex scenes, and constant f-bombs for no other reason than they could, or the peppering or needlessly grotesque moments just because they can be done (for shock value and nothing else).
Also, the shows like what you mention, or say Game of Thrones, or The Walking Dead, etc., their bread and butter is the fact that SOME people (obviously enough), like watching train-wrecks. They like all of the needless drama, and everyone being a sh**hole, etc. There obviously is a big enough audience who simply likes to watch awful people, being awful to other people.
Lastly, just because YOU have a certain opinion or take on something, doesn't mean someone else's opinion is invalid. It doesn't give you the right to crap on their opinion, or talk down to them, just because you disagree. That is childish BS at its best. If someone would like the characters they're investing in, to be more "likeable", that's their prerogative, just as much as it is their right to express that, on a forum like this, for expressing such things. I didn't find these characters to be "more complex and real", because they (specifically Steve, Shirley and Theodora) were each in their own way pompous, selfish jerkwads. Their lives have been hard, childhood filled with nightmarish tragedy. I get it. But that doesn't mean I like them, and frankly, I didn't have much empathy for those three at all, because they grew up to be sh*tty people.
Luke, while frustrating, was understandable. Poor Nell, was the only TRULY likeable one of the five kids.
Interesting, I don't feel the need to like or identify with the characters at all.
Couldn't possibly bother me less when it came to my enjoyment of the show.