How "The Voice" went from refreshing to unbearable

When NBC's "The Voice" premiered its first season on April 26 of last year, it was a surprisingly refreshing take on the singing competition series, and a very good alternative to the dreadful "American Idol". I started watching "The Voice" for two main reasons: I was curious to see if this was the show that could pull NBC out of the toilet, and of course there were those spinning chairs.

The second season premiered after the Super Bowl and the ratings were higher than ever. But the show has taken a severe plunge in quality this season and a show that I once found did everything right has now done almost everything wrong.

In which I defend a show I'm not particularly fond of at the moment

Every Monday, a video preview of that night's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" - be it a new episode or a rerun - goes up on the show's official Facebook page run by CBS. And every week, I continue to find the comments on those posts annoy me to no end. So allow me to vent about the ways in which other people vent: the weekly complaints follow.

1) "Another rerun??? Omg lyk u guys need to get it together, why is there only 1 nu ep each month? Gosh!!!!!!" (15-25 likes) - This is irritating to anyone familiar with how television works. There are 24 episodes a season and 36 weeks in the broadcast television season. That means that 12 times during the season, CBS cannot air a new episode of the show. It's always been that way. This is not a new phenomenon that's suddenly appeared this year. There are sweeps periods (periods in which television ratings are tracked to determine advertising costs on each show) every year in November, February, and May. Expect new episodes in the fall, but once the new year hits, don't look for them outside of sweeps. It's just how television works. Remember in the fall when we got 11 new episodes in a row? That's why there's reruns now. Accept it. Move on. Far better shows are not on the air at all.

2) "Omg finaly a new ep! It's been months since the last new episode!!!" (20-30 likes) - Same complaint, worded differently depending on a rerun or a new episode. Again, you're wrong, and get over it.

3) "This video is not available in your geographic region? That's sooo racist. Where do I live,, Narnia?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL" (5-12 likes) - People seem to think that CBS has it out for the international viewers of their shows by geo-filtering their material so that it can only be viewed within the United States. In reality, there are copious legal issues that prevent CBS from displaying video content in different countries. CBS does not hate your homeland, they just can't be bothered to sort out the legal issues of every specific country and different advertisers to display worldwide-viewable videos. Also, maybe this is just because I'm a Canadian and we get nearly every American show same day here, but why don't you just wait 10 hours and watch the episode? Is the preview all that necessary? And every person uses the Narnia joke. We get it, Narnia is a fictional location from a children's book hidden away from the rest of the civilized world. Someone on the page claimed the joke isn't funny anymore, but my response is that it wasn't ever funny. Finally, claims on the page that CBS doesn't care about anyone that isn't American or gives them money is also ridiculous - cock blocking you out of a 30 second promo doesn't give them extra bags of money to use as napkins. Any excuse to bag on the U.S. is a popular sentiment among those who are not American.

4) The show sucks now, you're going in circles, reveal the mother, end the show already (4-5 likes) - Okay yeah, can't argue with this one.

And if you continue to post such bullshit: