Yeah, even if you blast the center or mute other speakers or whatever there are sequences you can't understand dialogue in some shows. Boosting center helps and is worth doing, but it won't fix it all. It's also obvious when you watch older stuff and have zero issues. Or when some shows you have almost no issues, and others you have many, on the exact same setup with the exact same settings.

I'm not super familiar but it might be like the St Louis mob, which technically still exists but now is basically a bunch of geriatrics (like, over 80) running numbers games and maybe a bit of gambling and the FBI decided it wasn't even worth following any longer.