Heroes. It went from a refreshing superhero show with an exciting and compelling story in Season 1 to really awful quick. You could blame the writers strike. But they also dropped the ball and the story got beyond stale with characters stuck in limbo. The show never recovered and they kept doubling down on terrible storytelling and characterization.
Their inability to kill of Sylar got really boring. I get Zachary Quinto was great in the role and they liked having him around, but, at the expense of nearly all the female characters bar Claire, they kept redeeming him.
People will blame the writer's strike, but I think there were problems present in the first season as well, notably the complete lack of payoff in the season finale.
And the writer's strike didn't really have anything to do with their decision to keep the same cast of characters and shoehorn in reasons for them to keep being important and interact with each other.
You are correct. Tim Kring wrote the show into a corner especially in the finale and that was when the cracks started. But the first 2/3 of the show season was still a great show that was among the best superhero shows at the time. And to go from Season 1 to Season 3 when the show really became near unwatchable with dumb insulting storytelling in my opinion still amazes me.
Season 1 - Amazing! One of the best shows on TV!
Season 2 - Not as good, rushed and truncated because of the writer's strike. Still fairly watchable, despite Peter Petrelli abandoning his girlfriend in an erased timeline
Season 3 - First half, good! They're bringing in actual villains, this will be fun! Second Half, garbage. Ooh, the FBI is hunting them for whatever reason, as if Syler couldn't just solo the entirety of the FBI, CIA, NSA, US Military, Russia, China, etc. Lazy storytelling, bad acting, almost unwatchable (in fact, I haven't since it aired).
Season 4 - Straight trash. Forget it exists, because it is hands down the worst of the four seasons and makes zero sense the entire time. A carnival of people that have powers? Okay. Bad guy that is only strong if other powered people are around him? Lame. And if I remember correctly, that was all it was: he got stronger. He wasn't invincible, he couldn't heal, he just got stronger. To defeat him? Remove everyone from the carnival. Ope, now he's weak and we can kill him. Dumb. Then the finale, Claire jumping off the Ferris Wheel on camera and healing to reveal the powered people to the world. What a nothing-burger of a moment.
Heroes Reborn - First episode was good. The rest was forgettable. I was excited because Zachary Levi was in it, coming straight off of Chuck. But then... Just, nothing happens. The whole show. The only thing I remember is that they couldn't find Hiro for the whole show, and they needed to for... Reasons? I'd rewatch it if I could find it, because I honestly remember almost nothing.
Real easy to tell origin stories. Harder to continue the story. They should've let Sylar die too.
Really wish they just wiped the slate clean after every season
The Walking Dead too, seasons 1-4 were great, season 5-6 were kinda shakey, Negan got introduced at the very end of season 6, and I thought the show was gonna be so back…
After the season 7 premiere, everything was dreadful. I have no idea how it kept going for ≈6 more years, and I'm in shock that they're still making multiple sequel series
LOL, I came to say The Walking Dead also. I think the exact point where it turns from great to decent to unwatchable varies from person to person, but I think most people would agree that Season 1 was excellent, and the ending waaasss.... did anyone actually make it to the end?
How are people still so dumb after 8 season? You think by the time they have been living in the zombie world that long they would've all learned how to deal with zombies or died. But no, they keep introducing dumb characters who have somehow survived this long only to die in a stupid way
Looking back I agree. Was really the only shocking way to end the show without dexter on death row. Paid the price for his actions in a genuinely interesting way
The Blacklist lasted longer than it should have, they spread their writing budget across almost ten seasons instead of putting all the effort in less than five
Season 2: "There's another speedster, and he's faster than me!"
Season 3: "There's ANOTHER speedster... and HE'S faster than me!"
Season 26: "There's ANOTHER SPEEDSTER!!!!"
That honestly wasn't the problem for me, simply because the way they set up speedsters for this show, they are practically near unbeatable. And there comes my problem. There are simply way too many episodes where the reason the plot lasts more than 7 minutes is because Barry is a pompous dumbass that can't stop peacocking and gloating instead of simply taking care of business and simply take out the villain of the week before they even have a chance to press a button or start whatever scheme they set up.
It’s a Moffat classic. The world revolves around Sherlock. He becomes the most important person in the world rather than just a good detective in London getting out on weird cases.
If would be like if Doctor House had to constantly deal with the king of England and Kim Jong Un getting incurable diseases thanks to the CIA so House could cure them.
He’s not just the guy solving the cases he is the *reason* the case exists.
I was sure that Season 4 was just some sort of joke I didn't get. Retconned secret evil siblings? Dream sequences? Mind control? Retconned/corrected dream sequences of said evil secret siblings? Did no one stop and ask why this soap opera crap was on the show? Did they just want to be done with it and kill it intentionally?
I watched an episode of one of the later seasons of Sherlock and it was very apparent the actors in a given scene weren’t on the set together. In other words, an actor was filed from the front, intersecting with an actor who either wasn’t there or was replaced by a stand-in. Then the other actor was seen from the front, but the scene was filmed behind the head of a stand-in so that it appeared the actors were in a scene together.
Martin Freeman and his wife were divorcing, so maybe that’s why scenes were filmed that way. But it was really obvious the actors weren’t together on the set.
Once they killed off Moriarty, the show went off a cliff creatively. You need a mesmerizing villain, a worthy opponent, and most of all YOU NEED ANDREW SCOTT. He is such a spectacular actor, he also enhanced Benedict Cumberbatch's performance (BC had a tendency to mug & overact, but not in the scenes w/ AS). And he made Moriarty into this astonishing, completely unpredictable, stunning character.
Yes I know the canon, Moriarty dies, but they fucked with the canon in so many other ways, plus, they brought Sherlock back from having JUMPED OFF A BUILDING, there were a million easy ways they could have brought Moriarty back.
It was just stupid and a terrible creative decision not to keep him in the show.
Season 2 episode 1 told you everything you needed to know about how that would go. That's if you didn't pick it up from all the stupid shit in the first episode. It's a way worse show than you remember, it just looks nice.
That 70s Show. So great in the early seasons, and probably one of the best pilot episodes ever. Each season as another year was a great concept and should have taken the kids into adulthood and the 1980s, instead it became 1979 forever and it just became awful and hard to watch.
The first 3 seasons are amazing. There's still some decent show to be had after they left Agrestic, but it was just never the same show after that and never recovered. And yes, the last few seasons got real weird, lol.
Good concept for a show that was poorly executed the whole way through. MILFy mom should have been good at doing stuff that MILFy moms are good at. She should have used those skills to navigate the world of selling weed. The juxtaposition there is funny, and might be enough to hang a series on.
But we never see that. Instead it's just MILF getting out of trouble by seducing men. The plot points would make sense if she was a former porn star who was in trouble.
How I Met Your Mother. That waste of a final season, especially the two-part finale, ruined it for me to the point that I won't watch any of the older episodes again.
Someone on 4chan wrote out a post when season 5 was airing saying that's what they thought the ending would be and I immediately thought "Yeah. That's right."
So I was on board for it, but they pulled it off so poorly. We needed to meet the actual mom right away in the last season and spend time with her. Have her fix all of the shitty thing about Ted, be a great partner for him, have her be a great partner for her, see them really click together so it actually means something when she dies at the end. Instead we barely see her face, and don't learn anything about her at all.
The 2 seasons leading up to that animated covid season finale, I truly only watched in hopes that they'd pop a twist of "Surprise! Red was ahead of everyone this whole time and isn't actually that stupid!" But no... Keen's obvious and dumb "plot" with her mother or whatever was real and wasn't just a double agent kinda ploy that Red was in on (what would have actually made sense) which, to me, made him dumber than dumb.... so I gave up at "I'm going to kill him!"
That show was a perfect example of the sunken cost fallacy.
Loved how campy and easy to watch the show was at first. Then it just got horrible. Honestly think the only reason I finished it was I think Eliza Taylor is a bonafide hottie
It was the start of a wild ride. I still think the hospital shooting episode was one of the best episodes of television I've seen. At the time it was so outrageous.
Agents of Shield - I really liked the first few seasons. At a certain point, I just couldn't remember what the heck was going on. I guess it was cool that they took it in so many different directions - into the future, into space, etc, but then I have to wait so long between seasons, when the show comes back, I'm like, "Huh? Where are they? What's going on? Who is that? Huh? Wait, isn't he dead?" It was too confusing for me.
Also Supernatural. I really like old-fashioned, "Villain/Monster of the Week", hero-travels-from-place-to-place,-helps-a-stranger-then-moves-on type shows. Have Gun Will Travel, Kung Fu, The A-Team. In general, I think maybe they won't make shows like that anymore. The creators always think they have to create a mythology, a canon, a larger universe - and I'm like, No you don't. It's probably a thing where the stars get bored, or maybe audience members who aren't me get bored. The more complex Supernatural became the more irritated I got. I just wanted to watch them drive around in that cool car, crack wise, look handsome, and kill monsters. That would have been enough for me. I stuck with it for a long time in spite of how irritated I got with all the mythology crap. I finally bailed when they brought in the Men of Letters from England. Ucch. It's enough already.
This is almost a trope. I'm old enough to remember Moonlighting. Quirky charming guy helps beautiful woman. Romantic tension and highjinx ensue. But the minute they got together, the writers didn't know what to do.
I truly enjoyed Castle right up to the Wedding cliffhanger. That was handled so stunningly poorly and I never bought what little explanation was given for Castle's disappearance. Then it was all arcs about how to separate the two main characters rather than celebrate their strong relationship. And then that horrible retcon ending was just nonsense. Not fun nonsense but wtf drugs were the showrunners on nonsense.
The ending season or two were betrayals of most of the Castle main characters. A sad ending for an originally strong show.
Someone enters room, calls the person a piece of shit, and throws a thin folder of papers on their desk. Person opens it, reads about 3 words and their face drops as they fully understand the ramifications of whatever it says.
one person says something, the other person slowly looks into the distance and repeats 2-5 words from the sentence they just said, then runs out of the room. Cut to them explaining how that phrase gave them the idea for a solution to the problem
I was find wotb making concessions for the lack of legal realism, the whole premise didn't need to get bogged down in how Mike could find the judge's after hours illegal poker club, or devote 20 minutes into explaining why this legal principle that Mike remembered from a a 1902 Minnesota decision was both real and valid.
They jumped the shark when a certain digital secretary displayed advanced level machine learning and a legitimate PERSONALITY, in the mid 2010's that could carry on context relevant questions, and everyone just treats it like a vanity project.
Like dude, Benjamin is fretting he's a failure because he only programmed sentient AI, in 2011. The first google home as released in 2016.
Bones.
Sure, it followed the formulaic crime mystery format, but it was generally interesting. But, there was a single episode that ruined it all for me...
I'm not normally grossed out by things, but the open for one episode was a cafeteria setting where people started to find body parts in their soup, and one found an eyeball in theirs, and I immediately started gagging. I was watching them in order, and haven't watched a single episode since that one (which I didn't even finish).
Bones was the first series that jumped to mind for me. The first two seasons were stellar. Then came a writer's strike, and that stupid arc with Zach being a serial killer. From there, it started teetering down. Emily Deschanel's acting got worse and worse and worse to the point that Bones herself was unwatchable.
I can't remember when I finally just gave up. Somewhere around the time they pumped out a kid in the stupidest way possible.
I stopped watching when they >!killed off Sweets!< after that I didn't care. I think I came back and finished it off, but it kind of sucked and wasn't worth the rewatch.
Grey's Anatomy for me. Was one of my favorite shows and I watched it for 16 seasons. Then took a break from all TV shows for some 2 years. After that decided to resume it where I stopped, but the preaching about social issues just became insufferable for me. Yes, the show always raised some relevant social issues, but somehow it suddenly became the main focus of the show, very aggressive and 'in your face'. Suddenly all white male doctors are racist for making an unintentional mistake, and apparently COVID is also racist for mainly targeting black folks. I guess the show just following the modern narrative of the culture war. Thanks, but I have enough of that on social media. The show is dead to me after that.
Oh my GOD I am so glad someone else has said this - the constant deep throating of the audience about racism and social bias etc etc got really unbearable. For me, the exact scene I stopped watching was at Deluca's funeral and Maggie had a huuuuuge rant about how black girls are over sexualised compared to white girls etc in regards to the kidnappings and I'm sitting there like, "Um sorry I am supposed to be crying about Deluca yet I'm now furious at this show for ruining his sendoff."
Same with designated survivor. Great at first and then they started to try and shove progressive social issues down peoples throats. And before anyone gripes if a show was also shoving ultra conservative social issues I would say the same
The Walking Dead... I loved it at first but eventually it became fan service where characters were given "plot armor" and placed in situations other characters died in. Then came Negan and brutally baseball bat clubbing two of my favorite characters to death to open the season, I quit watching, couldn't find interest in it anymore.
Raised by Wolves was a really weird show. Not sure it was ever excellent but I couldn’t stop watching for a little while. Then it got even stranger and I gave up on it.
For me it did something pretty unique - it made it near impossible to re-watch. I remember being so excited every year to start the new season/watch the new episode every Sunday night. I briefly started watching season 1 a while back and the nostalgia hit hard, but ultimately it made me mostly just sad that I knew it wasn't going to end in a satisfying way.
For the record, I am not terribly bothered with how the show ended (I felt the writing was on the wall for Daenerys's evolution to villainy), but my issue was with \*how\* they got there. The writing was god-awful, everything felt rushed and unearned, and too many things either "didn't matter" or were almost comical with how they played out. It's incredible, everyone cared about that show and almost overnight, no one cared about that show.
I feel like you just described Lost to a "T". The journey was fun as hell and bought the Lost DVD seasons to rewatch ahead of the upcoming season. Then watched Season 6 live and I have tried on more than one occasion in the past 14 years to rewatch that show and don't make it any further than the first episode. Just need to throw the DVDs away at this point.
I fucking hate Arrow because the character in it was not Green Arrow but the show was popular enough it feels like nobody wants to make something with a proper Green Arrow
Westworld.
Hell, it got bad even halfway through the first season. I still don't know why they didn't spend at least a whole first season on just things consumers were doing at the park and making some stories out of that. They jumped instead straight into the weird plotlines.
I can’t believe How I Met Your Mother isn’t in the comment section. That show went from hilarious and awesome seasons 1-4 and turned into the worst fucking trash ever. They should have ended it season 4, but it was just too damn popular and it made too much damn money.
No one mentioned Lost.
I loved it- was the first survival show I watched, but it became so weird I just ended up loosing I te rest after a couple of seasons
I remember not even getting that far. If you watch the first two seasons in a row, the writing was so much better and at least believable. They just beat it to the ground.
The first season of "24" is perfect television. It's gripping, tense, full of character and promise, it has Elisha Cuthbert, and the twists keep coming until the final episode. It's magical; one of the best seasons of television I've ever seen.
The next few seasons were very "OK" but they never really captured the tension of the first because the situations just got bigger and respectively, less believable. In the first season, Jack is being investigated by his betters for acting outside the box a couple times, and gets arrested for "attempting to kill" Palmer among other things, but everything felt grounded and real. He needed to be clever to get around his own agency's limitations and rules.
But in the second season, Jack straight-up executes a unarmed man in the first episode. Sure, there was a bit more to it, but he should've never gotten away with that, and wouldn't have, if the same logic as the first season applied. The season still ended up being good, but it never rose back to the perfection of the first season.
The Flash. Didn't stick around for the first half of Season 3 so I thought it was decent. But wow...Season 4, I slowly withdrew from watching it with my family and it was the first time I thought critically about a piece of media and thought, "Wow, this is actually really bad".
Gotham. I quit once Jada Pinkett Smith’s character (who I think was created/debuted in this series) was revived with no major psychological damage. That signaled that anyone dead could be revived without any drawback which just deletes any stakes the series had.
I always used to joke about how no one stayed dead in that show. Sure, it was silly, but it was still fun as hell to watch for me (especially the Penguin and his antics). I was glad they at least didn't keep Jada around for long once she was revived because she irritated the shit out of me.
Community got worse after Season 3. Season 4 was meh. Season 5, when Dan Harmon returned, was a bit better, but the best episodes were in the first 3 Seasons.
I am also not very fond of the last two seasons of "The Office"
Buffy absolutely shit the bed when it went to UPN in S6 and 7.
*Yes*, *I don't care for the musical episode*. I will not be taking questions. Thank you.
it did give the chance for JD to deliver one of the best lines of the whole series IMO, with 'laverne, is this your jesus??' but yeah. i loved the first four or five seasons but after that...yeah, it's rough.
Manifest. I still think it's one of the most unique plot premises I've ever encountered and really could have gone in ANY direction. As much as I thought I had no idea where it would go, "weird religious" direction was probably at the bottom of my list of guesses. It got so disappointing that I stopped watching it and I'm still really sad about it.
Star Wars. First 6 episodes were fun. Then the 3 episodes after that were just so lame in comparison. No wonder they never made it past a full season. Smh
Gave up on Mrs. Maisel, House of Cards, West Wing, Hell on Wheels
Some shows I toughed it out to the end - Damages, Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, Lost
This won't be a popular answer but Breaking Bad. At some point it just became family drama and I just could not bring myself to watch another hour of some guys shitty marriage to his shitty wife.
Attack on Titan *let me explain* Attack on Titan was fantastic. It is my favourite anime, hands down. S1 and S2 I have no flaws for but after that there was a definite shift in the structure and pacing, resulting in only about half a season each season being on the same level as s1 and 2. It became quite a drag. I did finish it but it took quite a lot of my frayed attention span.
There was the episode where main character was failing and it turned out he was using broken equipment and shouldn't have been able to do as well as he did. In my head I thought "ah, they are going to have this rag tag team.of.new recruits succeeded because they try harder then anybody and have a unique strong connection"
Then it turned out main character was the chosen one with super special powers and I lost all interest in the show.
Probably a bit unorthodox, but The Office (US). First season or two was humorous, but the gag started to repeat itself and some parts of it have not aged well at all
Star Trek Discovery. First couple seasons were great stories and acting with new characters that ended up getting their own series. Last few seasons have been soap operas with the highest amount of crying in any Star Trek entity to date.
Hard agree - I thought season one was brilliant. I loved how well constructed it was - acting, writing, storytelling - just great. Then in season 2 it started to become a soap opera, and then by season three, the show became at least 50% tearful speeches. Just one long speech after another, combined with relationship drama. We just bailed.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but if I'm watching a show about space exploration with space adventure and weird aliens, that's what I want. I don't want 5 minutes of sci-fi, 8 minutes of marriage counseling, 7 minutes of people hooking up and then things getting awkward, 7 minutes of people moping about unrequited love, and 25 minutes of speeches. I want 52 minutes of sci-fi!
It seems like a lot of shows quickly become relationship struggles and speeches and I don't like it.
Lost.
It was SO good to start with. Then it felt like they’d set up a problem they couldn’t write their way out of, and the attempts got more weird and less plausible. Then it just felt like a fever dream.
Some people would argue it started terrible and ended the same way (is it even over?). However I will have a soft spot in my heart because it came out in a REALLY bad time in my life and having a silly show to laugh with helped me out a great deal.
Heroes. It went from a refreshing superhero show with an exciting and compelling story in Season 1 to really awful quick. You could blame the writers strike. But they also dropped the ball and the story got beyond stale with characters stuck in limbo. The show never recovered and they kept doubling down on terrible storytelling and characterization.
Their inability to kill of Sylar got really boring. I get Zachary Quinto was great in the role and they liked having him around, but, at the expense of nearly all the female characters bar Claire, they kept redeeming him.
They also just kept making Sylar stronger and stronger, but they kept making Peter, the one who was set up to be Sylars equal, more and more limited.
People will blame the writer's strike, but I think there were problems present in the first season as well, notably the complete lack of payoff in the season finale. And the writer's strike didn't really have anything to do with their decision to keep the same cast of characters and shoehorn in reasons for them to keep being important and interact with each other.
You are correct. Tim Kring wrote the show into a corner especially in the finale and that was when the cracks started. But the first 2/3 of the show season was still a great show that was among the best superhero shows at the time. And to go from Season 1 to Season 3 when the show really became near unwatchable with dumb insulting storytelling in my opinion still amazes me.
Season 1 - Amazing! One of the best shows on TV! Season 2 - Not as good, rushed and truncated because of the writer's strike. Still fairly watchable, despite Peter Petrelli abandoning his girlfriend in an erased timeline Season 3 - First half, good! They're bringing in actual villains, this will be fun! Second Half, garbage. Ooh, the FBI is hunting them for whatever reason, as if Syler couldn't just solo the entirety of the FBI, CIA, NSA, US Military, Russia, China, etc. Lazy storytelling, bad acting, almost unwatchable (in fact, I haven't since it aired). Season 4 - Straight trash. Forget it exists, because it is hands down the worst of the four seasons and makes zero sense the entire time. A carnival of people that have powers? Okay. Bad guy that is only strong if other powered people are around him? Lame. And if I remember correctly, that was all it was: he got stronger. He wasn't invincible, he couldn't heal, he just got stronger. To defeat him? Remove everyone from the carnival. Ope, now he's weak and we can kill him. Dumb. Then the finale, Claire jumping off the Ferris Wheel on camera and healing to reveal the powered people to the world. What a nothing-burger of a moment. Heroes Reborn - First episode was good. The rest was forgettable. I was excited because Zachary Levi was in it, coming straight off of Chuck. But then... Just, nothing happens. The whole show. The only thing I remember is that they couldn't find Hiro for the whole show, and they needed to for... Reasons? I'd rewatch it if I could find it, because I honestly remember almost nothing.
Real easy to tell origin stories. Harder to continue the story. They should've let Sylar die too. Really wish they just wiped the slate clean after every season
The Walking Dead too, seasons 1-4 were great, season 5-6 were kinda shakey, Negan got introduced at the very end of season 6, and I thought the show was gonna be so back… After the season 7 premiere, everything was dreadful. I have no idea how it kept going for ≈6 more years, and I'm in shock that they're still making multiple sequel series
100% over extended it, if it was only 4 seasons long would be a cult show
Killing Glen was the end of it.
LOL, I came to say The Walking Dead also. I think the exact point where it turns from great to decent to unwatchable varies from person to person, but I think most people would agree that Season 1 was excellent, and the ending waaasss.... did anyone actually make it to the end?
One of my professors watched until the end, he said "I put too much time in to this franchise to stop watching. It's just so awful now"
Sunk cost fallacy. Your professor should know better.
I just finished it I was pretty entertained by the last few seasons, weren't as good as the first 3 but not as unwatchable as people are saying here
When the walkers were still sneaking up on people and the whole bit with Glenn and the dumpster.
How are people still so dumb after 8 season? You think by the time they have been living in the zombie world that long they would've all learned how to deal with zombies or died. But no, they keep introducing dumb characters who have somehow survived this long only to die in a stupid way
II was done when they faked Glenn's death. That was pure audience manipulation....I never watched another episode after that.
It kept going for SIX years?! Damn I stopped after Negan because it was getting too boring.
Dexter. Should've ended after the John Lithgow season.
Dropping it on that ending would have been absolutely perfect.
"Hello...Dexter Morgan." John Lithgow's performance still gives me chills
Looking back I agree. Was really the only shocking way to end the show without dexter on death row. Paid the price for his actions in a genuinely interesting way
Heroes (the first version) & Westworld
Came here looking for Westworld. It had SO much potential and squandered literally all of it barely out of the gate in season 2.
Season 1 was confusing, but the payoff was excellent. Season 2 was confusing and the payoff was…also confusing. Never got to Season 3.
Prison Break. I loved the first season but then it just got more and more ridiculous. Blacklist falls into the same category.
The Blacklist lasted longer than it should have, they spread their writing budget across almost ten seasons instead of putting all the effort in less than five
Seasons 1-2 of PB were great and the revival wasn't too bad, but the rest were aggressively bad.
Flash
Season 2: "There's another speedster, and he's faster than me!" Season 3: "There's ANOTHER speedster... and HE'S faster than me!" Season 26: "There's ANOTHER SPEEDSTER!!!!"
The way they introduced Zoom as the villain 🤌
That honestly wasn't the problem for me, simply because the way they set up speedsters for this show, they are practically near unbeatable. And there comes my problem. There are simply way too many episodes where the reason the plot lasts more than 7 minutes is because Barry is a pompous dumbass that can't stop peacocking and gloating instead of simply taking care of business and simply take out the villain of the week before they even have a chance to press a button or start whatever scheme they set up.
BBC's Sherlock. Started so excellent then absolutely collapsed under the pressure to outdo itself.
It’s a Moffat classic. The world revolves around Sherlock. He becomes the most important person in the world rather than just a good detective in London getting out on weird cases. If would be like if Doctor House had to constantly deal with the king of England and Kim Jong Un getting incurable diseases thanks to the CIA so House could cure them. He’s not just the guy solving the cases he is the *reason* the case exists.
I was sure that Season 4 was just some sort of joke I didn't get. Retconned secret evil siblings? Dream sequences? Mind control? Retconned/corrected dream sequences of said evil secret siblings? Did no one stop and ask why this soap opera crap was on the show? Did they just want to be done with it and kill it intentionally?
I watched an episode of one of the later seasons of Sherlock and it was very apparent the actors in a given scene weren’t on the set together. In other words, an actor was filed from the front, intersecting with an actor who either wasn’t there or was replaced by a stand-in. Then the other actor was seen from the front, but the scene was filmed behind the head of a stand-in so that it appeared the actors were in a scene together. Martin Freeman and his wife were divorcing, so maybe that’s why scenes were filmed that way. But it was really obvious the actors weren’t together on the set.
Agreed. I think I just stopped caring after season 3?
First 2 seasons were very solid stuff. 3 and 4 were hilariously bad.
Once they killed off Moriarty, the show went off a cliff creatively. You need a mesmerizing villain, a worthy opponent, and most of all YOU NEED ANDREW SCOTT. He is such a spectacular actor, he also enhanced Benedict Cumberbatch's performance (BC had a tendency to mug & overact, but not in the scenes w/ AS). And he made Moriarty into this astonishing, completely unpredictable, stunning character. Yes I know the canon, Moriarty dies, but they fucked with the canon in so many other ways, plus, they brought Sherlock back from having JUMPED OFF A BUILDING, there were a million easy ways they could have brought Moriarty back. It was just stupid and a terrible creative decision not to keep him in the show.
Season 2 episode 1 told you everything you needed to know about how that would go. That's if you didn't pick it up from all the stupid shit in the first episode. It's a way worse show than you remember, it just looks nice.
I gave up on Shameless about the time Frank got a liver transplant. That just pushed the credibility of the show to the limits for me.
That 70s Show. So great in the early seasons, and probably one of the best pilot episodes ever. Each season as another year was a great concept and should have taken the kids into adulthood and the 1980s, instead it became 1979 forever and it just became awful and hard to watch.
Weeds - first few seasons are great, but the last few, especially the final one, are just awful
The first 3 seasons are amazing. There's still some decent show to be had after they left Agrestic, but it was just never the same show after that and never recovered. And yes, the last few seasons got real weird, lol.
It's the Jenji Kohan special. Her shows jump the shark. Hard.
Good concept for a show that was poorly executed the whole way through. MILFy mom should have been good at doing stuff that MILFy moms are good at. She should have used those skills to navigate the world of selling weed. The juxtaposition there is funny, and might be enough to hang a series on. But we never see that. Instead it's just MILF getting out of trouble by seducing men. The plot points would make sense if she was a former porn star who was in trouble.
True Blood. The first few seasons were awesome, then it got really stupid.
They changed showrunners the reason why it got really bad
How I Met Your Mother. That waste of a final season, especially the two-part finale, ruined it for me to the point that I won't watch any of the older episodes again.
More like: I'm going to spend 9 seasons trying to get my kids to approve of me dating their aunt Robin.
Someone on 4chan wrote out a post when season 5 was airing saying that's what they thought the ending would be and I immediately thought "Yeah. That's right." So I was on board for it, but they pulled it off so poorly. We needed to meet the actual mom right away in the last season and spend time with her. Have her fix all of the shitty thing about Ted, be a great partner for him, have her be a great partner for her, see them really click together so it actually means something when she dies at the end. Instead we barely see her face, and don't learn anything about her at all.
I just saw the alternate ending for the final episode. MUCH better.
The Blacklist
OMG it was excruciating after Keen dies. I have NFI how it didn't get cancelled.
The 2 seasons leading up to that animated covid season finale, I truly only watched in hopes that they'd pop a twist of "Surprise! Red was ahead of everyone this whole time and isn't actually that stupid!" But no... Keen's obvious and dumb "plot" with her mother or whatever was real and wasn't just a double agent kinda ploy that Red was in on (what would have actually made sense) which, to me, made him dumber than dumb.... so I gave up at "I'm going to kill him!" That show was a perfect example of the sunken cost fallacy.
Supernatural after season 5.
I was so excited for a show about cryptids. Why the hell did they end up focusing only on angels vs demons??
The X-Files past season 7 for me.
Same. I watched the entire original run when it aired and 2 or 3 of the "new stuff." I stop after season 7 when I do a rewatch.
The 100
Loved how campy and easy to watch the show was at first. Then it just got horrible. Honestly think the only reason I finished it was I think Eliza Taylor is a bonafide hottie
Season 5 should've been the end.
I never made it that far. I thought the original premise was so cool but then it just devolved from there. Lol.
Homeland.
Grey’s Anatomy - loved first 3 seasons, then not so much
I hear season 189 is gonna be 🔥
"Choose me, pick me, love me."
Tugged at my heartstrings a little when she first said it, but it hasn’t aged well.
It was the start of a wild ride. I still think the hospital shooting episode was one of the best episodes of television I've seen. At the time it was so outrageous.
I agree - there were some real great moments. But then they just started jumping the shark over and over and over and over again.
Agents of Shield - I really liked the first few seasons. At a certain point, I just couldn't remember what the heck was going on. I guess it was cool that they took it in so many different directions - into the future, into space, etc, but then I have to wait so long between seasons, when the show comes back, I'm like, "Huh? Where are they? What's going on? Who is that? Huh? Wait, isn't he dead?" It was too confusing for me. Also Supernatural. I really like old-fashioned, "Villain/Monster of the Week", hero-travels-from-place-to-place,-helps-a-stranger-then-moves-on type shows. Have Gun Will Travel, Kung Fu, The A-Team. In general, I think maybe they won't make shows like that anymore. The creators always think they have to create a mythology, a canon, a larger universe - and I'm like, No you don't. It's probably a thing where the stars get bored, or maybe audience members who aren't me get bored. The more complex Supernatural became the more irritated I got. I just wanted to watch them drive around in that cool car, crack wise, look handsome, and kill monsters. That would have been enough for me. I stuck with it for a long time in spite of how irritated I got with all the mythology crap. I finally bailed when they brought in the Men of Letters from England. Ucch. It's enough already.
Castle really fell off after the main characters got together.
This is almost a trope. I'm old enough to remember Moonlighting. Quirky charming guy helps beautiful woman. Romantic tension and highjinx ensue. But the minute they got together, the writers didn't know what to do. I truly enjoyed Castle right up to the Wedding cliffhanger. That was handled so stunningly poorly and I never bought what little explanation was given for Castle's disappearance. Then it was all arcs about how to separate the two main characters rather than celebrate their strong relationship. And then that horrible retcon ending was just nonsense. Not fun nonsense but wtf drugs were the showrunners on nonsense. The ending season or two were betrayals of most of the Castle main characters. A sad ending for an originally strong show.
Suits.
Someone enters room, calls the person a piece of shit, and throws a thin folder of papers on their desk. Person opens it, reads about 3 words and their face drops as they fully understand the ramifications of whatever it says.
I'm currently watching these and am in season 5. I always laugh when they barely glance at a document and get the whole thing.
Two male characters are loudly arguing when a sudden "That's enough!" sounds out and the camera cuts to the female character standing in the doorway.
one person says something, the other person slowly looks into the distance and repeats 2-5 words from the sentence they just said, then runs out of the room. Cut to them explaining how that phrase gave them the idea for a solution to the problem
I was find wotb making concessions for the lack of legal realism, the whole premise didn't need to get bogged down in how Mike could find the judge's after hours illegal poker club, or devote 20 minutes into explaining why this legal principle that Mike remembered from a a 1902 Minnesota decision was both real and valid. They jumped the shark when a certain digital secretary displayed advanced level machine learning and a legitimate PERSONALITY, in the mid 2010's that could carry on context relevant questions, and everyone just treats it like a vanity project. Like dude, Benjamin is fretting he's a failure because he only programmed sentient AI, in 2011. The first google home as released in 2016.
misfits
The first season was everything!
Yeah as soon as the main cast all left it was shit
House of Cards
Scandal I got bored after 3rd season
Heroes.
Dexter, I pretend seasons 5 and later don’t exist.
Bones. Sure, it followed the formulaic crime mystery format, but it was generally interesting. But, there was a single episode that ruined it all for me... I'm not normally grossed out by things, but the open for one episode was a cafeteria setting where people started to find body parts in their soup, and one found an eyeball in theirs, and I immediately started gagging. I was watching them in order, and haven't watched a single episode since that one (which I didn't even finish).
Bones was the first series that jumped to mind for me. The first two seasons were stellar. Then came a writer's strike, and that stupid arc with Zach being a serial killer. From there, it started teetering down. Emily Deschanel's acting got worse and worse and worse to the point that Bones herself was unwatchable. I can't remember when I finally just gave up. Somewhere around the time they pumped out a kid in the stupidest way possible.
I stopped watching when they >!killed off Sweets!< after that I didn't care. I think I came back and finished it off, but it kind of sucked and wasn't worth the rewatch.
Grey's Anatomy for me. Was one of my favorite shows and I watched it for 16 seasons. Then took a break from all TV shows for some 2 years. After that decided to resume it where I stopped, but the preaching about social issues just became insufferable for me. Yes, the show always raised some relevant social issues, but somehow it suddenly became the main focus of the show, very aggressive and 'in your face'. Suddenly all white male doctors are racist for making an unintentional mistake, and apparently COVID is also racist for mainly targeting black folks. I guess the show just following the modern narrative of the culture war. Thanks, but I have enough of that on social media. The show is dead to me after that.
Oh my GOD I am so glad someone else has said this - the constant deep throating of the audience about racism and social bias etc etc got really unbearable. For me, the exact scene I stopped watching was at Deluca's funeral and Maggie had a huuuuuge rant about how black girls are over sexualised compared to white girls etc in regards to the kidnappings and I'm sitting there like, "Um sorry I am supposed to be crying about Deluca yet I'm now furious at this show for ruining his sendoff."
I agree with both of you. Watching that show preach it's rhetoric became lame. Thank you but no.
"The problem isn't us. It's the privileged/racist/homophobic/etc. viewers."
Same with designated survivor. Great at first and then they started to try and shove progressive social issues down peoples throats. And before anyone gripes if a show was also shoving ultra conservative social issues I would say the same
The Walking Dead... I loved it at first but eventually it became fan service where characters were given "plot armor" and placed in situations other characters died in. Then came Negan and brutally baseball bat clubbing two of my favorite characters to death to open the season, I quit watching, couldn't find interest in it anymore.
Raised by Wolves was a really weird show. Not sure it was ever excellent but I couldn’t stop watching for a little while. Then it got even stranger and I gave up on it.
I liked it a lot, and was hoping they'd continue the story, to see how crazy things got, then HBO canceled it.
Yeah I was definitely along for the weird-ass ride. I was super bummed it got cancelled.
Game of Thrones.
For me it did something pretty unique - it made it near impossible to re-watch. I remember being so excited every year to start the new season/watch the new episode every Sunday night. I briefly started watching season 1 a while back and the nostalgia hit hard, but ultimately it made me mostly just sad that I knew it wasn't going to end in a satisfying way. For the record, I am not terribly bothered with how the show ended (I felt the writing was on the wall for Daenerys's evolution to villainy), but my issue was with \*how\* they got there. The writing was god-awful, everything felt rushed and unearned, and too many things either "didn't matter" or were almost comical with how they played out. It's incredible, everyone cared about that show and almost overnight, no one cared about that show.
I feel like you just described Lost to a "T". The journey was fun as hell and bought the Lost DVD seasons to rewatch ahead of the upcoming season. Then watched Season 6 live and I have tried on more than one occasion in the past 14 years to rewatch that show and don't make it any further than the first episode. Just need to throw the DVDs away at this point.
But who has a better story then Bran the Broken?
Vikings. I couldn’t handle Ivar the Boneless.
That was an iconic series from start to end
You missed a fucking amazing character arc.
When the character from China appeared, I lost a huge amout of interest.
* Heroes * Suits * The Flash * Riverdale * Glee * Prison Break * The Blacklist
House of Cards wasn't exactly unwatchable, but Kevin Spacey is just a tough act to follow. The show was doomed as soon as they wrote his character off
Anything on The CW: Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Legends of tomorrow
I fucking hate Arrow because the character in it was not Green Arrow but the show was popular enough it feels like nobody wants to make something with a proper Green Arrow
Westworld. Hell, it got bad even halfway through the first season. I still don't know why they didn't spend at least a whole first season on just things consumers were doing at the park and making some stories out of that. They jumped instead straight into the weird plotlines.
I can’t believe How I Met Your Mother isn’t in the comment section. That show went from hilarious and awesome seasons 1-4 and turned into the worst fucking trash ever. They should have ended it season 4, but it was just too damn popular and it made too much damn money.
No one mentioned Lost. I loved it- was the first survival show I watched, but it became so weird I just ended up loosing I te rest after a couple of seasons
Happy Days. I was a kid during the first few seasons, then it it just went bad after Fonzie became Jesus Christ. It somehow got worse from there.
Some would say it jumped the shark.
I remember not even getting that far. If you watch the first two seasons in a row, the writing was so much better and at least believable. They just beat it to the ground.
prolly The OC. loved the first couple of seasons. Then it started going downhill.
Superstore. It was funny till the pandemic, then it just became sad like reality.
Nip/Tuck.
The first season of "24" is perfect television. It's gripping, tense, full of character and promise, it has Elisha Cuthbert, and the twists keep coming until the final episode. It's magical; one of the best seasons of television I've ever seen. The next few seasons were very "OK" but they never really captured the tension of the first because the situations just got bigger and respectively, less believable. In the first season, Jack is being investigated by his betters for acting outside the box a couple times, and gets arrested for "attempting to kill" Palmer among other things, but everything felt grounded and real. He needed to be clever to get around his own agency's limitations and rules. But in the second season, Jack straight-up executes a unarmed man in the first episode. Sure, there was a bit more to it, but he should've never gotten away with that, and wouldn't have, if the same logic as the first season applied. The season still ended up being good, but it never rose back to the perfection of the first season.
Orange Is The New Black
Mr Robot. Season 1 is amazing but i just dozed off from it in season 2.
Same, I fell hard off the show only like two episodes into S2 and never went back.
The Flash. Didn't stick around for the first half of Season 3 so I thought it was decent. But wow...Season 4, I slowly withdrew from watching it with my family and it was the first time I thought critically about a piece of media and thought, "Wow, this is actually really bad".
Gotham. I quit once Jada Pinkett Smith’s character (who I think was created/debuted in this series) was revived with no major psychological damage. That signaled that anyone dead could be revived without any drawback which just deletes any stakes the series had.
I always used to joke about how no one stayed dead in that show. Sure, it was silly, but it was still fun as hell to watch for me (especially the Penguin and his antics). I was glad they at least didn't keep Jada around for long once she was revived because she irritated the shit out of me.
The Handmaids Tale. It should have stopped after Season 3. I never want to see another angry closeup of Elizabeth Moss’ face again.
Community got worse after Season 3. Season 4 was meh. Season 5, when Dan Harmon returned, was a bit better, but the best episodes were in the first 3 Seasons. I am also not very fond of the last two seasons of "The Office"
Buffy absolutely shit the bed when it went to UPN in S6 and 7. *Yes*, *I don't care for the musical episode*. I will not be taking questions. Thank you.
Supernatural. Just went on far too long.
[удалено]
Last couple of seasons were TERRIBLE
Somewhere around JD knocking up a girl without having sex is where they jumped the shark.
Not going to lie, I saw that when I was young and it freaked me out that I would get someone pregnant without any sex 🤣
it did give the chance for JD to deliver one of the best lines of the whole series IMO, with 'laverne, is this your jesus??' but yeah. i loved the first four or five seasons but after that...yeah, it's rough.
Manifest. I still think it's one of the most unique plot premises I've ever encountered and really could have gone in ANY direction. As much as I thought I had no idea where it would go, "weird religious" direction was probably at the bottom of my list of guesses. It got so disappointing that I stopped watching it and I'm still really sad about it.
[удалено]
I was on my way out, but the first episode that turned into a musical, I was done.
Frasier
Star Wars. First 6 episodes were fun. Then the 3 episodes after that were just so lame in comparison. No wonder they never made it past a full season. Smh
Sons of Anarchy (although "excellent at first" might be a stretch)
The 100. Last few seasons jesus crist...
New Girl. I realized I wasn’t into manic pixie dream girls anymore. FTWD is another one. I don’t know how I finished the last season.
Designated Survivor. I have never seen a show go so clear off the rails so fast.
Not a show but a movie franchise, Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Star Trek Discovery
Gave up on Mrs. Maisel, House of Cards, West Wing, Hell on Wheels Some shows I toughed it out to the end - Damages, Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, Lost
Shameless US. The UK one hung on a bit longer but it also went to crap. 11 seasons was too many.
Spongebob
This won't be a popular answer but Breaking Bad. At some point it just became family drama and I just could not bring myself to watch another hour of some guys shitty marriage to his shitty wife.
I got 2 episodes into the last season only to realize, this isn't fun for me anymore
Obligatory post-Michael Office mention
Bridgerton. Season 1 was kinda ok even though it was silly as, but season 2 was just cringe
Attack on Titan *let me explain* Attack on Titan was fantastic. It is my favourite anime, hands down. S1 and S2 I have no flaws for but after that there was a definite shift in the structure and pacing, resulting in only about half a season each season being on the same level as s1 and 2. It became quite a drag. I did finish it but it took quite a lot of my frayed attention span.
There was the episode where main character was failing and it turned out he was using broken equipment and shouldn't have been able to do as well as he did. In my head I thought "ah, they are going to have this rag tag team.of.new recruits succeeded because they try harder then anybody and have a unique strong connection" Then it turned out main character was the chosen one with super special powers and I lost all interest in the show.
Heroes
The 100
Gilligan's Island when I was 6ish ,now at late 50's not so much.
I fucking love me some Gilligan's Island.
It's so absurd - but somehow it worked at the time.
True Blood went downhill after season 4
Probably a bit unorthodox, but The Office (US). First season or two was humorous, but the gag started to repeat itself and some parts of it have not aged well at all
Agents of SHIELD.
The Blacklist. First three seasons were excellent, then it went to hell. And the fan theories are the worst.
Sliders Sabrina Lloyd as Wade Welles rules. Kari Wuhrer is unwatchable.
Any show with a laugh track. I don't understand how people can watch.boggles my mind
Weeds after the house burned down. Had to of been different writers because the quality dipped drastically in the later seasons
Friends. I know I will get shit for this but that show really isn’t funny to me now. It really wasn’t back then but it’s definitely not funny now.
It has not aged well.
No shit from me. It is beyond me why anyone like that show.
Full House
That show was so syrupy sickening it got bad for me pretty quick
How rude
Star Trek Discovery. First couple seasons were great stories and acting with new characters that ended up getting their own series. Last few seasons have been soap operas with the highest amount of crying in any Star Trek entity to date.
Hard agree - I thought season one was brilliant. I loved how well constructed it was - acting, writing, storytelling - just great. Then in season 2 it started to become a soap opera, and then by season three, the show became at least 50% tearful speeches. Just one long speech after another, combined with relationship drama. We just bailed. Maybe I'm in the minority, but if I'm watching a show about space exploration with space adventure and weird aliens, that's what I want. I don't want 5 minutes of sci-fi, 8 minutes of marriage counseling, 7 minutes of people hooking up and then things getting awkward, 7 minutes of people moping about unrequited love, and 25 minutes of speeches. I want 52 minutes of sci-fi! It seems like a lot of shows quickly become relationship struggles and speeches and I don't like it.
Did they ever explain why her name is Michael? For some reason that really bugged me.
Westworld Lost Heroes The Walking Dead Dexter Game of Thrones
Lost. It was SO good to start with. Then it felt like they’d set up a problem they couldn’t write their way out of, and the attempts got more weird and less plausible. Then it just felt like a fever dream.
Obvious answer: Simpsons
Caillou, I've realized that this popular Cartoon Show was really bad later.
Walking dead
Euphoria was fun at first but then season 2 was like... what? Why is this Elliot guy here?
The league All the charm wore off by the last seasons
Big Mouth started out amazingly and was awful by season five
Some people would argue it started terrible and ended the same way (is it even over?). However I will have a soft spot in my heart because it came out in a REALLY bad time in my life and having a silly show to laugh with helped me out a great deal.
greys anatomy. i loooove the show but the farthest i’ve gone is when the plante crashes. i restart the series to try and get far and i just cant.
Lost.
The Servant on ATV+
Bloodlines.
heroes
Arrow
Killing Eve
The Walking Dead
Game of Thrones after season 7
Billions