What's a show that should've gotten cancelled or ended SOONER than it did?
What's a show that should've gotten cancelled or ended SOONER than it did?
Too many "what got cancelled too soon" questions, what's a show that went on too long?
Hard mode: no The Walking Dead
Game of thrones. They should have ended it when they caught up to the books. Just leave it unfinished. That’s not satisfying but better than what we got.
I was gonna binge this show after it ended but I can't bring myself to watch a show that I know has a shit ending, so it will forever be one of those shows I missed
It was so good early on though. IMO you would do better to just watch the first 5 or 6 seasons and make up an ending in your head vs not watching at all. Or read a brief synopsis of the last couple seasons just to know where the characters ended up.
But then you might feel the call of the void, and want to watch the last couple seasons as a sort of "bad movie night” on steroids. On one hand, you will fully understand the magnitude of the fuckup, but on the other, you will taint your fond memories of the early seasons. The choice is yours.
It was awesome. Definitely worth the watch for anyone that can get over the ending. Maybe if you know it’s bad going into it you won’t be as disappointed 😂
Yeah, and maybe consider a sequel once the rest of the books came out.
I started reading the series around 2002, when there were 3 books. Martin released book 4 in 2005. In the afterward of the book he said that book 6 was basically already done… book 6 didn’t come out for 6 more years (2011).
It’s been 12 years. We're waiting on book 7. Given his age, it doesn’t seem like the series will be finished by Martin. Hopefully he actually does know what happens through the rest of the story and has it down for whoever takes up the mantle.
I think the production team was fully aware that those books weren't getting finished.
Spoilers ahoy. If you've not seen game of thrones, read on to get the disappointment out of the way now
I disagree wholeheartedly. As much as "who's got a better story than bran" sucked, I think that was likely the ending that was intended in the books as well (and the extreme backlash against it is why we'll never see the last books). GRRM stated on multiple occasions that he was working closely with HBO and that they knew the general shape of the story he was trying to tell.
I feel like the majority of the problem with GoT was Benioff and Weiss. GRRM wanted at least two more seasons in which to tell the story (and, knowing what we know now, to delay the revelation that he didn't really have a way to untangle the story he tangled), HBO made it clear that they would keep riding the money train no matter how far the station, but D&D wanted to wrap the series up ASAP so they could work on producing some Star Wars films. That's why Jon goes from Dragonstone to the wall in a single cut. That's why the entire war with the nights king that was central to the whole series was over in an episode. That's why Dani went psycho in her moment of victory. That's why cersei's death was so predictable that it's a cliche in ttrpgs, that's why cleganebowl was ultimately disappointing, that's why the resolution to dragons being in westeros was "idk he just left lol", that's why the resolution to aryas story was "idk she just left lol" (even after several seasons developing her character as someone who believes that if Starks don't stick together they'll be destroyed), that's why the resolution to the war in the north was "idk the north...won? but also surrendered? lol", that's why LRJ didn't matter at all, that's why the spider went from being the most politically adroit character on the show to doing a whole musical number entitled "Do You Wanna Do A Treason?", that's why littlefinger's whole trial was "we know he's a dick just kill him", and the fact that House of the Dragon is being made by people who want to make it is why its almost as good as the first 5 seasons of GoT
It all comes down to the fact that they wanted the show to just be over, and now it is I suppose.
I personally think of it as “seasons 1-5 happened, then there was a huge, mysterious time jump, and the last 2 episodes of season 8 happened”.
I can see the ending happening, it’s just… Dum&Dumber couldn’t figure out how to get there, and GRRM was too rich and lazy to do what he was supposed to do to get them there.
Actually I think many people agree with you. I can see the ending happening, it’s just… Dum&Dumber couldn’t figure out how to get there, and GRRM was too rich and lazy to do what he was supposed to do to get them there.
I personally think of it as “seasons 1-5 happened, then there was a huge, mysterious time jump, and the last 2 episodes of season 8 happened”.
Isn't the main sticking point that they segwayed before the books ran out somewhere before Dorn? and/or they had material supplied to them and basically willfully threw it in the trash?
I would've been really pissed off if they just stopped and didn't even take a stab at it. Now I'm disappointed with the seasons that came after that point but at least the series has come to some kind of conclusion.
What really pisses me off was not just that is was lazily written, but that D and DB knowingly ran it into the ground. They had a Q&A where they admitted it.
Big bang theory. It was absolute garbage.
I think I'd like to point out that they shouldn't have had even one season. It's so fucking offensive.
Haha! These people aren't neurotypicals! It's so funny!
By today’s standards, yeah. At the time, too, but the ultimate message was groundbreaking and progressive. Archie was written as a bigot for the purpose of creating conflict and addressing difficult social issues. The actor who played him, Carroll O'Connor, was liberal in his personal politics, as was the producer, Norman Lear.
I appreciate the show for what it was attempting, not because I worship Archie Bunker.
It's weird with Big Bang Theory, when it first started me and my friend circle loved it, thought it was brilliant but yes it did lose something after a few seasons.
But online everyone just seemed to hate it - could it be because we're British and it just landed better with us..?
Nope, I'm British and I hated it.
The newer characters they introduced were just not likeable. Bernadette and the other female lead just dragged the show down. Stuart was shit too. They should have centralised the show on the main characters from the start and actually built on their stories a bit more. Instead they all became flanderised
It's true, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Oh God, so terrible. For some reason I seem to remember that either critics or the show promoters sort of hinted that you had to be smart to watch the show.
I'm on the flip side with that one. I absolutely loved Big Bang Theory, but honestly I can't stand Young Sheldon. I mean sure the show has its funny moments, but still, why oh why won't they just let the show die?
Any show that needs a laugh track to tell you when it's trying to be funny isn't going to be funny. I actually heard a perfect description of why BBT wasn't good (to me) a couple weeks ago from the Venture Bros creators. BBT was a show created by people outside nerd culture trying to tell nerds what nerd culture is. And IMO it entirely missed the mark.
I actually really enjoy both... which I guess is unpopular here.
I like how the show is basically a telling of the life of Sheldon Cooper. The two shows combined if you were to put them in order show a lot of character development.
Zabinka.
Why? Did the last season suck? Or did the show run out of ideas along the way?
Note: I am not very well known with the show.
IMO the show was garbage from the first second of the first episode. I didn't watch more than one or two over the whole span of its production.
Westworld should have just been an amazing miniseries.
Enterprise needed one more season.
Yeah!! If anyone interested just watch the first season, it doesnt need continuing it was great!
See also: True Detective.
There's a reason that it's one of the few shows to be referred to as True Detective (Season One) when people talk about it
Am I the only person that enjoyed season 2 of True Detective?!
It feels to me like the writers of westworld slowly forgot what the show was about or something as it goes on. Like when you come up with an alt universe for a story that ignores the point of the original, like a version of Star Wars where Luke joins Vader that abandons the themes of family and redemption.
SPOILERS AHEAD IDK HOW TO DO SPOILER TAGS By season 3 it just felt like they plopped characters into the plot and wrote them to logical/"cool" conclusions, like "ooo wouldn't it be fucked up if Halores took over the world and made the humans the hosts in her game" they just really lost the plot later on imo
I'm pretty sure the writers admitted they lurked forums and got really self conscious about how some people predicted the entire plot from like the first episode and wanted to really shake things up but lost the plot themselves.
Any sci-fi series that starts messing with time-travel or random time frames is when it goes really bad. You stop caring for any of the characters and any major death scene is not as convincing as before
Seriously folks - there can be only one and done:
HEROES
Save the cheerleader, save the world and then please - go home. But nooooo../
Gonna disagree, we needed more Heroes, but from a writing team with a vision and purpose. Or at least one that understood the character driven nature of the first season was it's selling point, not just the half baked superhero action. The '07 writers strike really screwed that show.
I can only judge by what was done - not could have been. From the first episode of the second season, it was clear lightning wasn’t gonna strike twice.
Honestly, I rewatched season 1 again a couple of years ago and it didn't really hold up for me. The Niki and Micah storyline just seemed to slow everything down. I don't know if it the newness factor wore off or if my tastes have changed, but it just didn't have the same feeling.
Or, you know, have them be HEROS. I kept waiting for them to do something that helped someone that wasn't a HERO or fight something that wasn't a HERO. If you took everyone that had powers and put them on Mars, nothing on earth would change.
Watch series one of Misfits for more (better) Teen Superpower action!
Quick edit: yeah just watch until Nathan leaves
How I met your mother. They saw a cash cow and milked it.
Big Bang theory. It was kinda ok at first, but then it was just bad.
It says something with HIMYM that the season 9 teaser was the kids, all grown up, yelling at future Ted to wrap things up because it's gone on too long.
I will say for all of the hate BBT got, they didn’t try to do something bullshit for their ending like most sitcoms had been trying to do (e.g How I Met Your Mother). They created a simple good/wholesome ending.
I loved himym, all of it, except the ending. Like I get what they went for, but it dismissed all seasons.
The whole last season was trash and then they had the audacity to say "and then he got together with Robin anyway". Why have him meet their mother when all he wanted was Robin? Just have them end up together and be done with it.
Scrubs.
I understand that they were trying to create a spinoff. But to continue with the same name and then teasing us with the previous main characters just destroyed what was the perfect series ending.
Original Scrubs was one of the best shows ever made in my opinion - great cast and chemistry, genuinely funny whilst also bringing in the drama and tragedy of a hospital and it's patients, great writing, kept up momentum until the end (the original end not the crap that come after), great acting, one of the most faultless TV shows ever made.
Honestly, that final season would have been an acceptable sitcom that might have gone on to 3 or 4 seasons if it wasn't tied to Scrubs.
I'm sure most people here would agree that cancelling Game of Thrones once they ran out of source material and waiting for the books to be done (lol) would have been preferable to what we got.
GoT would have exited the cultural zeitgeist a lot sooner than it did, probably to the detriment of future viewer engagement and thus a source of revenue for HBO, which is why they pushed it forward, but still...
Supernatural
They managed to escalate all the way to God's grumpy sister.
And then went even further, making the next enemy: The British.
Bruh, they managed to escalate all the way to God himself. Literal God is reduced to a mere human by the benevolent spawn of Lucifer, somehow, and said spawn becomes the new God. Seriously.
Well that's just the logical next step
Yeah, that show was good for a few seasons and then just got weird.
I was told by a friend; watch all the way up through season 5, then sit for a couple weeks and don't watch it for a while. Really think about if you want to keep going. Because the writers originally wrote the first 5 seasons to be a self contained story and it worked really well. Then the show was very successful, and they asked them to keep going. What ended up happening was they'd have single or double season long plots that just kinda rolled from one to another and had a bunch of escalation and flanderization going on. Like, in one season the big issue is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They deal with three of them, and then Death is the big badass. He's the one they can't actually beat. They spend an entire season leading up to him and trying to deal with him.
Then, the very next season, that same super badass, Death himself, is in the way of something they want. Summoning, binding, and killing permanently this mega badass end season boss is all the effort of half of a fucking episode in the next season. The Flanderization is most obvious in Dean, where he goes from a dude who is characterized by typically masculine traits, and emphasizes that masculinity at times, to "Me Dean, me want burger! Me want pie!!"
I randomly decided to binge supernatural and caught up during season 15 with only 3 episodes yet to be released.
The timing was almost supernatural.
The Office. Last couple seasons were garbo
cue downvotes from the “still watches The Office on loop” crowd
The last seasons are a lot weaker, I have to agree. I got my hopes up real high when Will Ferrell entered the chat, but he was just a temp :-(.
Still watch that Garbo on repeat though _
Should have stopped the show when Michael left, and made a TV movie of Dwight's wedding.
I still think the way Jim handled being (or technically not being) the best mensch is worthy of being canon.
But Nellie and Robert were just too bizarre. Will Ferrell was just awkward. It could've been good but he was just very strange. No one was a worthy replacement. Even Ray Romano would have been weird if he hadn't gotten scared off.
I would watch the Michael session on loop if I wanted to pay for peacock.
After Jim and Pam's wedding it could of ended, the quality was already going on. The only redeeming thing to me after Steve Carrell left was Robert California and even then I could of done without that.
Could HAVE. Never "of"
Could have/could've
Should have/should've
Would have/would've
People think it's "of" because the contractions sound like it. "Could've" sounds like "could of", but it doesn't make any sense (of isn't even a verb at all) and a lot of people don't even think about what they're saying.
House of Cards went on far, far too long. Should've ended at or shortly after he became President.
The double tap on the desk should've been the last scene.
And the actor's last breath.
- The Office (US) could have ended at the proposal in the rain.
- The Office should have ended at the wedding in Niagara.
- Dear god why didn't The Office end when Michael left?
I dunno, upon subsequent rewatches, I’m glad we got Robert California.
Do you want the nature or the sex metaphor?
Just sad we didn't get a Stargate crossover episode..
Edit: Why the downvotes? Robert California is in the OG Stargate movie lol
Simpsons. Hasn’t been great since Season 12. Maybe glimpses in a few later seasons. But it’s now running on 35 years. Most of the original voices have left as have long gone all the good writers. The remaining can’t voice characters outside their ethnicity. And the show. Just “fart jokes.”
Probably the most brilliant show for a dozen seasons. Now just a husk.
The remaining can’t voice characters outside their ethnicity.
This fucking overcorrection has got to stop. If every fictional character must be portrayed by a person who is as close to being that character in real life as possible, it's no longer "acting."
Most of the original voices have left. The remaining can’t voice characters outside their ethnicity.
What? The 6 of them are all still there. Hank Azaria gave up Apu/Lou/Carl and Harry Shearer gave up Dr. Hibbert, but the vast, vast majority of characters are still being voiced by the same actors.
I do think that the fact that The Simpsons has been on so long that they had to go ahead and do that is strong evidence that the show has run its course + ought to end, but the re-casting is a symptom, not a cause.
Also not to be morbid, but IMO they should really think about wrapping it up before the main cast starts to retire or pass away. The actor who voiced Mrs. Krabappel already died, and I mean... Harry Shearer is 80 this year, and the rest of the cast is getting up there too. I guess they could always recast or (God help us) try to use AI or something, but yeah, they should try to send it off with a little bit of dignity left I think.
"stop stop... he's already dead". Pretty much how everyone feels about the show.
Yeah on that, notice how everyone quotes the original Simpsons?
I often wonder who's still watching it. Like obviously someone is, because it's doing well enough to keep getting renewed. But what's the demographic? I don't know many young people, but I'd assume they're not watching it. Certainly nobody in my age range ever talks about it (or if they do, then they just say what the people in this thread are saying - it used to be great, haven't watched it in years), and I don't know of anyone in the boomer/parent age group who ever talks about it.
Of course, just because nobody I know watches it doesn't mean nobody at all is watching it. But just like... who are they?
I watch it during lunch sometimes and have kept up with every episode so far. Its not what it was of course back in the day, but I largely use it as semi- background while eating lunch, knowing that if I have to cut things short or divert my attention it won't matter.
I heard it's been better recently but I watched an episode like 2 years ago and didn't crack a smile the whole time, it was terrible. The Simpsons movie was a good bookend to the series I think.
I feel like I've been hearing people say it's improving for the last 20 seasons lol, but every time I watch an episode past about season 12 it's always been a harsh lesson.
Every time I make an attempt to watch a newer episode, I have to stop simply because of the voice actors. All the main cast sound so undeniably old. It can't be hidden and can't be worked around. Hearing these aged actors just keep going, like everyone is pretending it's not strange, just makes me so sad that I can't stand it.
Game of thrones. Just pretend last 2 seasons don’t exist and you’re good.
Last 4 I'd say. Seasons 1-4 were smashing, then it really fell off a cliff.
The divergence point is when they changed what happened to Jon Snow
Last 4 seasons you mean.
Once Upon a Time. They felt like they had to just introduce a new Disney character at every turn and that they all had to be somehow related to one of the other characters. They also had a chance to tie things off by having Regina fall in love but nope, had to drop an A-Bomb on that possibility. Can't have a happy Evil Queen can we?
This was my first thought, and I genuinely didn’t expect to see it mentioned. Wow. Hi.
Season 1 is top notch. It is consistently worse from there. Am I mad the show went on? No. Still, if the show had ended when the curse was broken, it would’ve been all time storytelling IMO. The magic effects and writing were so cheesy after season 1… It all seemed so well made at first.
Kind of burned out on the show in season 3 to be honest when they threw away all the character growth, felt like no point watching any more. I read ahead to see what they do later on and it just got worse
Scrubs: one of the best medical shows ever made. The last season was just a waste of everyone's time.
Frasier: After Niles and Daphney got together the writers were stalling the inevitable end.
The Son: Two seasons was two too many. Who TF thought it was a good idea to have Pierce Brosnan play a Texan?
As a Futurama fan...Futurama. The reboot is very mediocre at best, the show was great when it was a bunch of characters with wildly different personalities messing around in the year 3000. The first reboot was kinda less interesting but ok for the most part, I personally think the movies were pretty bad and the new season just wants to be South Park with 3-year old dated references. It had a good run, should've ended after season 4
I was looking for someone else to mention Futurama. The new season is just so mediocre. You hit the nail on the head, they're leaning so hard on social commentary but most of the references are already dated (Bitcoin mining, lol) and in general it's just rather cringey. I've yet to hear one joke that actually had me bust out laughing, and the writers seem to have forgotten the subtlety that made Futurama stand out from other animated sitcoms.
Billy West sounds like he's lost his voice and it feels like the rest of the cast are phoning in their performances a lot of the time. And what's with the release schedule? A Christmas episode in August? I remember there being delays but I don't understand why they would rush to get it out, they had so long to get it right and they still messed it up.
Oh yeah, and what the hell happened to Zoidberg's girlfriend when he was all alone on Christmas? Are they just completely retconning season 10 or what? I don't remember if they said exactly how far back the time button sent them.
I’m still holding out hope that it gets better as it goes along but you’re absolutely correct about the new reboot. It’s fallen into the same trap as The Simpsons where it’s “pick a trend and make fun of it” show after show.
I watched the first season when it first aired way back in the 90s, and I've seen random episodes here and there since. I recently decided to watch the whole series, and I had forgotten that a lot of the writing is just not my kind of humor, which is why I lost interest back when it was new. Even so, there was enough good stuff for me to keep watching, but I'm in S5 right now, and I've definitely noticed a drop off in quality.
Ended way too soon:
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Invader Zim (there were plans for 7 seasons, but Nick said it was "too expensive")
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Jimmy Neutron (again, f*ck you Nickelodeon)
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Inside Job
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The Misadventures of Flapjack (i mean, it's length was ok, but i'm salty about it's rushed ending).
Went on for too long:
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Stranger Things (looking back, only S1 was good)
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Rick & Morty (it was pure filler from S3 onwards)
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The Simpsons (should have ended with the movie)
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Spongebob Squarepants (also should have ended with it's 1st movie)
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The Fairly Oddparents (i share the common thought that the show ended in "Channel Surfers", but there were a few good episodes afterwards).
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Regular Show (mainly about Mordo's disasterous love life, everything else was fine, and the ending brought me manly tears :')
Stranger Things should have been an anthology series with Matthew Modine’s character and his experiments as the common thread linking each season.
*Netflix wants to know your location
This sounds perfect.
Ended too soon, I would also add Rome and Deadwood
Deadwood was pretty disappointing, especially with the movie. I was expecting the movie to wrap stuff up nicely, but it basically leaves stuff exactly where it was except (SPOILER) is dead. It's not even a horrible ending, it just doesn't feel like an ending at all and it makes me sad that there's not more
Inside Job is so good, I was crushed when I heard they canceled it. Such a fun concept for a show, and I thought it was really well written. Was really funny, but also had it's sad moments. I'm bummed about that one for sure.
It was good, but as soon as they made a love interest for Reagan who was your typical Fox Muldur.... I mentally checked out
I'm glad Paramount is at least still hosting Zim. It was definitely a big part of my early teenhood.
I loved invader Zim!!!! Did you see the movie they released in 2020 that tied up the series? It was honestly really well done.. I didn't hate it
Awesome point on Flapjack, hadn't even thought of that. I'd love to see a reboot, the world in that show was so interesting. Not nearly enough Steampunk cartoons out there
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The Walking Dead for sure. I couldn't make it through the second season.
Also Fear The Walking Dead. I actually really liked that show for the first 3 seasons or however many it was until they changed showrunners. After that it really became a slog and I didn't finish it.
Yup, what can you really do with a zombie apocalypse though, it's not the best setting to try and drag on. Just like 10 episodes would have been enough.
If someone made World War Z (the book, not the movie) into an anthology series, I could see it going on for a few seasons.
It wouldn’t have hurt if they stuck to the comic book version of events. It was only TWD in name after season one. Sure they added characters from the comic but the story was so off base by that point that I really didn’t care.
It’s so difficult for me to watch the show having read the comics.
Yeah I think it kind of doesn't fit too well into the long TV format because you have to have a sort of base-under-siege type of story (like all the Romero movies), a kind of survival road-trip or a globe spanning thing like World War Z (the book I mean lol). Changing locations constantly is pretty expensive for TV, and having a base under siege for 8+ seasons is boring, so you always end up with this thing where the group finds a shelter, stays there for the whole season, then it all blows up and they move onto the next one. Which you could probably get away with for a bit but over 12 seasons like Walking Dead is definitely starts to drag.
Scrolled way to far to find this.
I kept on for way too many seasons as I knew people in production and would periodically be asked about the most recent episode. Once it became apparent Norman Redus was the single life line to a viewing audience that thing trailed on like the zombies they were supposed to be killing.
Weeds should have ended at the burning of Agrestic.
That town was a character, and the most compelling one in the series.
Supernatural. Imo season 5 was a great ending and a nice bittersweet way to end the series, instead they just kept going and the plot got too convoluted and I stopped caring. Might rewatch at some point, but idk if I'll watch past season 5
Honestly, it's worth skipping season 7 if you do make it that far. The leviathan are one of the worst television plots in history imo. That said it gets pretty decent again for a few seasons.
Lost - seriously fuck that show Prison Break Heroes The Walking Dead Dexter
Are the first to spring to mind…
Heros reaaaally went to shit with the writers strike. Wow did it get bad quick.
Get ready, this is happening again.
lmao i loved prison break.. so many people i come across hated it
The Simpsons
Honestly? Stargate SG1. One of my favorite shows.
The whole theme of the first seven or so seasons was teching up and gathering allies to say "you're not my real dad/god" to the evil sufficiently advanced aliens.
But then having reached the end of that arc and wanting to keep the show going, they introduced some even more godly evil aliens who weren't just sufficiently advanced but were actual magic. I felt it deflated the point made in the whole first arc, that there ain't nobody better then you, to then trot out some evil canonically supernatural entities.
Stargate: SG-1 should have ended at season 8. They beat Anubis, all the conflicts were tied up, there's a nice scene where the crew is just relaxing at O'Neill's pond. And then they ordered another season. So they did the same thing that Xena did and said "Well we ran out of ancient dead religion gods, I guess Christianity is next except they still exist so we have to be kinda cagey about it" and just kept making the show.
The Office (US version). NBC should've put it out of its misery after Pam and Jim married if they had to hold on to airing it. But really it could've ended way earlier than that.
The Simpsons
Amazon's The Rings of Power.
It should have been cancelled 8 episodes ago.
Small show, but Eureka. Everything after the time traveling reset shouldn't have been made.
Awesome show! I just kind of fizzled. I would love to see more episodes if they were good.
Scrubs should have been done with season 7, saying good bye to JD. no weird season 8 with new side stories that all sucked!!
Oh and Family guy... when Seth left the writing and production of the show and only did voicing, the shows quality changed .. it's funny, but its no where near as on the nose funny as season 1 through 10.. now when they break the fourth wall for a brake away joke, it just feels... off.. peter is not ironically funny anymore.. the meg jokes got stale and honestly cruel to where it was not Soo funny anymore.. Lois used to be a great loving mother, even to meg, then became just cold and unrelatable to me... Stewie was funnier as a world domination deviant before they completey changed his character around.., Brian used to be more relatable and then just got pretentious and misogynistic that really wasn't ironically funny anymore.. Chris is maybe the one character who has barely changed from the early seasons... idk it's just not that funny any more to me..
Blame the network for how Scrubs was handled, iirc Bill Lawrence never wanted to acknowledge that season 8 was anything but a spin-off. As such, any rewatches of Scrubs in my household end with season 7.
I agree with Family Guy. Once the reruns hit double digit seasons I stop watching. It definitely was at its best in the original run and right after it was revived. Besides the family members, the supporting cast also changed for the worst, with Quagmire going from Playboy to sexual predator to sexual predator with a grudge against Brian, Joe going from hero cop to whiny wheelchair guy, and Cleveland being more assertive after getting his own show.
OMG, so much this!!! I agree 💯
Family guy seems to be a lot better recently. I'm going through season 19 and it's a lot more grounded (by family guy standards).
I mean for me it's really the characters.. not the story that sucks.. they do tackle some tough, on the nose content, but the characters personality changes just kinda ruin it for me.. I understand I could be a minority in this opinion too
Yeah, there are SO many character derailments in Family Guy, it's sad.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterDerailment
It's just got so pandering. I am fairly left leaning too and have no issues with liberal ideas, but family guy is guilty of what Disney is doing... which is checking boxes and not being great story tellers...
The canonical answer is "Happy Days".
Just before the shark jumping. Yea, this is the original.
For me, Lost.
Writers introduced way too many mysteries that they didn't resolve. ABC should have given them less episodes so they were forced to tie up loose ends faster.
The expanse (the novels). Time jumps in sci-fi are hard to do right. The show had the good sense to end it before the time jump, but they still had to put in admiral Duterte and MCR II (Laconia) in the final season with little to no follow-up because that was in the books
I know it will probably never happen but I find it fun to think they could do a time jump IRL, do a new season after years so everyone is literally older
How many years was the jump?
Without adding any details, the last three jump ~30, ~5, and ~1. The thirty makes the world-building they wanted to do more sensible, and underlines that this is the start of something pretty different and final, but contrary to @nxfsi, I think it was handled fairly well.
Between book 6 and 7 is 28 years.
Time jumps in sci-fi are hard to do right.
Haven't read The Expanse, but I know a lot of people who read Dune bailed when God Emperor jumped ahead over three thousand years.
I was confused as hell and then I realized you were talking about a different series.
Yeah, Dune series is insane. Tho, only God Emperor got that absurd time jump (3500 years with the prequel and 1500 years with the sequel). The other parts only got a few decades at most in between.
The games Nier Replicant and Nier Automata got about nine thousand years between each other.
I remember watching a couple of episodes of Under The Dome and then getting bored of the concept and bailing on it. I forgot about the show for a couple of years and then saw something advertising a third season and I was like "How are they still under that fucking dome?!"
Me with Prison Break. Watched the first season, thought it was pretty good but moved on with my life. Then a few years later saw a trailer for Season 4 or 5 and said "you mfers already escaped from the prison! What are you doing back there??"
Everything Shonda Rhymes does
Castle
House
Oh, I disagree about House. I wish that was still going. He was my favorite asshole.
I got a little weird about House once the main cast got half swapped out, but by the end I came to terms with it and I think the show actually ended pretty solid
It's definitely a good show, but I found the last season hard to get through. I think the season 7 finale would have been a good place for the show to end.
I wish the show just kept doing interesting cases solved by house doing house things.
Ive been watching The Good Doctor and the first episode was kind of bad but it starts getting decent. It's not house but it's produced by David shore so it's got that similar "interesting" medical cases being solved by a savant sort of thing going.
As much as I love Castle, I hated the "I need to do this myself to save you" mentality. Took like three different versions until the last couple episodes and "ok let's work together". Then I think writer strike or maybe actor discrepancies and it ended in such a flat way.
The leads disliked working with each other quite a bit by the end, and you can see when they started filming them apart as much as possible.
It fell into the trap of “things happening to the character” instead of “things happening external to the character and letting them figure it out”. I find that almost every serialized show starts to go that way about 4-5 seasons in.
I also really dislike how many of the kind of shows feel the need to completely change their premise from fun crime procedural to deep dark romance drama. Lucifer did the same kind of thing.
Riverdale. It had so many chances to end well, but it just got more and more ludicrous until they just had to reset everything for the last season.
Scrubs, the reboot they kept as the same name for whatever reason with the interns? So bad.
Arrested Development. The streaming seasons. Terrible.
Futurama. This new season is painfully bad.
Seems like almost anything that has a break for more than a couple years and reboots on a streaming service. It's never as good, and often terrible.
Roughly 95% of all shows.
The X-Files. The direction they took after Robert Patrick joined just did not work and felt like a spinoff more than part of the main series.
I must say that the season 10 was good for the most part though, season 11 was ok, but it wasn't as good as 10
Lost
I just felt like it slapped me in the face with the ending. I was a kid when it came out and was obsessed with it! I also love Dominic Monogham from LOTR SO I watched for him... when He died (for no reason other than to kill his character!!!) I was so mad... but then the series finale was "oh btw.... they were all dead the whole time.. the smoke monster was death pulling them to the other side and they all were in purgatory..... " I felt so upset...
It had a phenomenal last episode, but I think most people agree that M*A*S*H went on way too long. They really started running out of good, meaty concepts for shows around the time David Ogden Stiers (nothing against him, I like him) joined the cast.
I love Bones to death, but they really should have stopped it earlier.
Supernatural seasons 2-7 are pretty great, but it just tanks during season 8 IIRC.
I stopped watching after season 7, my wife held out for one more, and we both wondered every year since why they couldn’t let it die
The 2020 Dracula Netflix show.
The first episode is a fun reimagining of the original story. The second episode is a neat "reverse who-done-it"/bottle episode. The third episode should not exist. Full stop. "Dracula wakes up in modern times and it turns out his weaknesses are just PTSD and then he chooses to die out of honor or something."
Penny Dreadful
The second season ends on a fantastic melancholy vibe that matches the whole tone of the show. The third season wastes all character development to have extra drama.
Dexter. Just leave it at the end of season 6, on the giant 'what the fuck' moment. Leave it there with all the potential and possibilities and open questions for people to wonder about.
I'd argue the end of season 4 would have been an incredible ending. We'd have talked about that show for a generation if we ended it on that note.
OH. MY. GOD. YES. PLEASE.
Agreed. I stopped after season 4 because it was the perfect ending in my mind.
Trinity Killer won, the only thing that kept Dexter's sliver of humanity was gone.
It was almost impressive how they managed to fuck up the ending that badly, revive it for a mini-series, get this close to turning it around and then fuck the ending again lol.
It's like the X-Men movies comitting suicide by badly adapting the Phoenix Saga twice, with the same writer.
Big Mouth. Season 4 redoes and then it just gets awful
Person of Interest
First two seasons were phenomenal. From that point forward it was a battle royal between the writing team, with each one trying to push their personal perspective on the series to the point it was like watching three different series mashed together.
Spartacus
The lead actor died at the end of season one. That is it. Pack it up and go home.
Prison Break
You had one good season. It was the concept. The moment the actual break is done, there is nothing to go on.
That's enough for now.
Grey's Anatomy
Because just how long can that thing go on for?
Law and Order
Any of its iterations. Same as above.
House M.D.
Good show until you start to put in and take out characters just to maintain the pulse of the thing.
Now I'm done!
Surprised I haven’t seen Prison Break yet. After season 3 it just went down
It was weird and forced. I wanted Prison Break, not Fast and the Furious.
Stranger Things.
Season 3 and its fallout in S4 (Hopper in Russia) were pretty dire. Cut those and go deeper with the Satanic Panic plot from S4 instead. Maybe actually have a church leader involved, not just jocks and the PTA? Riff on the "spiritual warfare" literature of the period, Mike Warnke, Frank Peretti -- distant cultural ancestors of QAnon, by the way.
Mad Men. If it had ended with him standing on the top of the stairs saying "This is not the end!" it would have been perfect. Everything after that was weak wish fulfillment.
Idk dude... That Coca Cola ad created on top of the ruin of Don's life wraps it up perfectly for me.
Every Jenji Kohan show.
I think The Shield ended a season too late. If the seasons 6 and 7 were condensed into one with [spoilers ahead] the fallout of the Kavanaugh investigation and the money train, rather than stretching them across two different season, I think the ending would have a tighter pace and would really feel like the "walls are closing in." Plus the whole cartel subplot of the last season came out of nowhere
Edit: Riverdale too, but that should go without saying
Edit 2: House of Cards should've ended with Kevin Spacey leaving
Edit 3: True Detective
Probably controversial, but the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty bad - 2 good episodes (and the finale, though people tend to ignore its flaws because the last scene was so satisfying), but the rest of it was mostly Season-1-level filler.
Yeah, Masks and Sub Rosa were great episodes…
The honor was mine.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The first half of the series was great, I literally almost choked from laughter a couple times. The show kept going but I thought the jokes weren't landing as much anymore.
Oh definitely a hot take! Obviously there are outstanding episodes in the newer seasons, but you also can't say it hasn't changed alot.
I still love the new stuff, there are real classics in there, though it's not as edgy as it was
Great point, I agree even though it doesn't seem like a very popular opinion. All of the characters have just become caricatures of themselves and it no longer feels like "four assholes in a bar"
Chuck. It was on air at the same time as Better Off Ted, which was a fantastic show. IIRC, two seasons into Better Off Ted, the network had to choose between the two shows, and they chose to keep Chuck running. We were robbed.
But how would NBC's decision to renew Chuck impact ABC's decision to cancel Better Off Ted?
I still agree with you, however, in that Chuck (as much as I enjoyed it) probably should have ended after season 4, and Better Off Ted was still in it's prime and could have lasted a couple more seasons.
Game of Thrones
How I Met Your Mother
Tokyo Ghoul
I’ve heard so many terrible things about GoTs final season that I won’t even give it a chance. Why get invested in characters and storylines when I know the writing goes to shit?
Friends.
Lost.
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
I was just thinking about the friends later seasons, hooking up Joey and Rachel, wtf was that about?
The Tonight Show with
Jay LenoJohnny CarsonBoth Leno and Fallon are so boring.
Why Friends? Just curious to hear you motivation
The second half of the series is a boring soap opera with no stakes rather than an actual comedy.
Young Sheldon. There's nothing left they can do with the formula.
Arrested Development. The Simpsons. Scandal. Scrubs. Friends.
At least the last season of scrubs was a different enough setting/cast, so even though it was definitely not as good, it didn't "ruin" it for me like some other series that have gone on too long.
Scrubs is one of my all time favorite shows, but after season 5 it's unbearable to me.
Family guy
Casa de Papel. The first season is its own contained story and it was fantastic and ended perfectly. The subsequent seasons were okay, but you could really tell that the writers hadn't expected the show to continue after season 1, and everything kind of felt made up on the spot and not nearly as well constructed. I watched it because I love some of the actors/characters, but when I recommend it to people, I tell them to only watch the first season.
Wish Agents of SHIELD had ended before anyone uttered the name Daisy.
I'm bingeing this now. It's an interesting show. The last few seasons have been "there is an extinction level event and we must stop it" and then it starts all over.
I've been surprised by the quality of the show, but yeah watching it just straight has made it feel very repeatable.
It's a decent show. But I doubt I'll be watching it again.
I was okay with the name reveal. My problem was the unduly hyped Ghost Rider arc, and also the last two seasons, which were certainly unique, but couldn't possibly have been more tacked-on.
Dammit.
I tried so hard to get through the space station arc but it was so damn confusing and obtuse. I then tried to watch the one after where they're in the tower and past villains come back and it was so far off the rails there was no way I could keep watching.
Just finished watching Marcella and I was so bored by season 3.
Season 1 and 2 are pretty great whodunit mysteries with many twists and turns to keep you guessing. Some super dark stuff thrown in there too and got me emotional on a couple of occasions.
Season 3 feels like a terrible spinoff where not only is there no real mystery, you'll dislike all the characters, including the 2 main returning character. It feels like an 8 episode single episode. You could probably watch the first and last episode and not really miss anything.
Servant. When your whole hook is "eerie and mysterious", you need to provide some payoff for the viewer at some point. After 4 seasons we got some really underwhelming payoff, and by that point the show had gotten so stale that Leanne was actually getting a significant amount of dialogue, so we also find out that that girl isn't a great actor. Thank god the production value was so high in other ways, because the narrative itself became very cheap.
Wayward Pines
Big Little Lies
Muhammad Hassan
Arrested Development.
The first two episodes of season 4 are great but yeah, after the initial charm wears off its pretty clear that they didn't know where they wanted to go with the series after the reboot
Treme, lost its way after season 1 iirc
I am in an opposite camp on that & would happily watch more seasons.
I think I'll rewatch it all as it was over a decade ago. I love the music and there's some great performances in it.
Hannibal. I'm trying for the second time and again started losing interest in the second half of season 2. I'm fizzling out hard on season 3 again.
Part of the problem with season 3 is, ironically, that the show was cancelled. They tried to cram too much in.
Didn't know that but not surprised with Fuller's record.
The Leftovers. The pilot and 1st season were fantastic. The world building, characters, and story all had feeling and potential. Come the 2nd season everything felt flat, small and derivative.
The Office (US version) went downhill in seasons 8 and 9 without Steve Carrell. But the ending of the show was satisfying. They brought back Steve for that.
Fuller House
Ended to soon:
- Terminator Sara Corner chronicles - they left it off on a cliffhanger.
- Firefly - the movie did wrap the show up.
- Next - left it off on a cliffhanger.
BBC’s HUMANS. Story should have wrapped up faster
what an absolute train wreck of a final season that was canceled
Going off the reboot, futurama