The GoT Effect: Once Great Shows That Got So Bad They Sent You Into A Rage Spiral

[BrittaBot]

Echoing House. My husband and I watched it together the first time and now he's re-watching it on Netflix for some reason. Every time he does, I literally go into a rage spiral. Also, Gilmore Girls. Loved it the first time around, maybe because I was in high school, but now if I even happen to catch 5 minutes on ABCFamily, I'm just like Ugh, this is the absolute worst, no one acts like this.

[TaraS1]

Sadly, I'd have to say Elementary.  I thought S1 was absolute perfection in every way, but S2 was a gigantic disappointment for me.  A rage-inducing disappointment.  It stopped being a show about the wonderful partnership between two people and turned into The Sherlock Holmes Show with special guest appearances by Joan Watson.  Sherlock was given constant development and rich layers, while Joan was virtually ignored unless they needed her to serve a greater story for Sherlock (ala the Mycroft debacle).  I wasn't interested in that.  And judging by the dwindling ratings as the season went along, I don't think I was the only one who felt that way.

[Wax Lion]

 

I think if you like something, then you shouldn't feel like you have to hide behind things like hate-watching or watching ironically. Just say you know it's ridiculous but you love it anyway. It's the same when someone calls a show a guilty pleasure. Why not just say it's a pleasure.

 

For me, hatewatching isn't so much a guilty pleasure thing but usually a show that's so compellingly awful, no amount of fury can get me to stop watching. The example that comes to mind is The Big C. The first two seasons were so great, but the third season was a mess of increasingly-selfish behavior and plots that made little sense. The whiplash from season two to three was infuriating but I couldn't quit that show until the third season ended.

 

Gilmore Girls falls into this category for a lot of my friends, I listened to their grumbling and stopped getting the DVDs from Netflix the first time Lorelei made a romantic choice that mixed stupid with cruel.

 

 

Designing Women never recovered from the loss of Delta Burke and Jean Smart.  They were the heart and soul of that show.  That show was pure magic with the original four ladies.  The chemistry was unmatched.

 

For me, the problem was that the new characters never managed to be anything other than Substitute Susanne and Substitute Charlene.

[Kel Varnsen]

Glee - First season was amazing.  Second season had me going "what the what?"  Third season, interest had definitely faded.  Fourth season, watched 3 or 4 episodes, stopped and haven't bothered looking back.  I also think I have an irrational hatred towards Ryan Murphy as well for the demise of what really did start off as a wonderful ensemble/musical series.

 

I really don't know what happened to that show. I mean it seemed to start out as an awesome kind of dark, satire type show of every crappy teen melodrama show out there. But then at some point the hype the show was getting really took off, and the creators really bought into all the hype. It seems like they decided that they would become the one true force that could fix every stupid issue high school kids were dealing with. And the show basically became everything they used to be actively making fun of.

[aradia22]

 

I really don't know what happened to that show. I mean it seemed to start out as an awesome kind of dark, satire type show of every crappy teen melodrama show out there. But then at some point the hype the show was getting really took off, and the creators really bought into all the hype. It seems like they decided that they would become the one true force that could fix every stupid issue high school kids were dealing with. And the show basically became everything they used to be actively making fun of.

I don't think it's a bad thing that they realized that the show was meaningful for a lot of people and that they were more conscious of the fact that it could be used as a force for good. But I do feel like they listened to all the various fan needs and in trying to please too many people they made a mess of things that ended up making a lot of fans unhappy anyway. You're never going to make anyone happy so you need the confidence to stay the course you've charted. I still got a lot of songs for my Spotify playlists but yeah, it's not the show it once was. 

[lucindabelle]

Monarch of the glen. Words do not describe my loathing for the Lexie pair up. Ugh.

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

Surprised nobody's mentioned Oz:

 

The first season was brilliant, somehow managing to cram 13 episodes' worth of plot developments into 8 episodes with nary a wasted scene or conversation.

The second season was almost as good, introducing Chris Keller and a few others, and ending with a devastating one-two-three punch (Sippel being crucified on the gym floor, Alvarez blinding the guard, and Keller's bone-snapping betrayal of Beecher).

 

Season 3 was where the show turned from a gritty prison drama into a prison-based soap opera. The dividing point for me was the second time Alvarez was sent to solitary permanently, only to be let out again a couple of episodes later.

 

Season 4 and beyond were garbage, saved only by the occasional good plotline (and O'Reilly was always interesting to watch).

[DearEvette]

Every single Ryan Murphy show belongs in this thread.

 

They start off so brilliant : Popular, Nip/Tuck, Glee and theny they completly implode into a messy, self indulgent pile of poo.

 

Usually you get at least a great season or two before the mess happens, but The New Normal didn't even make it past four episodes before it began to sink under it's own idiocy.

 

I never started watching American Horror Story because that sort of macabre story telling isn't to my taste, but I thought maybe it would escape the Murphy Curse because he was essentially rebooting every season.  But I understand that the last season of it began to show signs of the same over indulgence and loss of control over the story narrative that marks the rest of his shows.

[spaceytraci1208]

Surprised nobody's mentioned Oz:

The first season was brilliant, somehow managing to cram 13 episodes' worth of plot developments into 8 episodes with nary a wasted scene or conversation.

The second season was almost as good, introducing Chris Keller and a few others, and ending with a devastating one-two-three punch (Sippel being crucified on the gym floor, Alvarez blinding the guard, and Keller's bone-snapping betrayal of Beecher).

Season 3 was where the show turned from a gritty prison drama into a prison-based soap opera. The dividing point for me was the second time Alvarez was sent to solitary permanently, only to be let out again a couple of episodes later.

Season 4 and beyond were garbage, saved only by the occasional good plotline (and O'Reilly was always interesting to watch).

I tend to mark Adebisi's death as the moment that ushered in the decline of the quality of the show. As bad as the show got at times (that aging pill storyline was THE dumbest shit), I remained obsessed with it until the end, and it remains my favorite HBO series thus far...I can only rewatch through season 4 though.

[Enero]

Speaking of prison dramas, I never watched Oz, but did watch Prison Break, which needs to be added to this list.

It was excellent in Season One. Season Two was good, but cracks started to form in the story. The conspiracy around Lincoln's imprisonment was weak at best and though T-bag was disgustingly awful, he was awesome in S1. However, in S2 and beyond he became insufferable (he really should've bit it like many of the other escapees in S2). The show should've ended at the end of S2 with Michael, Sarah and Lincoln escaping to South America. Because when they came back in S3 and tried to recapture the brilliance of S1 by throwing most of the gang in a Mexican prison, the show was lost and never recovered. It was an awful season as was S4 with the horrible story around Scylla.

Edited June 22, 2014 by Enero

[Kromm]

Speaking of prison dramas, I never watched Oz, but did watch Prison Break, which needs to be added to this list.

It was excellent in Season One. Season Two was good, but cracks started to form in the story. The conspiracy around Lincoln's imprisonment was weak at best and though T-bag was disgustingly awful, he was awesome in S1. However, in S2 and beyond he became insufferable (he really should've bit it like many of the other escapees in S2). The show should've ended at the end of S2 with Michael, Sarah and Lincoln escaping to South America. Because when they came back in S3 and tried to recapture the brilliance of S1 by throwing most of the gang in a Mexican prison, the show was lost and never recovered. It was an awful season as was S4 with the horrible story around Scylla.

The only way Prison Break ever stood a chance of being good after Season 2 would have been with a total reset with a new protagonist.  To have some continuity some of the side cast could have been holdovers.  They just didn't have enough guts to do that.

[ybrik]

It was mentioned earlier One Life to Live and I had the opposite reaction. I could barely watch the show the last few years on TV and felt like I finally could enjoy it when Prospect Park brought it back. Of course the writer who made me dislike OLTL has cause me to stop watching General Hospital. I made it through the Guza era but I just can't watch it anymore. I feel like General Hospital is doing exactly like OLTL did in their last few years. There were good ideas but horrible follow through.

 

Warehouse 13 went downhill starting in s4. Bringing back Steve and HG the way they did really made it hard to take the threat of death serious on the show. Then the main plot of the first half of the season has the most obvious plot twist that I think almost every fan guessed it half way through the first half of the season. Then after three years of redoing things to prevent someone from dying they decide to kill off one side character that is important to everyone yet none of them tried to do something to save her. Then there was the cancer plot, the ridiculous HG living a normal life and don't even get me started on season 5.

 

While Dawson's Creek was never my most loved show, I really started to hate the show in season 5-6 when it became all about Joey.

[ToxicUnicorn]

Fun thread to read through.  Chiming in because I can remember (more accurately, look up) the exact episode of Glee where it got irredeemably bad.  That was the mid season finale of season 3, when Karofsky attempted suicide and Kurt visited him in the hospital, when Rachel and Finn were in a hurry to get married at the courthouse and Quinn texted and drove and crashed.  Of course, I am against the despair of teen suicide and the idiocy of texting and driving and, to a lesser extent, to ill-advised marriages, but the heavy handedness of all of it (plus the repulsive notion that Kurt would visit his bully) made me turn off the show and never go back.  No, not even for the Finn memorial (although in real life, I was quite saddened by Cory's death).  Haven't watched another Ryan Murphy vehicle because ... he should shut the hell up, already.

 

Stopped watching House for a different reason.  I found the Season 4 two-part finale powerful and devastating.  But when the show started back up again, nothing seemed to change.  It was so anticlimactic.  I lost interest after that.  (Also, if I may add my vote, I HATED Jennifer Morrison's acting.  13 didn't do much for me, but she was a massive improvement.  I could take or leave Taub and Foreman.  It was really House and Wilson and Cuddy for me, and from what I have read about the later House-Cuddy relationship, I'm glad I didn't watch until the end.)

 

I stayed in love with Battlestar right up until the finale.  Wasn't crazy about the finale, mostly because of the wretched overacting from Olmos.  He was dreadful and the whole thing smacked of overindulgence.  The thing with Starbuck was a WTF.  But it didn't send me into fits of rage.  Not like Lost.

 

Vampire Diaries is another where I remember the exact moment midway through where I got so disgusted I had to stop.  After rooting for Damon for roughly forever (yes, I know he was a killer, but he was also a very sexy underdog), he and Elena finally get together and the obstacle that gets put in their way is... the sire bond.  That one made me rage.  After all that patience, the writers did not let me enjoy it at all.  No.  They decided to take away my ability to root for those two crazy kids immediately.  I felt compelled to never watch the show again, probably because of some misplaced belief that the cosmos will reward me for my sacrifice by beating sense into the writers.  That was probably the most painful spiral, because I had really enjoyed that show, and it was so unexpected - the writers actually had been quite clever, many times, before then.  Stupid, stupid plot twist.

 

For pure rage spiral, though, nothing will ever beat Lost, because that show taught me basically never to invest in a high risk show in real time ever again.  I'm not going to get sucked in like that again.

 

Reality shows has to be Project Runway's Gretchen win, for me.  That made me more than a bit angry.  As for old tv, I was not happy with Bob Newhart's second show, Newhart.  After the great run of the Bob Newhart show, that second show really stunk up the place.  That kind of counts, no?

[Kromm]

Fun thread to read through.  Chiming in because I can remember (more accurately, look up) the exact episode of Glee where it got irredeemably bad.  That was the mid season finale of season 3, when Karofsky attempted suicide and Kurt visited him in the hospital, when Rachel and Finn were in a hurry to get married at the courthouse and Quinn texted and drove and crashed.  Of course, I am against the despair of teen suicide and the idiocy of texting and driving and, to a lesser extent, to ill-advised marriages, but the heavy handedness of all of it (plus the repulsive notion that Kurt would visit his bully) made me turn off the show and never go back.  No, not even for the Finn memorial (although in real life, I was quite saddened by Cory's death).  Haven't watched another Ryan Murphy vehicle because ... he should shut the hell up, already.

Hmm.  Although I watched the show with vain hopes long after (past both my irredeemable line AND yours) I'd not have even gone that far into Glee.

 

For me the break point was somewhere around the Superbowl episode in Season 2.  It's when the show started to feel silly to me, and consequently insincere.

 

 

As for old tv, I was not happy with Bob Newhart's second show, Newhart.  After the great run of the Bob Newhart show, that second show really stunk up the place.  That kind of counts, no?

These things are personal taste to a great degree of course, and I personally loved 80s Newhart, but for me the requirement is that the show itself satisfied you a lot, then eventually did the exact opposite--to the point of pissing you off.  So I'd say if you ever loved anything about the 80s Newhart show at all, it might qualify. If you had it in for it since Episode 1, I don't know.  "Once great comedians" (in this case it would be Newhart if you feel he tanked the second show totally) and "Once great shows" aren't really the same thing.

Edited June 23, 2014 by Kromm

[Jeebus Cripes]

Speaking of prison dramas, I never watched Oz, but did watch Prison Break, which needs to be added to this list.

It was excellent in Season One. Season Two was good, but cracks started to form in the story. The conspiracy around Lincoln's imprisonment was weak at best and though T-bag was disgustingly awful, he was awesome in S1. However, in S2 and beyond he became insufferable (he really should've bit it like many of the other escapees in S2). The show should've ended at the end of S2 with Michael, Sarah and Lincoln escaping to South America. Because when they came back in S3 and tried to recapture the brilliance of S1 by throwing most of the gang in a Mexican prison, the show was lost and never recovered. It was an awful season as was S4 with the horrible story around Scylla.

 

I don't know if I'm in the minority but I was all about Sona. That was the most exciting season for me. Then again, it featured lots of William Fichtner looking all sweaty and hot. 

[ToxicUnicorn]

These things are personal taste to a great degree of course, and I personally loved 80s Newhart, but for me the requirement is that the show itself satisfied you a lot, then eventually did the exact opposite--to the point of pissing you off.  So I'd say if you ever loved anything about the 80s Newhart show at all, it might qualify. If you had it in for it since Episode 1, I don't know.  "Once great comedians" (in this case it would be Newhart if you feel he tanked the second show totally) and "Once great shows" aren't really the same thing.

Good points, and I love your kick off posts and moderating in this forum, if that's what you're doing, Kromm.  To clarify, I did not have it in for Newhart at the start.  I was very intrigued by the Julia Duffy character and her sidekick (was he a boyfriend?), laughed at and had hopes for the bumbling guy, and got a kick initially out of the three Darryls.  It seemed really promising, and I watched for awhile.  But I got progressively more disgruntled, because the show never seemed to go anywhere.  Maybe it's a really bad fit for this thread, because I didn't get all that pissed off, nor did I feel it really achieved enough to be called a once great show.  So --- point taken!

[Anna Yolei]

Kinda surprised Reno 911 hasn't been mentioned yet, because it had five seasons of improvised brilliance, then season six where I didn't laugh even once. Even Ryan Murphy shows don't tank that suddenly. Granted, there was BTS stuff that forced the canning of nearly half the cast, but damn.

[Sweet Tee]

House.  I raged so hard over this show after about season 6.  I didn't mind the big cast overhaul in season 4 because I didn't really care about Chase and I hated Cameron so the less she was onscreen, the happier I was.  But dear Lord did they botch up House and Cuddy.  THey had such fun chemistry in the first three seasons.  How it turned into...that, I just don't understand.  I could not watch them together after a while.  I just couldn't.  I do think the show pulled itself together in the last season for a solid final arc.  Nothing like the magic of the first three years and I got whiplash with how quickly Wilson went from stage 2 to dying in a year or two no matter what.  But, the ending left me satisfied and glad that I'd stuck it out.  It's just seasons  6 and 7 and the mess that was Huddy.  So.  Much.  Rage.

 

The Office.  This might belong more in the UO thread, but I rage quit after they destroyed Jan's character.  I loved her and Michael and then all of the sudden she's an abusive psycho and that was supposed to be funny?  I was done after that.  NEver cared about Jim and Pam so that wasn't gonna keep me around.

 

Gilmore Girls.  Long lost daughter?  REally?  Then Lorelai marries that tool Christopher?  Really?  They'd alreayd wrecked Rory in season 4, by the time they got around to wrecking Lorelai, I was done.  No way was I gonna watch Christopher's smug face week in and week out.

Edited June 23, 2014 by Sweet Tee

[zxy556575]

I don't want a movie in 12 parts. I want a one-hour story I can digest in the few hours I am done with work and not sleeping.

 

Me, too. It's easier for me to list the handful of shows I've stuck with than the multitudes I've given up on.

 

I haven't seen these mentioned, but The Riches and Drop Dead Diva both took ridiculous turns, or maybe their premises were simply unsupportable from the beginning.

 

The regal baby plot and Adalind made me turn away from Grimm for good. Going back a while, Murphy Brown becoming a single mother .. blech. I stopped watching The Good Wife last season because there were too many personal, non-courtroom plots. I've never, ever cared about Peter and his elections, or the kids, or Jackie.

 

I'm a big fan of limited-run series. Tell your story in one season and leave, folks.

Edited June 24, 2014 by lordonia

[blueray]

Grimm probably on my list too. I got so sick of Adelind, her baby and I hated the ending of last season. I'm not sure if I will watch next season.

[pivot]

Felicity went wrong at some point and started to suck. I can't recall the exact season or moment, but I know that I loved the first season, and somewhere along the way I began to loathe the show.

 

It was the episode where they got stuck in the subway and Felicity's friend wrote a song about how much Felicity sucked, talked about it all episode long and they cut out just as we were going to hear it. I have no idea why but that was the last straw for me.

 

My list of shows for this thread:

 

Angel - The end of Fredless where Darla comes back pregnant. I consider the series finale to be the scene right before Fred comes back and before we see Darla to be the end of the show. It was perfect. The gang of Angel, Cordy, Wes and Gunn all hanging around waiting for the next demon attack. No stupid Fred, no baby and no beginning of the end for Cordy.  I stuck around through the end of Season 4 in the hopes that it would improve. But, they made my favorite character, Cordelia, in the Whedonverse evil and stupid to punish the actress for getting pregnant and then kicked her off and added my least favorite character in the Whedonverse, Spike, to the show instead. I still have no idea how that show ended.

 

Buffy - They should have ended with Buffy dying at the end of Season 5. Everything after was shit.

 

Burn Notice - The show went downhill the second they killed Nate. Made the show too depressing. It was a silly little show on the USA Network. But, USA seems determined to make the next Breaking Bad without having the talent or the quality shows to do it. Not everything needs to be that depressing.

 

Covert Affairs - Getting Annie together with Auggie killed my interest in the show. I always thought Auggie was the most boring of Annie's potential suitors and half the fun of the show was watching the hot guys run around with Annie. Stupid USA Network.

 

The Fosters - They turned a sad, funny interesting drama into a bad Daneille Steel novel with Callie and Brandon falling in forbidden love. So many more interesting storylines that could have been pursued and weren't seen on TV very often. I feel like ABC Family pushed the writers to cram these two down our throats.

 

The Good Wife - Getting Alicia back with Peter. The guy is so scummy and he just made her character pathetic and I feel like they had to throw away all of her earlier season growth to get her and Peter back together again. Frustrating.

Edited June 24, 2014 by pivot

[Bastet]

The Fosters - They turned a sad, funny interesting drama into a bad Daneille Steel novel with Callie and Brandon falling in forbidden love. So many more interesting storylines that could have been pursued and weren't seen on TV very often.

 

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything get so bad, so fast.  The show was something I was vaguely aware of but had no intention of watching, since family dramas on teen-oriented networks are not exactly up my alley (plus, I had hated Teri Polo in every single role I'd seen her play), but then I came across a guest appearance by Lorraine Toussaint while going around the dial and, as a die-hard Any Day Now fan, had to stop.  I soon found myself mesmerized as two television characters engaged in a frank, messy conversation about colorism within the African-American community.  And Teri Polo didn't bug for once. 

 

So I stuck around, and got caught up, and discovered a show that was a bit too treacly for my taste and had a terrible habit of tackling too many big issues in rapid succession, but that dealt honestly with a number of scenarios not often presented, let alone realistically, on television: lesbian parents, adopted and biological kids in the same family, the foster care system, gender identity, biracial characters and couples, etc.  When it got renewed after its initial half-season order, I had high hopes they'd stop throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us and settle into a more organic pace.

 

Instead, they amped up the drama, and in increasingly clichéd ways.  Brandon and Callie's attraction could have been a fascinating storyline to explore, as two hormonal teenagers who are not legally related have to learn how to let go of those feelings in order to become a family, but instead it turned into the worst kind of teen soap opera.  Then Sherri Saum gets pregnant and instead of trusting the audience to understand a character isn't gestating even though the actor who portrays her happens to be, the showrunners put forth a storyline in which a couple with three, going on five, children, all of whom are having major adjustment issues and, in some cases, serious problems, decide this would be a great time to go get inseminated.  By a colleague.  Without a donor contract in place. 

 

In the midst of all this, a teenager has drunken sex with his father's girlfriend (when he's not busy bribing a witness, which he finances by running a fake ID selling ring).   Another teen ends his long-distance relationship via text and falls for a girl I'm pretty sure the writers think is a feminist but who is in actuality one of those "I hate other girls and only get along with guys" types that thankfully are far more rare in real life than they are on television.  A foster child goes through everything but having a helicopter fall on her to forestall her adoption. And that barely scratches the surface of what happened over the course of about ten episodes.

 

I didn't even finish the second half of the season, and I certainly haven't watched any of this season.  It sounds like there are still glimpses of the things that initially made the show so great, but there's far too much dreck to wade through to make that worthwhile.  What a shame.

[Luckylyn]

Angel was awesome and then Season 4 happened.  I still am pissed at Whedon for punishing Charisma Carpenter for getting pregnant by turning her evil, raping the character by having a demon possess her body to have sex with a boy Cordy loved like a mother, putting her in coma, not allowing the character to deal with the emotional trauma of her possession, and then killing her off.  They decided she was an appendage to Angel that could be discarded, and it hurt the show.   Her character development  didn't matter to Whedon at all.  Killing off Cordelia and introducing Spike (which didn't have to be a bad thing but the writing didn't work for me as far as integrating Spike) were things the show couldn't recover from.  My pissiness about the show is so well known that my sisters got me only seasons 1-3 as a Christmas present.

 

There was a time when I thought HIMYM was one of the best shows ever and then the longer the show went on the worse it got.  It was better written when they were in danger of cancellation.  Once they were considered a hit the writers just stopped really letting the characters progress. 

[ABay]

Burn Notice - The show went downhill the second they killed Nate. Made the show too depressing. It was a silly little show on the USA Network. But, USA seems determined to make the next Breaking Bad without having the talent or the quality shows to do it. Not everything needs to be that depressing.

Seriously, what is with those people? They had all these entertaining shows, perfect for summers and as an antidote to the pretentious "ooh, we're so DARK! And intense! Aren't we cool" crap on so many broadcast and cable networks. And then they ruined them. I'm glad Psych ended when it did.

[arc]

I think Ally McBeal might have been the first time I really paid attention to who a showrunner was, because everything I read about the show said something like "David E Kelley is great and makes great shows and has a tendency to leave them behind for new shows -- but his lieutenants can never maintain the balance of weird but good that he did."

[blueray]

Seriously, what is with those people? They had all these entertaining shows, perfect for summers and as an antidote to the pretentious "ooh, we're so DARK! And intense! Aren't we cool" crap on so many broadcast and cable networks. And then they ruined them. I'm glad Psych ended when it did.

That's so true. I started watching Teen Wolf two years ago because I was looking for something light to watch and help with my stress from school. While I'm still watching now, the writers definitely took their summer campy show and tried to make it dark. Season 3 was very dark.

[Shannon L.]

Something reminded me of Survivor today and I thought of this thread.  I stopped a long time ago because I got bored with it, but I did go into a rage spiral (and from what I understand, many people did) during the Amazon episode with Jenna and Matt.  For me, it was like watching viscous high school crap all over again.  They didn't like Matt because he was different and Jenna, well, she's the pretty girl who would flash her boobs for peanut butter.  She was one of the cool kids!  I was ashamed to admit that I couldn't sleep that night, but the next morning, I read an article by a tv critic who said he was so enraged by the whole thing that he was almost embarrassed by it.  I sent him a message telling him not to be embarrassed, that I'd actually lost sleep over it and he wrote back saying that he'd been getting that same response from family members, friends and others like me who wrote in.  It was just ugly all around. 

[Actionmage]

I've seen a show mentioned that I had to give up for my health- hate watching wasn't helpful or cathartic. General Hospital, a daytime soap about the lives and loves of folks who worked in and near the titular hospital. I watched soaps in cycles since the 70s; when I got burned out on a particular soap or two, I'd watch another. With GH, I kept watching, hoping that someone somewhere (not just fans) were actually watching and would stop the madness of glorifying mobsters and actively making cops and doctors figures of ridicule.  Eventually, the Husband asked me why I was watching if I got that angry, and I had no good reason. So, I made myself stop. I'd try to look for when I broke, but even typing this is getting me to that frustrated/angry/not-understanding place. *g*

 

While not as rage-inducing, Burn Notice's season 7 has never been viewed by me. In the same way that I kept myself from getting angry about GH, I read about the first episode on TWoP's thread and decided it wasn't worth it. I read periodically about episodes, so I think it was a good decision.

 

Homicide: Life on the Street  pretty much lost me when they lost Pembleton/Andre Braugher.  Yeah, it made sense for the character (Frank had been through his stroke and the baby and Tim getting shot, so a lot of trauma), but Frank was a big fave of mine. When there were more new characters that I wasn't enjoying with no Pembleton? I sadly waved bye-bye around season 6. I came back for the wrap-up movie, but that was such a mixed-bag for me, I just was sad. 

 

The Mentalist I left after the (inevitably disappointing) Red John reveal. Castle I left after the umpteenth iteration of push together-pull apart. In season 5, I was hit and miss, but it was after The Squad and The Quail that I bailed. Richard and Kate were a couple. They'd done the dance, played the game, and almost every cliché inbetween. Then they have Kate bodyguard Ioan Gruffudd  and Castle act like an idiot teen and super insecure. Again, some more.  So I gave up. The Husband watches both, so I hear about how the shows doing periodically. I haven't missed too much, which makes me sad.

 

As much as I liked The Cosby Show, I had to stop after Elvin was given every stupid trait that a tv husband can be given. I just couldn't  with the show doing that to him. Elvin was already pretty regressive to start with, then to make him almost a nuUr example of tv sitcom husband? Just say no.

 

Original Recipe 20/20 and Dateline. They were great in-depth, investigative news magazines at their starts and not unlike 60 Minutes, with the odd fluff piece about a movie or tv star. Now, they seems to do nothing but wallow in murder and 'gotcha!'. (While it might be instructional on one level, the 20/20 offshoot 'What Would You Do?' shouldn't warrant more than an occasional/quarterly special, imo.)

 

Criminal Minds- when they started spending more time with the killers instead of the profilers, I bailed. I'll check in on an episode to see what's going on, but usually I don't stick around. So, I mostly bailed in season 6.  (Season 10 is coming up.)

[Dirtybubble]

Pretty much every reality tv show ever made has overstayed their welcome even if they only lasted one season.

 

Everything from American Idol to Project Runway to Big Brother I just can't stomache anymore.  I've always prefered competition based reality tv because at least some sort of talent is required but when talent takes a back seat to b.s. I'm done.  In fact the only reality tv show I watch religiously is Rupaul's Drag Race. 

 

I'm kinda surprised Dr. Who keeps getting brought up.  Since they change out doctors every few years it kinda keeps things refreshing.  I will admit there are some drs. I like more than others but the story lines change with each doctor so idk, it keeps me engaged.

 

[Mulva]

Project Runway sent me into a rage spiral the season when Nina, Heidi and Michael acted like mean girls towards Giordana, a very nice, pleasant, talented woman who did absolutely nothing to piss them off. She was polite to everyone, and kept making beautiful clothes, so they had to keep her around when they clearly wanted to auf her. Even Chris March mentioned that the "judges hated her" in his TV Guide commentary. The episode when she was aufed even the judges admitted her dress was the best, but still booted her.

[andromeda331]

I've seen a show mentioned that I had to give up for my health- hate watching wasn't helpful or cathartic. General Hospital, a daytime soap about the lives and loves of folks who worked in and near the titular hospital. I watched soaps in cycles since the 70s; when I got burned out on a particular soap or two, I'd watch another. With GH, I kept watching, hoping that someone somewhere (not just fans) were actually watching and would stop the madness of glorifying mobsters and actively making cops

 

 

That's the reason I had to give up General Hospital. I kept watching year after year hoping it would get good again. Finally I had to give it up every episode made me angry. My blood pressure has gotten better since then. A couple weeks ago I checked the GH forums to see if its improved. Nope. But I still miss the old General Hospital.

[Anna Yolei]

Like the GH fans in the last few posts, my soap that spirled down was As the World Turns. 2005 saw the show's last really engaging umbrella story with Jennifer's baby being switched with Gwen's, the fallout from which was still there till ATWT'S dying days.

Everything else after that? I don't know where to begin. Do I start blasting Lily and Holden's on and off marriage making more flips than IHOP and causing their daughter's eating disorder? Or Carly and Jack's equally turbulent "romance" where both were willing to use their children against the other? How about that sad sack Allison eating up the whole of the 2008-2009 season, or the female Chief of Police's oldest son becoming an attempted rapist, or Meg Synder eventually becoming more insane than Paul, for whom she pulled the typical Synder Sanctimony Shit upon?

And let's not forget the one actual stable couple, Luke and Noah. Oh my goodness, Mistletoegate made for good TwoP reading. I can even forgive that cutaway, or the fact that it was two years before they were even allowed to have sex (albeit implied) and even after they joined the ranks of every toxic couple of this show, I could forgive the breakup. But killing off Lukevs new love interest to save Katie's? Fuck you, show. And then the parade of couples in the finale....fuck you again.

I almost added the Bold and the Beautiful, but terrible as that show is, there's been some effort to not sleep at the wheel the past few years, including more screentime for the younger characters.

[Jediknight]

Burn Notice. The last season. It started out perplexing and stupid and became one of the worst character assassinating show endings I can remember.

Yes, yes, yes.  It was the ultimate summer show.  Here you had an action show, that was fun, full of likeable characters, had great humor, at times would go over the top, and just ran with everything.  In season 7 all of that went away, and instead we got a show that was void of fun (with the exception of Sam and Jesse), took itself way too seriously, lost the humor, Michael became deplorable, and Michael no longer was protecting the little guy.

 

I haven't even bought the season on DVD.

[nicepebbles]

Ah, Prison Break. I faithfully watched thru S3. S1 was very good despite its premise, which required suspending belief alot. It was worth it though. S2 was good even with the cracks. By the end of S2 it was obvious this show wasn't cut out for a multi season arc. S3 was painful. It didn't make any sense and then they killed off Sara. I wasn't going to watch S4 but I watch the first few episodes because Sara was back. I couldn't take it after a few episodes. Not even for M/S and the hotness that is Wentworth Miller could get me to stick around. I did watch the very last episode and was so mad. So mad!

Don't get me started on Heroes and it's race fail.

[Snow Apple]

Has anyone mentioned games shows like Deal or No Deal, Minute to Win It, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader, etc. They stared off fun and then they kept stretching it out by introduction of family/friends/neighbors/mailman and sob stories and other antics. I just want to watch the darn game, not your life story. 

[joelene]

I agree that Heroes, Glee and Homeland fell real hard real fast. I don't know how but I stuck with Glee until half of season 3, but I had hate-watched for a good while by then. When the show got back from the break and the Quinn car crash cliffhanger and they hadn't killed her off I finally quit.

I disagree about Nip/Tuck, myself. That show was still fun through season five which was just hilariously bananas (Sharon Gless with the Build-A-Bear, anyone?). Season 6 and 7 were just kinda dull in comparison but they still had good, crazy moments, I thought.

Crash and burn might be a bit harsh, but Downton Abbey definitely took a harsh turn to Worseville after an excellent first season. Season 2 was fine and 3 not bad but the quality of season 4 and 5 comparing to season 1 is rough. But I guess it didn't crash as sudden as other shows mentioned and I can still watch it without hating everyone (only about half of them).

Torchwood crashed hard and fast in it's third and last (for now) season.

Dexter and Weeds are shows that managed to crash and semi-rise like a phoenix only to crash again.

[Rick Kitchen]

Has anyone mentioned games shows like Deal or No Deal, Minute to Win It, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader, etc. They stared off fun and then they kept stretching it out by introduction of family/friends/neighbors/mailman and sob stories and other antics. I just want to watch the darn game, not your life story. 

 

Ugh.  That's what's happened to American Idol and the chef shows.  And especially Next Food Network Star.  I don't want to hear about how your third cousin's appendectomy showed you to be a better person, just perform/cook, dammit.

[kiddo82]

Ugh.  That's what's happened to American Idol and the chef shows.  And especially Next Food Network Star.  I don't want to hear about how your third cousin's appendectomy showed you to be a better person, just perform/cook, dammit.

Taking this to the Unpopular Opinions thread where my response is more appropriate.

[Bruinsfan]

Angel is the show that really sent me into a rage spiral. For its first two seasons it was among the best shows I'd ever seen, and the third looked to be continuing in fine form at the start, then it went completely off the rails with miracle babies and character assassination and awful repeated catchphrases. I know some of the crew and was very involved in the fandom, and was thus too invested to just stop watching and spare my blood pressure; instead I suffered through the most chemistry-free "romance" to ever darken a television screen, one incoherent ass-pull after another, and so many repetitions of "Handsome mayuhnn, saved me from the monsters!" in the teasers it's a wonder I didn't snap and go on a shooting spree.

 

In the show's defense it did manage to right the ship somewhat in its fourth season, and turned out some really entertaining episodes that I'm glad I saw in the fifth. But the third represented the worst fall from grace I've ever seen a television show go through.

[DkNNy79]

GH - loved this show in the 90s.  I remember running home from school to watch this show.  The Sonny/Brenda/Jax is my favorite love triangle of all time.  Somewhere in the 2000s, the show became obsessed with the mob and that's when I checked out.

 

BTVS - I also hated the whole Dawn storyline and I think that was the last season that I fully watched.

 

Glee - I enjoyed the first 2 seasons, have not watched since.

 

Roseanne - Did not enjoy the post-lottery shows.

 

TBBT - I don't think the show has really been as funny the last couple of seasons.

 

That 70s show - once they broke Jackie & Hyde up, it all went downhill for me.

 

Will & Grace/Friends - used to watch these shows every week, but it just lost its charm for me the last few years.

Edited December 3, 2014 by DkNNy79

[Guest]

TBBT - I don't think the show has really been as funny the last couple of seasons.

 

I get irritated every time I think about the fact that this show has been renewed for three seasons because they are already out of ideas and have been for a while.

[Anna Yolei]

I forgot about Weeds until it was mentioned a few posts back...holy shit. I don't hate it when shows try I to deviate from its initial premise per se (I'm the only Archer fan that actually liked season five that I know of), but after the 'burbs got burnt the show started to become like every other drug show out there and Nancy's smugness got more irritating with every season.

Once Elizabeth Perkins was off the show, I left too.

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

One hearty vote here for The View!  The loss of Meredith Viera, Lisa Ling, and Joy Behar brought this screechfest to its knees, and the additions of Bitsy Hasselbeck and Sherri Shephard were daggers to the heart.  This one is really circling the drain these days.

It did inspire one of the all-time great TV exchanges:

A typically lobotomized Sherri Shepherd: "I don't think anything predated Christians."

Whoopi Goldberg: "The Jews?"

Edited December 6, 2014 by Sir RaiderDuck OMS

[shantown]

I think The OC and Weeds are two shows that went off the rails, but came back in their last seasons. Which I guess I prefer to shows that go off the rails in the series finale and you know there's no chance of redemption.

 

Also, Glee. The show that went off the rails, and then took the rails and beat the fandom bloody with them.

[Anna Yolei]

It did inspire one of the all-time great TV exchanges:

A typically lobotomized Sherri Shepherd: "I don't think anything predated Christians."

Whoopi Goldberg: "The Jews?"

Wow. Being owned by Whoopi the rape apologist has gotta sting.

[Kromm]

It did inspire one of the all-time great TV exchanges:

A typically lobotomized Sherri Shepherd: "I don't think anything predated Christians."

Whoopi Goldberg: "The Jews?"

For all the times Whoopi is a total moron (and frankly, increasingly a massive hypocrite and consequently something of a shit human being), occasionally some rare one-off jokes like this pop up to remind us that she used to be capable of being pretty witty.

[Rick Kitchen]

It did inspire one of the all-time great TV exchanges:

A typically lobotomized Sherri Shepherd: "I don't think anything predated Christians."

Whoopi Goldberg: "The Jews?"

 

Not to mention Sherri's refusal to believe that the world isn't flat.

[janie jones]

For all the times Whoopi is a total moron (and frankly, increasingly a massive hypocrite and consequently something of a shit human being), occasionally some rare one-off jokes like this pop up to remind us that she used to be capable of being pretty witty.

Is it meant to be a joke?  It's a statement of fact.

[Guest Accused Dingo]

One word! Dexter. Honestly this show started its downward slide after the death of Rita. I liked Lunen and I think the Luman season was the last good season on the show

Homeland has been and still is a good show. I disagree that this show has gotten bad. I think the last of the Brody seasons was inspired television. I mean what do you do when a family member is exposed as a terrorist? How do you ever recover from that?

[Jpxfactor]

Whoopi is stupid and entitled... Don't say anything against her famous friends ..lol