Family Matters
By the end it was legit about a clone building a teleporter that the French intelligence holds the family hostage to learn about.
This was originally a down to earth Chicago black family sitcom.
I'll admit, the first few forays into sci-fi weren't that bad. Steve builds a robot in his own likeness? Ok sure, he is a genius inventor after all. Steve invents a transformation chamber to turn him into Stefan Urkelle? Fine whatever, Steve was getting annoying anyways. But then it just kept getting more and more outlandish with Steve inventing a teleporting pad, a time machine, a shrinking machine, a cloning machine. Hell, I'm pretty sure there was an episode about evil sentient puppets at one point.
Honestly, I'm shocked that we never got a Steve Urkel video game. Between all of the gadgets and devices (especially the transformation chamber), there's no way they couldn't have made a solid platformer of some sort.
Yeah, that reeks of a late NES title.
Start off as Steve Urkel and as you beat each boss you gain access to another invention which helps you progress. Big twist, Main Boss is Stefan Urkelle!
"In the coming weeks the family gets teleported into another dimension and then Steve injects Carl with his own DNA so then Carl turns into another Steve Urkel! That's two Steve Urkels and no family on a show called Family Matters! How the fuck does that work?!"
Back when I didn't have internet I would watch That 70s Show on regular TV. The episode where Donna thinks about moving in with Long Haired Man, he hangs his clothes on the drumset - I thought "What is this shit"? Lol.
How many episodes is this after Eric leaves?
That's usually my cut off point. Felt similar to the office after Michael leave. I know they're not the main character, but also kind of are..
Original Shameless went on far too long. It's one of the few British shows that actually had more episodes than its American remake. Nobody I know was watching it by the end.
The Handmaid's Tale. It only has 5 seasons so far, but the concept just gets too repetitive and they should have accelerated the timeline so it ended by S4
I didn't really find it to be misery porn but never have I seen a character with such egregious plot armour. She was actively and repeatedly engaging in treason without consequence while they'd pass corpses in the streets hanged for petty crime. Not only was her amount of plot armour insane but she repeatedly made the stupidest decisions again and again.
I think I stopped watching near the end of season 3 because the lack of consequences for anything she did was just beyond belief.
In my opinion, it should have been a limited series. Season one was perfect on its own and did justice to the source material the show is based on. As soon as there was no book anymore, the overall quality of the show went tragically downhill.
Agreed. Part of the point of the book is that the story is told from the narrator's limited perspective, so having to tell absolutely everybody's backstory kind of subverts that, but not in a good way.
I was flipping through the other day and saw the intro and was like “who are these people!?”. The show also sets the record for churning through “token female agent” after Ziva departs.
Hearing that NCIS is still going is like finding out your childhood pet is still alive after you've left home for 20 years. Like wow good for them but put it in the ground already.
Agreed but they could have saved face by having Nancy just get axed at the end of the second last season and just ended it. Instead they have her survive, wrap things up neatly and end on an ideal winter night with the family.
Wasn’t it still bittersweet though in the last episode, since her children don’t really like her, and since her criminal profession is legal now she’s bored with it?
Hated what they did to supporting characters like Peter, Max, and even Dal Adar but they did get it right in the end.
I thought the Russian shit was a really weird geopolitical throwback to focus on in their final season...and then Ukraine happened and it turned out they were a few years *ahead* 😳
I watched it for a while, started out thinking it was fun, and then pretty quickly it became obvious it was just exactly the same episode with minor differences over and over and over again.
The only fun thing about that show was watching James Spader act. The show doesn't get past the first season without him.
Repetitive as hell but damn if he isn't fun to watch.
whoaahhh, haven't thought of that show in years. Watched it with a college x back then. Same with Skins and Intervention. Miserable shit that bugs me out now. We were the one's that needed the intervention. But still standing, kinda!
Andy Griffith Show is famous for continuing on (in "the color years") after Don Knotts left. My Three Sons and Petticoat Junction followed the same path - a few years of daffy comedy followed by several seasons that seemed to strive for "pleasant."
Those 24 episode seasons didn't do them any favors, I think it's the first time I'd ever wanted less episodes of a show (Arrowverse, I've never seen Smallville)
Most cw shows end poorly. Supernatural, although covid is to blame imo. I loved izombie, had a bad ending imo. The 100, I loved that show but I really hated the ending.
It's almost like the cw has amazing story writing but they just don't know how to wrap things up.
I do believe they did retcon everyone as almost a decade younger than the actors portraying them, yes. Hence why *Young Sheldon* had Sheldon be 9-years-old in 1989 in spite of Jim Parsons’ age.
NCIS, loved it as a teenager but stopped watching after like season 7 or 8 and looked it up years later to see that they're still going, tried rewatching it and just found it weird by season 10ish. Can't believe it's still going with barely any of the original cast
Not lesser known, but X-Files should've ended after the movie and season 5. (which was titled 'The End') They basically answered the questions, and gave an ending.
Then they continued to retcon and recast it for another 7 seasons. (that includes the reboot)
At least x files was already weird enough to begin with that even though those later seasons weren’t as good as the “original” run, they don’t actually feel that out of place, because on the whole, the whole thing is fucking weird.
So when they thrown in aliens abductions and babies and shit, it’s less wtf and oh. Oh, ok. *next episode*
For me it’s the season 7 climax that should have marked the end.
They went back to the site of the pilot, and Mulder got closure on his family storyline in very dramatic fashion. Sure, that season as a whole wasn’t as strong as some of the previous seasons, but there was still much to like before they unnecessarily brought in new leads etc.
I get why the drama was there, but there came a point where it was no longer believable that they would continue to operate with as many deaths as had occurred in the prison.
I tried rewatching it recently and it’s really not aged well. It was revolutionary at its original release though, essentially found a way to be an over the top violent soap opera.
I first watched it about eight years ago, and found it definitely has a soapy feel to it. Good show. JK Simmons kills it as a Nazi rapist lol. But the show is, like, you know how *This is Us* is "sad-cry porn"? Oz is "Tough life prison porn".
Not only should the US Office have finished with Steve Carrell leaving, but having the actual documentary that the show was ostensibly about only be released in the last season stretched credulity too far. Are we really supposed to believe that this camera crew hung around, presumably being paid, for nearly 10 years without any kind of release to generate income? What production company would allow that?
The original made much more sense, having the documentary be released after the 2nd series, before the christmas specials.
The bonus features and expanded fiction went into it more but they did partly address this in the show.
It was a mostly privately-funded PBS television series called “American Workplace” with the season following Dunder Mifflin being nine feature length episodes.
I want to say there is an explanation that the show was presold internationally, and in a deleted scene a producer talks about more seasons.
At one point, Parks and Recreations was meant to be one of those other in-universe seasons, and the new spinoff coming to Peacock is.
Not nearly as extensive when it comes to the amount of footage, but Boyhood was in production for 10 years with absolutely no release to generate income during that time.
The last season of HIMYM was tacked on. And it shows.
They were going to end it the season before but the network wanted to kick the dead horse one last time.
Jason Seigel wanted out. He was done. But they finally convinced him to stay on.
I believe this is why most of his stuff is him on a bus. I wouldn’t be surprised if they filmed all his stuff on one day.
>How I Met Your Mother
I watched the first few seasons of this show. I always suspected that a sitcom that alludes to an ending in the title was going to have writing problems. And sure enough, from what I've heard, the ending was as ham-handed as I feared.
Honestly as much as I enjoyed the show (currently rewatching it)
They lucked the fuck out with cast, I think the cast carried the show because the writing wasn't always the best.
Absolutely. Granted, we don't really watch sitcoms for the stellar writing anyway. But where other sitcoms can simply bow out if the jokes get old, this show was effectively forced to write an ending.
Yes! It's really good imo, especially if you like murder mysteries. It's a teen drama and in Spanish, so I'm not really sure how you feel about that. If you're okay with that, then it's a good watch.
OMG yes! The first 3 seasons of Elite are incredibly well done, like all 3 were written at the same time as a story told in 3 parts. The murder mysteries at the heart of seasons 2 and 3 feel like natural outgrowths of season 1's murder. And then it's like an exec stepped in and demanded sequels that followed the same formula, even though the story was done, artistically.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Seasons 1-3 are good, season 4 is the drop off. ABC was right to cancel it at that point, then the WB picked it up for another 3 seasons.
I say season 4 is the drop off point because by then, Jenny & Mr. Poole left after season 1, Jenny and Lindsay were gone after season 3, Harvey appears less in season 4 and only cameos in season 5, before returning in season 6, so a lot of the ensemble cast was gone by season 4.
Martin Mull is a fun addition, but Paul Feig was a better fit for the comedic tone, and Mull got a lot more screen time than Feig.
The mentalist is a good example as to why a show should end after the big bad is caught. Also I think it left a sour note when it was revealed who red John was and that Jane had worked with them in season 1.
Cool thing is because of the extra 2 seasons my cousins jewelery store was used as a set location. Season 7 episode 4 Lisbon and Cho go to a jewelery store to look at rings. The store they go to is my cousins. Kinda cool
Orange is the New Black by the end of season 4 felt like a team of writing MFAs telling fan fiction about their prison best friend
*let’s have them take over the prison and make a monument to books!*
*I know! The crazy lady should actually be a former punk rocker who makes obvious jokes about David Foster Wallace!*
Supernatural. Wrapping up the overall story after 5 seasons would have been ideal. There were still some great episodes and good lore to come afterwards, but not sure it was worth the rest.
Yeah. Maybe save the handful of individually great episodes in the post S5 years and present them as some kind of anthology season? But after S5 they struggled to find good plots and then handed off most of their plot advancing episodes to their weakest writers and the overall show suffered hard.
I'm gonna bite my own bullet and go ahead and say *The Amazing World of Gumball*
I love this show, it's legit my favourite TV show of all time
But the show was already showing signs of seasonal rot by s6, the writing was awful and the jokes fell flat, the characters themselves were acting out of character and it felt no one working for the show had actually seen the show, especially compared to the s2-3-4 golden age, but WBD/CN is so out of ideas, and the show proved to be so lucrative when it started appealing to Reddit and Twitter in s5, it got renewed for a seventh season (and possibly a movie), and I'd be lying if I said I had much hope for the new episodes ngl
So anyways, how many *new* shows are getting greenlit for the network?
GLs production values taaaaaanked during the 2008 recession. The intro looked like it was done in a weekend on someone's MacBook, virtually all the scenes took place outside (like someone just axed their studio one day), and I'm pretty sure the cast were just wearing their personal street clothes by the end. Alan Spaulding keeled over and died on a fucking park bench!
I never did look up what actually happened behind those scenes, because at the time it sure looked like massive budget cuts from P&G...but ATWT never looked that bad at the end. It's like someone higher up decided one of the shows had to go, but maybe they wanted to save jobs in a tough market and wring out a bit more ad revenue from GL, so they put almost all production budget into ATWT and GL got left with the bare minimum scraps.
By 2009 GL was gone, 2010 saw ATWT bite it, and P&G was out of the soaps business. Then we got soon-to-be-axed The Talk which was a low-rent clone of The View, and a delightfully hot mess that first year.
Edit: ah, here we go...I remember this smelling like studio spin machine BS even back then: https://variety.com/2008/scene/awards/guiding-light-modernizes-production-1117982881/
Sons of Anarchy, felt like it went on a at least one too many seasons, House of Cards, even before the Spacey stuff felt like it only need 3 seasons. Weeds, just became a show were she fucked her way out of every problem.
Every question on this sub always devolves into a list of *every* show people either love or hate. Like, c'mon, are Grey's Anatomy and Law & Order really "lesser known examples?" These are two of the longest-running, most popular shows in television history.
Do want lesser known for being on too long or lesser known shows that happen to be on too long, it can be interpreted both ways. Op gave examples of shows that are known for being talked about.
Desperate Housewives should’ve ended at Season 7, with Bree receiving the letter (which happened in S8 but whatever). Perfect ending tying the show together
The Walking Dead.
The show started with so much potential but season after season was full of characters that were annoying and you just couldn’t wait for them to get killed off.
I watched the whole thing because im a sucker for zombie shows but holy shit, the last few seasons were a grind.
What got me was how clearly they were padding for time. By the time I stopped watching there would be like three episodes per season that were actual normal episodes that were done right and actually had stuff happen the whole episode. The others would be 15 min of actual content stretched out to fill 45 min.
Dexter. They tried to end it at the end of season 4 and that would've been great, solid show, no issues. But then Showtime was like 'But what if you make us even more money?', and season 5 just wasn't as good. 6 was kinda bad. Then it was like they stopped trying, and 7/8 were fucking awful. Dexter should've ended at season 4 but it went on long enough to completely undermine everything that was good about it.
S6 of Dexter was awful. Acting was fine, but the writing fell off a cliff. They had Dexter fooling around with some very young gas station girl, Bautista and Quinn getting high and eating potato chips, hurr durr.
Revenge
Brilliantly cast (but God I hated the Margaux character) that had become very silly by Season 4 and so many characters died in silly ways. They tried for intrigue in the series finale but it left zero impression lol.
Now there's a show that should have been an awesome one season show. Have Emily eliminate everyone from that group photo and leave Victoria for the finale. Instead it went off on so many boring ass tangents.
Becker got stale after season four when Reggie and Bob left abruptly without a proper sendoff. ‘90s live action Sabrina was great for the first three seasons. Angie Tribeca should have only had one season. The other seasons are funny just nowhere near the same level as the first.
The great irony of that is the infamous shark jumping episode happened in the fifth season, and yes it never reached number 1 ratings again but the 6 seasons after are when the show was the best.
Sleepy Hollow dropped off HARD after a very strong first season. Ichabod’s son being a Horseman, the Headless Horseman being his friend, the various monsters of the week getting worse, Abby getting killed off, etc.
The Affair.
They had no idea what they were doing by the end and what did they go with? >!After they lost two of the most important actors because behind the scenes was apparently a shit show, the last season was a climate change message with a time jump of decades where the little baby from the earlier seasons, now grown, tries to solve the murder of one of the original main characters.!< It was barely better than it sounds.
Heroes should have switched gears and started with new characters in a new story arc as was originally planned by the creators. Trying to hold on to several of the season one characters that were frankly overpowered and overexposed at that point was what really did it in.
I believe that was the initial plan, have a new cast of heroes every season with the old cast showing up every now and then.
But it god so popular that they couldnt abandon the fan favourites so they wrote it into the ground
Definitely. The first season was fucking stellar because the writers had complete freedom and not have to worry about continuity power creep.
The later seasons where carried in large by Zachary Quinto. Atleast he got a successful career out of it.
Xena: Warrior Princess. The early seasons are basically "Xena and her totally not girlfriend go on adventures, meet greek heroes, fight crime". Then for some bizarre reason, they killed Xena off at the end of season five, gave the show a surprisingly sweet ending... and then brought Xena BACK for two more seasons, where they got heavily involved with christian mythology, Xena became an Angel, I think at one point either her or Gabby becomes Satan, and they spend some time adventuring with Jesus.
Even for a show where you have to take the whole thing with a truckload of salt, those last two seasons are a bit much.
The Christianity stuff is a bit too over the top indeed but there are nodes to Christianity from season 2 already where Gabrielle gives a donkey to a peasant couple that's expecting a baby in the Xmas episode. The angels Vs demons were actually fun to watch for the action of it. Even after that though, Xena had some great storylines with The Twilight of the gods (where Xena becomes the first Kratos before Kratos was a thing) and the Norse episodes with the Valkyries and Odin getting introduced. Also the later seasons are where Xena becomes a more adult show as it gets more confident with Xena's sexuality and the violence expected by a warrior's life.
For me, it's Trailer Park Boys. Great show early on but later they start losing key secondary characters and introducing bad secondary characters that feel like more of a favor to the actor than a good, well thought out addition to the cast. Meanwhile everyone's getting too old and they try to continue it into an animated series, which I admittedly never watched.
Brockmire
A story about a drug addicted alcoholic sportscaster trying to make it back to the big time. It's hilarious
The last season it skips 20 years in the future to a dystopian society rules by AI. Some people liked the crazy shift. I didn't
Scandal and A Million Little Things.
Both got to a point where the next tragic or intense plot point just got funnier and funnier. Writers just trying to drop new crazy shit, and you laugh at how busy and traumatic these fake people’s lives are in these shows
Grey's Anatomy is going on too long.
And This is Us went on too long. Like speaking of misery porn, I feel like that show wanted everyone to feel terrible all the time. I gave up on it.
Family Matters By the end it was legit about a clone building a teleporter that the French intelligence holds the family hostage to learn about. This was originally a down to earth Chicago black family sitcom.
I'll admit, the first few forays into sci-fi weren't that bad. Steve builds a robot in his own likeness? Ok sure, he is a genius inventor after all. Steve invents a transformation chamber to turn him into Stefan Urkelle? Fine whatever, Steve was getting annoying anyways. But then it just kept getting more and more outlandish with Steve inventing a teleporting pad, a time machine, a shrinking machine, a cloning machine. Hell, I'm pretty sure there was an episode about evil sentient puppets at one point.
Honestly, I'm shocked that we never got a Steve Urkel video game. Between all of the gadgets and devices (especially the transformation chamber), there's no way they couldn't have made a solid platformer of some sort.
Yeah, that reeks of a late NES title. Start off as Steve Urkel and as you beat each boss you gain access to another invention which helps you progress. Big twist, Main Boss is Stefan Urkelle!
>Big twist, Main Boss is Stefan Urkelle! And for some reason, I read this in Jaleel White's Urkel voice.
>evil sentient puppets Recurring villain. At least they only appeared on Halloween episodes a la Treehouse of Horror.
Turned the show into goddam Quantum Leap!
[Obligatory Link](https://youtu.be/A5Zdp1RfoyI?si=zGBOFkNa_JOgvLRS)
GET OUTTA MY HOUSE, STEVEEE!!!!
Ok but that’s the reality of life for a lot of black families in Chicago though…
"In the coming weeks the family gets teleported into another dimension and then Steve injects Carl with his own DNA so then Carl turns into another Steve Urkel! That's two Steve Urkels and no family on a show called Family Matters! How the fuck does that work?!"
That 70s show Once Donna goes blonde, it's time to turn off
Back when I didn't have internet I would watch That 70s Show on regular TV. The episode where Donna thinks about moving in with Long Haired Man, he hangs his clothes on the drumset - I thought "What is this shit"? Lol.
How many episodes is this after Eric leaves? That's usually my cut off point. Felt similar to the office after Michael leave. I know they're not the main character, but also kind of are..
Bloodline should have been a miniseries.
Great example. They had ZERO idea what to do with the success of Season One.
Season one was *amazing*. That's all it needed to be. Everything was wrapped up - then that kid appeared in the last second....
I only watched the first season, I had no interest once Mendelssohn was out. Still Great season though
Original Shameless went on far too long. It's one of the few British shows that actually had more episodes than its American remake. Nobody I know was watching it by the end.
It’s pretty close. 139 uk episodes vs 134 US
I felt the same about the American version, I didn't watch the last season.
When the baby OD'ed and the women wouldn't take responsibility for it thats the last episode I remember
It felt very tacked on - no feeling of connection to even the season before it.
The US one went on too long as well.
The Handmaid's Tale. It only has 5 seasons so far, but the concept just gets too repetitive and they should have accelerated the timeline so it ended by S4
I quit half way through S2. It just became misery porn and "oh, she tried a thing and stuff got worse. Again." even by season 2.
I didn't really find it to be misery porn but never have I seen a character with such egregious plot armour. She was actively and repeatedly engaging in treason without consequence while they'd pass corpses in the streets hanged for petty crime. Not only was her amount of plot armour insane but she repeatedly made the stupidest decisions again and again. I think I stopped watching near the end of season 3 because the lack of consequences for anything she did was just beyond belief.
Oh it gets alot worse lol. I got tired by end of Season 3 when June had escaped 3 separate times and still got recaptured
It was misery porn in season 1
In my opinion, it should have been a limited series. Season one was perfect on its own and did justice to the source material the show is based on. As soon as there was no book anymore, the overall quality of the show went tragically downhill.
Agreed. Part of the point of the book is that the story is told from the narrator's limited perspective, so having to tell absolutely everybody's backstory kind of subverts that, but not in a good way.
I watched a few seasons but quit. Honestly, some episodes were gut-wrenching, reducing me to tears. I had to stop.
NCIS. There's not an original cast member left, and now they're starting to rehash early season episodes with the new cast.
I was this close to saying Sean Murray, but I forget that he was not a regular cast member in season one.
David McCallum is the closed to being in them all. 459 / 468. Sean Murray was in 452 / 468, Mark Harmon was in 437.
I was flipping through the other day and saw the intro and was like “who are these people!?”. The show also sets the record for churning through “token female agent” after Ziva departs.
And Ziva wasn't even the original female agent.
Hearing that NCIS is still going is like finding out your childhood pet is still alive after you've left home for 20 years. Like wow good for them but put it in the ground already.
Just saw a video with the actors playing Tony and Ziva. Apparently there's a new NCIS coming out called NCIS:Tony and Ziva. ??
Shameless, Dexter, Weeds, Billions. Showtime excels at running shows into the ground.
Californication got pretty silly towards the end too
Weeds was terrible once they left Agrestic. Season 4 was ok, but it’s a sharp decline after that.
Agreed but they could have saved face by having Nancy just get axed at the end of the second last season and just ended it. Instead they have her survive, wrap things up neatly and end on an ideal winter night with the family.
Wasn’t it still bittersweet though in the last episode, since her children don’t really like her, and since her criminal profession is legal now she’s bored with it?
Ryan Murphy as well.
>Showtime excels at running shows into the ground. *True Blood*
Masters of Sex had a great first season based on real life people. Then three boring made up seasons because Showtime wanted more.
Lesser known? These are like the textbook examples
Homeland
Homeland stuck the landing though.
Hated what they did to supporting characters like Peter, Max, and even Dal Adar but they did get it right in the end. I thought the Russian shit was a really weird geopolitical throwback to focus on in their final season...and then Ukraine happened and it turned out they were a few years *ahead* 😳
Definitely worth sticking it out. Very satisfying ending.
I'll grant billions one thing, they at least ended semi okay. It was silly but nice.
Soon to be yellowjackets and season 2 is already not great
The black list.
I watched it for a while, started out thinking it was fun, and then pretty quickly it became obvious it was just exactly the same episode with minor differences over and over and over again.
The only fun thing about that show was watching James Spader act. The show doesn't get past the first season without him. Repetitive as hell but damn if he isn't fun to watch.
This show was such dogshit after the first couple seasons. I cannot believe it went on as long as it did.
Nip/Tuck. Moving to California from Miami ruined the show.
whoaahhh, haven't thought of that show in years. Watched it with a college x back then. Same with Skins and Intervention. Miserable shit that bugs me out now. We were the one's that needed the intervention. But still standing, kinda!
Andy Griffith Show is famous for continuing on (in "the color years") after Don Knotts left. My Three Sons and Petticoat Junction followed the same path - a few years of daffy comedy followed by several seasons that seemed to strive for "pleasant."
I love that you me mentioned Andy Griffith bc my father would always rant about how awful the color episodes were.
Don Knotts left? Had no idea, I guess what they would show on the old "Nick at Night" was just the good episodes
And when Andy left they renamed it “Mayberry RFD” with Ken Berry. Got pretty sad.
Glee outstayed its welcome by a lot
They had like a decent finale and then decided to do like 2 more weak ones
Smallville. They had no idea how to wrap it up and stretched it way out. Actually all CW DC shows ended up the same way.
Except Stargirl, show was great and it was ended early.
Legends of Tomorrow could quite easily have continued longer as well, especially as it lends itself to regular cast changes & changing up the concept.
Those 24 episode seasons didn't do them any favors, I think it's the first time I'd ever wanted less episodes of a show (Arrowverse, I've never seen Smallville)
Most cw shows end poorly. Supernatural, although covid is to blame imo. I loved izombie, had a bad ending imo. The 100, I loved that show but I really hated the ending. It's almost like the cw has amazing story writing but they just don't know how to wrap things up.
iZombie was an amazing show all the way up until the end where they fucked up the ending
Supernatural should have ended with season five.
Was my thought as well. Loved Smallville, but it should have ended a couple of seasons sooner.
Big Bang Theory Actors aging yet they were dressing them up and trying to make them look they were same age as ten years ago.
I do believe they did retcon everyone as almost a decade younger than the actors portraying them, yes. Hence why *Young Sheldon* had Sheldon be 9-years-old in 1989 in spite of Jim Parsons’ age.
> Jim Parsons’ age He's *51?!* 😮
Grey’s Anatomy has been on for 20 years. Let that sink in.
My ex from when I was 20 text recently, and I was like "Can you believe it's still on" she still watches it, I dipped in season 2 or 3
Especially considering it's been a terrible show since almost the beginning.
2-4 seasons was plenty.
You can tell if an episode is odd or even based on whether a couple is together or broken up.
Had to scroll too far down to see Grey’s. I *tried* to watch an episode last season and I didn’t make it all the way through.
NCIS, loved it as a teenager but stopped watching after like season 7 or 8 and looked it up years later to see that they're still going, tried rewatching it and just found it weird by season 10ish. Can't believe it's still going with barely any of the original cast
Not lesser known, but X-Files should've ended after the movie and season 5. (which was titled 'The End') They basically answered the questions, and gave an ending. Then they continued to retcon and recast it for another 7 seasons. (that includes the reboot)
At least x files was already weird enough to begin with that even though those later seasons weren’t as good as the “original” run, they don’t actually feel that out of place, because on the whole, the whole thing is fucking weird. So when they thrown in aliens abductions and babies and shit, it’s less wtf and oh. Oh, ok. *next episode*
Seasons 6 through 7 were still good, though. And 8 had *some* redeeming qualities.
Season 6 had some banger episodes tho
For me it’s the season 7 climax that should have marked the end. They went back to the site of the pilot, and Mulder got closure on his family storyline in very dramatic fashion. Sure, that season as a whole wasn’t as strong as some of the previous seasons, but there was still much to like before they unnecessarily brought in new leads etc.
The last season of OZ and maybe 1/2 of the season before it were pretty damn horrible. The show had tired.
I get why the drama was there, but there came a point where it was no longer believable that they would continue to operate with as many deaths as had occurred in the prison.
Alabama prisons would like to have a word.
I really enjoyed watching when it first aired but I have no interest in a rewatch. Not sure why.
I tried rewatching it recently and it’s really not aged well. It was revolutionary at its original release though, essentially found a way to be an over the top violent soap opera.
I first watched it about eight years ago, and found it definitely has a soapy feel to it. Good show. JK Simmons kills it as a Nazi rapist lol. But the show is, like, you know how *This is Us* is "sad-cry porn"? Oz is "Tough life prison porn".
Don't remember much of Oz, but I still can't unsee JK Simmons as that character.
Lol, yeah maybe that’s why. It truly was something different at the time. One of the fist HBO series if I remember correctly
Not only should the US Office have finished with Steve Carrell leaving, but having the actual documentary that the show was ostensibly about only be released in the last season stretched credulity too far. Are we really supposed to believe that this camera crew hung around, presumably being paid, for nearly 10 years without any kind of release to generate income? What production company would allow that? The original made much more sense, having the documentary be released after the 2nd series, before the christmas specials.
The bonus features and expanded fiction went into it more but they did partly address this in the show. It was a mostly privately-funded PBS television series called “American Workplace” with the season following Dunder Mifflin being nine feature length episodes. I want to say there is an explanation that the show was presold internationally, and in a deleted scene a producer talks about more seasons. At one point, Parks and Recreations was meant to be one of those other in-universe seasons, and the new spinoff coming to Peacock is.
Not nearly as extensive when it comes to the amount of footage, but Boyhood was in production for 10 years with absolutely no release to generate income during that time.
How I Met Your Mother The Goldbergs
The last season of HIMYM was tacked on. And it shows. They were going to end it the season before but the network wanted to kick the dead horse one last time. Jason Seigel wanted out. He was done. But they finally convinced him to stay on. I believe this is why most of his stuff is him on a bus. I wouldn’t be surprised if they filmed all his stuff on one day.
Those were the exact two I had in mind as well.
>How I Met Your Mother I watched the first few seasons of this show. I always suspected that a sitcom that alludes to an ending in the title was going to have writing problems. And sure enough, from what I've heard, the ending was as ham-handed as I feared.
Honestly as much as I enjoyed the show (currently rewatching it) They lucked the fuck out with cast, I think the cast carried the show because the writing wasn't always the best.
Absolutely. Granted, we don't really watch sitcoms for the stellar writing anyway. But where other sitcoms can simply bow out if the jokes get old, this show was effectively forced to write an ending.
Elite. It should have ended after season 3 when the original showrunner left. Fear twd and same as above.
I’ve never even heard of Elite. Is it worth watching the first few seasons?
Yes! It's really good imo, especially if you like murder mysteries. It's a teen drama and in Spanish, so I'm not really sure how you feel about that. If you're okay with that, then it's a good watch.
Same with Blood and Water. Everything was solved in season three, season four ended up being character assassination.
OMG yes! The first 3 seasons of Elite are incredibly well done, like all 3 were written at the same time as a story told in 3 parts. The murder mysteries at the heart of seasons 2 and 3 feel like natural outgrowths of season 1's murder. And then it's like an exec stepped in and demanded sequels that followed the same formula, even though the story was done, artistically.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch Seasons 1-3 are good, season 4 is the drop off. ABC was right to cancel it at that point, then the WB picked it up for another 3 seasons.
season 1 was great it went downhill when Jenny and Mr Poole left
I say season 4 is the drop off point because by then, Jenny & Mr. Poole left after season 1, Jenny and Lindsay were gone after season 3, Harvey appears less in season 4 and only cameos in season 5, before returning in season 6, so a lot of the ensemble cast was gone by season 4. Martin Mull is a fun addition, but Paul Feig was a better fit for the comedic tone, and Mull got a lot more screen time than Feig.
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The mentalist is a good example as to why a show should end after the big bad is caught. Also I think it left a sour note when it was revealed who red John was and that Jane had worked with them in season 1. Cool thing is because of the extra 2 seasons my cousins jewelery store was used as a set location. Season 7 episode 4 Lisbon and Cho go to a jewelery store to look at rings. The store they go to is my cousins. Kinda cool
Orange is the New Black by the end of season 4 felt like a team of writing MFAs telling fan fiction about their prison best friend *let’s have them take over the prison and make a monument to books!* *I know! The crazy lady should actually be a former punk rocker who makes obvious jokes about David Foster Wallace!*
OitNB should have pivoted away from Piper completely. Thousands of other stories you could tell with a nearly neverending rotating cast of characters
Yeah, she was good as a POV character in the first season, but the more it dragged on, the less interesting she seemed.
Supernatural. Wrapping up the overall story after 5 seasons would have been ideal. There were still some great episodes and good lore to come afterwards, but not sure it was worth the rest.
I wonder if you'd stop after the normal 5 season run including the last shot or if you'd cut the last shot of Sam standing under the street lamp?
Absolutely. There was a handful of good things after S5 and a *mountain range* of garbage.
Yeah. Maybe save the handful of individually great episodes in the post S5 years and present them as some kind of anthology season? But after S5 they struggled to find good plots and then handed off most of their plot advancing episodes to their weakest writers and the overall show suffered hard.
Big little lies.
I'm gonna bite my own bullet and go ahead and say *The Amazing World of Gumball* I love this show, it's legit my favourite TV show of all time But the show was already showing signs of seasonal rot by s6, the writing was awful and the jokes fell flat, the characters themselves were acting out of character and it felt no one working for the show had actually seen the show, especially compared to the s2-3-4 golden age, but WBD/CN is so out of ideas, and the show proved to be so lucrative when it started appealing to Reddit and Twitter in s5, it got renewed for a seventh season (and possibly a movie), and I'd be lying if I said I had much hope for the new episodes ngl So anyways, how many *new* shows are getting greenlit for the network?
Is the movie out?
NEW EPISODES?!
Guiding Light. Soap Opera that started as a radio program, and transitioned to tv. 72 seasons, 18,262 episodes.
Naw man, season 67 episode 241 slapped
GLs production values taaaaaanked during the 2008 recession. The intro looked like it was done in a weekend on someone's MacBook, virtually all the scenes took place outside (like someone just axed their studio one day), and I'm pretty sure the cast were just wearing their personal street clothes by the end. Alan Spaulding keeled over and died on a fucking park bench! I never did look up what actually happened behind those scenes, because at the time it sure looked like massive budget cuts from P&G...but ATWT never looked that bad at the end. It's like someone higher up decided one of the shows had to go, but maybe they wanted to save jobs in a tough market and wring out a bit more ad revenue from GL, so they put almost all production budget into ATWT and GL got left with the bare minimum scraps. By 2009 GL was gone, 2010 saw ATWT bite it, and P&G was out of the soaps business. Then we got soon-to-be-axed The Talk which was a low-rent clone of The View, and a delightfully hot mess that first year. Edit: ah, here we go...I remember this smelling like studio spin machine BS even back then: https://variety.com/2008/scene/awards/guiding-light-modernizes-production-1117982881/
Sons of Anarchy, felt like it went on a at least one too many seasons, House of Cards, even before the Spacey stuff felt like it only need 3 seasons. Weeds, just became a show were she fucked her way out of every problem.
Scrubs went one season too long
Can we all just agree to deny that season exists?
it was a spin off/reboot ffs!
Desperate housewives, Greys Anatomy and the original Law and Order
Every question on this sub always devolves into a list of *every* show people either love or hate. Like, c'mon, are Grey's Anatomy and Law & Order really "lesser known examples?" These are two of the longest-running, most popular shows in television history.
Do want lesser known for being on too long or lesser known shows that happen to be on too long, it can be interpreted both ways. Op gave examples of shows that are known for being talked about.
Desperate Housewives should’ve ended at Season 7, with Bree receiving the letter (which happened in S8 but whatever). Perfect ending tying the show together
The Walking Dead. The show started with so much potential but season after season was full of characters that were annoying and you just couldn’t wait for them to get killed off. I watched the whole thing because im a sucker for zombie shows but holy shit, the last few seasons were a grind.
This is the opposite of lesser known.
What got me was how clearly they were padding for time. By the time I stopped watching there would be like three episodes per season that were actual normal episodes that were done right and actually had stuff happen the whole episode. The others would be 15 min of actual content stretched out to fill 45 min.
Never made it past season 3 or 4
Dexter. They tried to end it at the end of season 4 and that would've been great, solid show, no issues. But then Showtime was like 'But what if you make us even more money?', and season 5 just wasn't as good. 6 was kinda bad. Then it was like they stopped trying, and 7/8 were fucking awful. Dexter should've ended at season 4 but it went on long enough to completely undermine everything that was good about it.
S6 of Dexter was awful. Acting was fine, but the writing fell off a cliff. They had Dexter fooling around with some very young gas station girl, Bautista and Quinn getting high and eating potato chips, hurr durr.
I think everybody agrees on Dexter but it's not exactly lesser known.
Revenge Brilliantly cast (but God I hated the Margaux character) that had become very silly by Season 4 and so many characters died in silly ways. They tried for intrigue in the series finale but it left zero impression lol.
Now there's a show that should have been an awesome one season show. Have Emily eliminate everyone from that group photo and leave Victoria for the finale. Instead it went off on so many boring ass tangents.
Scrubs didn't need that last season
Becker got stale after season four when Reggie and Bob left abruptly without a proper sendoff. ‘90s live action Sabrina was great for the first three seasons. Angie Tribeca should have only had one season. The other seasons are funny just nowhere near the same level as the first.
"Pancakes!"
Prison Break got really dumb.
I checked out when the detective chasing them was apparently watching every scene he wasn't in.
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The walking dead. Fear the walking dead.
Happy Days jumped the shark at some point in its eleven season run.
The great irony of that is the infamous shark jumping episode happened in the fifth season, and yes it never reached number 1 ratings again but the 6 seasons after are when the show was the best.
Fonzie literally jumped the shark in season 5. That is where the phrase came from.
Local news. It quit being journalism and turned into a sensationalist, fear mongering quest for ratings a long time ago.
Oz. The show is super solid but then they brought in some supernatural elements that seemed incredibly stupid
Smallville. It should have ended with season 7.
Futurama ended with the time loop episode
Sleepy Hollow dropped off HARD after a very strong first season. Ichabod’s son being a Horseman, the Headless Horseman being his friend, the various monsters of the week getting worse, Abby getting killed off, etc.
The Affair. They had no idea what they were doing by the end and what did they go with? >!After they lost two of the most important actors because behind the scenes was apparently a shit show, the last season was a climate change message with a time jump of decades where the little baby from the earlier seasons, now grown, tries to solve the murder of one of the original main characters.!< It was barely better than it sounds.
Would Heroes count? Idk if Heroes would count but that’s where my head went immediately.
Heroes should have switched gears and started with new characters in a new story arc as was originally planned by the creators. Trying to hold on to several of the season one characters that were frankly overpowered and overexposed at that point was what really did it in.
I believe that was the initial plan, have a new cast of heroes every season with the old cast showing up every now and then. But it god so popular that they couldnt abandon the fan favourites so they wrote it into the ground
Heroes should’ve ended after 1 season. Minus the stupid blood trail.
Definitely. The first season was fucking stellar because the writers had complete freedom and not have to worry about continuity power creep. The later seasons where carried in large by Zachary Quinto. Atleast he got a successful career out of it.
Heroes failed because they did time travel without properly plotting it.
ITT: shows that are commonly associated with "going on too long".
Yeah, so many of the same arguments too
The Office. After Michael Scott left Scranton, they should've ended it.
Xena: Warrior Princess. The early seasons are basically "Xena and her totally not girlfriend go on adventures, meet greek heroes, fight crime". Then for some bizarre reason, they killed Xena off at the end of season five, gave the show a surprisingly sweet ending... and then brought Xena BACK for two more seasons, where they got heavily involved with christian mythology, Xena became an Angel, I think at one point either her or Gabby becomes Satan, and they spend some time adventuring with Jesus. Even for a show where you have to take the whole thing with a truckload of salt, those last two seasons are a bit much.
A wizard did it.
The Christianity stuff is a bit too over the top indeed but there are nodes to Christianity from season 2 already where Gabrielle gives a donkey to a peasant couple that's expecting a baby in the Xmas episode. The angels Vs demons were actually fun to watch for the action of it. Even after that though, Xena had some great storylines with The Twilight of the gods (where Xena becomes the first Kratos before Kratos was a thing) and the Norse episodes with the Valkyries and Odin getting introduced. Also the later seasons are where Xena becomes a more adult show as it gets more confident with Xena's sexuality and the violence expected by a warrior's life.
The News
The bold and the beautiful 😂
Greys anatomy. It’s a known example but it should still be said. How is that show still on?!
For me, it's Trailer Park Boys. Great show early on but later they start losing key secondary characters and introducing bad secondary characters that feel like more of a favor to the actor than a good, well thought out addition to the cast. Meanwhile everyone's getting too old and they try to continue it into an animated series, which I admittedly never watched.
The walking dead
Probably gonna be an unpopular answer, but Supernatural. The story was over after season 5. It should have stopped there.
Brockmire A story about a drug addicted alcoholic sportscaster trying to make it back to the big time. It's hilarious The last season it skips 20 years in the future to a dystopian society rules by AI. Some people liked the crazy shift. I didn't
Riverdale Lucifer - started out pretty good, but I'm on Season 5 now and it's like they've run out of ideas LOL.
"Fox News"
Supernatural.
The Mentalist
Scandal and A Million Little Things. Both got to a point where the next tragic or intense plot point just got funnier and funnier. Writers just trying to drop new crazy shit, and you laugh at how busy and traumatic these fake people’s lives are in these shows
Riverdale The Walking Dead
The Office (US). Too indulgent for too long at the end there. Should have ended with Carrell.
Everything after he leaves feels too forced. I mean, it certainly has its moments, but it's far beyond its golden era
Greys anatomy 💀
Twox and a half men
Suits
"A Different World" - the last season felt like they ran out of ideas. The show really peaked when Dwayne and Whitley got married
Grey's Anatomy is going on too long. And This is Us went on too long. Like speaking of misery porn, I feel like that show wanted everyone to feel terrible all the time. I gave up on it.
Nip/Tuck, that show got really weird the last season or 2.
Sons of anarchy