TV shows that have gone on for way to long

[Gizmo1990]

I broke my leg and my arm last week (no I will not tell you how, lets just say it was an accident and leave it at that) and as such I have been unable to do well basicly everything other than watch tv. This led me to catching up on the show Supernatural.

I stopped watching about half way into season 6 as it was boring and compared to season 5, which delt with the actual apocalypse, it seemed small in comparison. But needs must when bordem is beating your brain with a cricket bat so I started watching again. It has just finished season 8 and I just cannot belive the show is still running. None of the stories evern come close to what they had to deal with in season 4/5.

honorable mentions go to Smallville, a show that at its best was mediocre and at its worst easly as bad as the Green Lanturn movie, and Stargate Sg-1. I am a hudge Stargate fan but season 9 and 10 just did not work for me.

 

[Edguy]

Every soap opera ever made.

It's baffling how bad those shows get some times, I simply can't fathom why some people would follow them regularly, and yet they never end.. I believe some US soap operas have crossed 15000 episodes. Like, seriously? 15000 episodes of identical, nonsensical drama..

 

[Realitycrash]

I wanna say the Simpsons, but maybe that's just me growing sick of them. I just wish they all would die from their own stupidity and the only sane person (Lisa) would be left, stranded in a cold and dead world, playing a requiem on her saxophone.

 

[madwarper]

In addition to the Simpsons, every Seth McFarlane show.

Here's a cut away gag. Didn't like it? Don't worry, we're going to throw 20 more at you in the next 5 minutes.

 

[tippy2k2]

Not to be a debby downer and ruin the thread before it gets to go anywhere, I would say no shows. Let me explain...

Now, let's go back to the distant past of 2005. A young and still not broken-in-spirit Tippy2k2 sits down to watch his favored show, 24! Yah! Go Jack Bauer go! WHERE IS THE BOMB!!! indeed Jack...where is it indeed.

Now, anyone who was a fan of 24 would say that season 4 (2005) was kind of the year 24 started falling apart. The show would only get worse from there until a ray of hope and life shined down...season 8! In my ever so humble internet opinion, 24 came back and came back with a vengeance. The show was awesome again!

Now what does this long-winded story have to do with my first point you ask? It's that any show that had greatness at some point always has the potential to bring it back. The shows I would say should have gone away are shows that I would not have liked to begin with so that doesn't quite count

That said, I'm glad Dexter is ending with season 8. Now don't get me wrong...the very worst season of Dexter is better than 90% of what's on TV but it's out of love that I want the show to end. End on top of the world you serial killer...

 

[OneCatch]

Firefly!
*Capers off into the distance cackling madly*

Seriously though? Probably Simpsons, Friends, various shitty soaps.
Also, Big Brother. Hated that show from the get go, it's now worse than ever because it won't. fucking. stop.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Not to be a debby downer and ruin the thread before it gets to go anywhere, I would say no shows. Let me explain...

Now, let's go back to the distant past of 2005. A young and still not broken-in-spirit Tippy2k2 sits down to watch his favored show, 24! Yah! Go Jack Bauer go! WHERE IS THE BOMB!!! indeed Jack...where is it indeed.

Now, anyone who was a fan of 24 would say that season 4 (2005) was kind of the year 24 started falling apart. The show would only get worse from there until a ray of hope and life shined down...season 8! In my ever so humble internet opinion, 24 came back and came back with a vengeance. The show was awesome again!

Now what does this long-winded story have to do with my first point you ask? It's that any show that had greatness at some point always has the potential to bring it back. The shows I would say should have gone away are shows that I would not have liked to begin with so that doesn't quite count

That said, I'm glad Dexter is ending with season 8. Now don't get me wrong...the very worst season of Dexter is better than 90% of what's on TV but it's out of love that I want the show to end. End on top of the world you serial killer...

To be honest, I thought season 7 was better than season 8, and if asked to name the weakest I'd probably go with 3. I remember precisely fuck all about season 3 of 24 other than jack was addicted to heroin at the start of it. I can forgive 24 being overblown, morally problematic, and just outright dumb at times. The only thing I won't forgive it of is being forgettable.

There are some shows though, that have gone so far down the path of utter shittitude, that you could get the best team of writers in the world to do a new season of it and it still wouldn't be worth it.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I agree with anything McFarlane related. American Dad was great, Simpsons was funny (and still can be entertaining) and Family Guy was good when I actually found it funny. Now, anything he is still working on could probably fade away slowly and it wouldn't shake the whole world. I think the Simpsons could at least end first. Or Family Guy (preferably)

 

[AuronFtw]

Pretty much any show that goes on past 5 seasons. They're just out of steam, scrubbing the bottom of the barrel for ideas, getting awful writers in for an attempt to see how they fare on an episode of a series that has gone on so long a single terrible one won't be any kind of a deal breaker. House was solid up until 4 (aside from formulaic episodes etc), but then it dragged on for ANOTHER 4 and made me want to claw my eyes out. And simpsons hasn't been good since first season.

They need new material to keep shows interesting - almost anything will stagnate after 5 seasons, some shows stagnate earlier, but very few take longer to start being boring.

 

[champy_fan]

Big Bang Theory. Maybe then we can replace it with a show whose primary joke isn't "LET'S ALL LAUGH AT THIS HANDICAPPED MAN."

 

[shintakie10]

How I Met Your Mother! Not because I feel its quality has dropped significantly (I mean, it kinda has, but not like some shows where the quality just nose dives), but because it kept buildin up anticipation for somethin that can never meet expectations. No matter how great the story could be, it'll just get met with a "That's it? This is what we've waited for?

Also fuck Robin, seriously dislike her. For once I wanted a sitcom to not do that "Oh they were meant to be together after all after everything every other time was an absolute train wreck!" shit when it came to Robin and Barney, but nooo. They just had to end up together after all because Robins a twit. And I liked Quinn too.

Also, Scrubs. Not that Scrubs was ever really "bad" so to speak. Some of the later seasons were okay at best, though season 8 was brilliant in my opinion and season 7 suffered mostly because the writers strike (but the wizard of oz episode totally made up for it). The problem was season 9. Also J.D. and Elliot (again with the fuckin "hey its failed spectacularly every other god damn, maybe this time it'll work and it will because fuck you!"), but mostly because of season 9.

They ended with an absolutely wonderful and really touchin finale that everyone truly thought would be the end of Scrubs. That walk down the hallway as JD leaves Sacred Heart for the last time with everyone he ever met in the hospital linin the hall was super duper touchin and bittersweet. Then BAM! New season with a bunch of people no one knows about and a female lead that was tryin her damndest to be JD. Basically it was them restartin all over again, except slightly different. Turk without JD was just not doin it for me. DR. Cox without someone to constantly badger and help grow made his character exceedingly pointless except for him to be around to call people failures.

God I hated Season 9.

 

[anthony87]

God I hated Season 9.

You're not the only one. Zach Braff was doing an AMA on Reddit a couple of months back and apologized for Season 9.

....A few times in fact.

 

[shintakie10]

God I hated Season 9.

You're not the only one. Zach Braff was doing an AMA on Reddit a couple of months back and apologized for Season 9.

....A few times in fact.

It just was so unneeded that it pissed me off. They could have called it anythin else. Called it a spin-off, Scrubs:Inters season 1 or somethin and it would have at least somewhat lessened the blow of givin a big fuck you to what would have been an amazin series finale in Season 8. Instead it wasn't a new spin-off series or a new series entirely, it was a continuation of the old one, season 9, with an entirely different cast of characters with none of the chemistry of the old characters and fuck all soul.

I remember watchin it and thinkin that it could maybe sorta work, then just got disappointed. Then got even more disappointed as they kept tryin to force relationships with people that really didn't work simply to try and emulate the older seasons. You can't make people care about new characters by tryin to make them like the old characters, but worse.

Edit - I will say Jo was absolutely amazin though.

"You called me Jo"

"Yeah, like that as a new nickname?"

"Just a little butch. I like bangin dudes."

"I've heard that's nice."

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Family Guy, South Park and especially The Simpsons. They've all crossed beyond whatever freshness they may have had and are flat-out not even pretending to NOT be animation vehicles for politically incorrect shock-value comedy (and nothing else). SpongeBob SquarePants qualifies too for growing increasingly retarded like what happened to Johnny Bravo (any wonder kids are getting dumber?).

More locally, there's this soap opera in Norway that has aired for way too fucking long and was over-advertised when I was a kid - "Hotel Caesar". It's clocked in at 2500+ episodes as of May 2013, having aired since 1998. Truly grotesque.

 

[badgersprite]

To be honest, I kind of tend to think that most shows should be written with the plan of ending. Like, I know that's unrealistic since entertainment in America is really just a product that's designed to keep going and generate money and ratings for the networks they're on and for the studios who create them for as long as possible rather than something done for the sake of artistic merit or even quality in general, but we kind of end up losing a lot of elements of good storytelling as a result in favour of a simple status quo.

Bear in mind, I'm not saying TV Shows that are made this way are bad or lack passion or lack creative energy or whatever, but I am saying that if you're writing a show with the intention of simply being renewed and coming back and doing more, then you usually can't develop the strongest story arcs or character arcs or bring those to a resolution, because the show needs to come back next year. You have to avoid character growth to a certain extent and you can never bring the story down to a central point or meaning that needs to be resolved, because, once you've done that, the story is over and there's nothing left to do but meander or repeat yourself.

I really do think there's something that can be said for a show creator designing a story that's only meant to last for a specific length of time and letting it end there. That show could be one season, two season, five seasons or seven seasons or whatever, but the crucial point here is planning out the story in advance. If you're writing without a story in mind, sure, the show you make can still be entertaining as hell for a while, but eventually people are going to get sick of it and wonder when you're going to get to the point.

So, yeah, while shows like this can still be good, I do think there's a problem and an over-saturation of shows that are written with the intent of being renewed into perpetuity instead of trying to tell a clear, good quality story with a beginning, middle and end.

 

[Reaper195]

Probably a bunch of shows I don't watch. I have no negative feelings about the shows I'm currently watching, and want them to continue.

 

[wulf3n]

stuff...

For me scrubs died in Season 6.

There was a large gap for me between season 5 and 6, and when I returned the tone was just so different. I don't like to the use the term that often but It really did jump the shark.

As soon as everyone in the hospital started dancing to Turks ringtone it was all over.

 

[tabristhegreat]

To avoid mentioning those that have already been said...

Weeds.

At first Nancy was a likeable anti hero character, yes she was breaking the law but it was to protect her family etc. Then around season 3-4 she just devolved into a terrible person. Not to mention the show refused to get rid of Doug who spent the last 4 seasons just...being in the way of everyone else.

 

[shintakie10]

stuff...

For me scrubs died in Season 6.

There was a large gap for me between season 5 and 6, and when I returned the tone was just so different. I don't like to the use the term that often but It really did jump the shark.

As soon as everyone in the hospital started dancing to Turks ringtone it was all over.

Then you missed Season 8 and one of the greatest series finales ever, even if it isn't technically a series finale since there was a season 9. God damnit season 9.

 

[Ratties]

Don't like Scrubs at all. Really shocked that it made it past 2 seasons. All I can say is the show makes me sick to my stomach. Get a bunch of your yuppie friends together and watch a show with a bunch of annoying characters. Of course don't forget to grab your Starbucks coffee and "I love Scrubs T-shirt." Nothing about the show that I like. Say Family Guy cut aways are annoying, it's nothing compared to when the main character does it. Like jokes that you can see coming a mile away with a character that you want to strangle.
[http://photobucket.com/images/scrubs]

Scrubs: Its comfort food for yuppies. I want to round up all the Scrubs fans and kick them into the pit of lost souls.