TV shows that jumped the shark

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Animaniacs after, I believe, 3 seasons the crew just seemed to give up. Also Pinky and the Brain on *gulp* prime-time. Brain's cloned son sleeping with a human woman and nobody finds it weird. Yeah.

 

[kortin]

The Office.

The EXACT moment when Steve Carrell left the show.

I stopped watching after that, who did they finally get to replace him?

OT: Castle. Nathan is a great actor, but Castle is boring and repetitive. He needs to grace another show, maybe we could make a Star Wars spin-off with him as the lead, make it about spice smuggling or something....then he finds a force-sensitive hiding from the Empire in his cargo bay, and her padawan brother helps sooth her through the force bond they share. All the while Haning it up with a kickass crew aboard a nice little ship they call home. Wait a minute...LUCAS! LUCAS I FOUND A WAY TO REDEEM YOU! ANSWER MY CALLS!

Uh, for a couple episodes after they had Will Ferrell. He wasn't bad, he just wasn't Michael Scott. I haven't even glanced at season 9 though.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Heroes. Season one was amazing but it started to rapidly go downhill after that.
The Mighty Boosh lost it's magic after the second season.

I think it's something to do with the settings; Series one was a Zoo, it's surprising that such a thing hadn't been done before, it was great as a framing device, which elevated it above groundless surrealism for it's own sake.

Series two, uh...well there's not really a setting for series 2, just 'Howard and Vince have adventures', it worked for six episodes, and that was probably the extent of it working.

Series three: they run a shop together. Yeah. There's very little that can be done with that, even with the kind of creativity that the Boosh are capable of, hell even Black Books (the most recent with a similar setting I can think of) had only a handful of episodes directly based on it being a bookshop.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Super Sinp

Ok my bad I was half right. that will teach me to lisern to my sister. She is always wrong about this stuff. Just google Seth McF's name along with giving up family guy and you will get a lot of results linking to an interview he gave where he said that he thinks the best thing, from a creative point of view, for the show would be to end it while it is good and then do a movie every few years. The part about him putting in no effot is just rumour.

I think I saw that mindset in the final Star Wars special, where McFarlane basically up and told the viewers not to expect anything great this time around, because Fox wouldn't let him go off and do his movie (presumably, Ted) unless he did another special.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Batman TAS more angular redesign. Also as a kid, I FOUND BATMAN TAS BORING.

 

[SquidVicious]

I'm glad other people have mentioned Supernatural. The show really should have ended after the fifth season because now there really is no ending to the show. It will either end with both of them dying, or with one of those open endings where they just drive off, neither of which offer any real closure.

The only other show that I can say has dropped in quality has been NCIS, although I found that's drop was after season 6. Season 7 was just odd with the introduction of the lawyer lady as Gibbs' new frenemy (god I hate that word), and the whole finale was just... "that's it"? Then season 8 drops the lawyer lady and introduces a new cool serial killer plot that was quite a nice little mystery, which is then immediately solved by that CIA guy and it's all just another fucking government conspiracy. I only caught the last 5 minutes of season 9's finale, and while they looked intriguing, I'm just over it.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

24 has my vote. They stretched the concept way too far. It became impossible to take the show seriously.

Also... Prison Break....

Why the fuck is your show called Prison Break when they aren't even in prison for half of the show.

Dunno, maybe 'Out of Prison' didn't quite sound so good at the meeting.

 

[esperandote]

Scrubs starting from the season that only lasted 13 episodes though the last season had it's good moments

House, when it became more about personal relationships than medical puzzles.

Two and a half men, Since Ashton Kucther joined, I don't blame him but the writers.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Snip

Seth MacFarlane has given up on Family Guy. Check out his logic.

He wants to cancel the show because he belives that it has had it's day and he wants it to go out on a high note. However Fox would not let him cancel the show so he has been puting no effot into the show in order to get Fox to cancel it, making the shows quality drop, meaning that if the show is canceled now it will be going out on a low note. He is trying to get the show canceled by doing the very thing he wants to avoide by canceling the show? It is not just me, is it? That makes no fucking sense right?

As much as I'm not into Family Guy, that's actually kind of sad. The guy wants to end his show, but the man won't let him.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Snip

Seth MacFarlane has given up on Family Guy. Check out his logic.

He wants to cancel the show because he belives that it has had it's day and he wants it to go out on a high note. However Fox would not let him cancel the show so he has been puting no effot into the show in order to get Fox to cancel it, making the shows quality drop, meaning that if the show is canceled now it will be going out on a low note. He is trying to get the show canceled by doing the very thing he wants to avoide by canceling the show? It is not just me, is it? That makes no fucking sense right?

As much as I'm not into Family Guy, that's actually kind of sad. The guy wants to end his show, but the man won't let him.

From Batman: The Brave and the Bold
^_^

Hahahaha WHAT THE FUCK?

That was hilarious! Was that actually IN the show, or..?

 

[NeoShinGundam]

Hahahaha WHAT THE FUCK?

That was hilarious! Was that actually IN the show, or..?

Yep! Bat-Mite is IN the show that he watches. That particular scene was actually from the final episode because "The Brave and the Bold" really WAS cancelled:

 

[Bassik]

Red Dwarf. It jumped the shark, then turned around, had it's way with the shark, stuffed the shark and then used it to bash other sharks, and then set fire to the ocean.

I love that show ^^

And in my opinion, Family Guy got much better once it jumped the shark. It just worked for that show, in my opinion.

EDIT: And Buffy never jumped the shark. Buffy has always been prefect. And it always will be. No reasoning or logic can ever convince me otherwise.

 

[Pegghead]

Red Dwarf. It jumped the shark, then turned around, had it's way with the shark, stuffed the shark and then used it to bash other sharks, and then set fire to the ocean.

I love that show ^^

And I recognise your avatar from "Better Than Life"

As for me, I'd have to say True Blood. Admittedly I've only watched up to season 4, but here's my run-down:

Season One: Clever and grounded premise (if vampires were real and part of the everyday world, and that was it), sharp writing, great story and just great fun watching all these vampire politics unfold in a sleepy southern town full of interesting characters.

Season two: Hoo boy, better quality and the introduction of the vampire WBC? Shit just got so allegorical

Season three: Okay, slight dip in quality, they insisted on werewolves and redneck were-panthers and clearly money must be tighter, but damn if this isn't a great villain.

Season four: Oh fuck off.

I still watched it right to the end, so that's gotta be saying something, but magic and fairies just aren't things which can seem like normal parts of life (and by the third or fourth time you introduce a supernatural secret which nobody knows about in a world where vampires are known, the effect wears off), and on top of that when the show didn't seem to be pandering it was pretty frigging clear that most of the actors were just desperate to jump ship.

 

[Dangit2019]

The Office.

The EXACT moment when Steve Carrell left the show.

THIS. I don't even know what's going on that show now, but I think the last time I saw it, they had Andy basically doing all of the same jokes and routines as Michael, and it was just sad to watch.

 

[Quoth]

Red dwarf became an absolute travesty, a fine example of why a series should stop at season 3. You might always be left wanting more, but I think thats preferable to burning out.

I'm beginning to feel this way about Casualty. I've watched it for decades. But these days really see the same old stories replayed and worse than that it's usually by the same actors and actresses.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Probably Family Guy, after it bcame "more scathingly political". Also Heroes after season 1. Fucking writer's strike...

 

[Bassik]

Red Dwarf. It jumped the shark, then turned around, had it's way with the shark, stuffed the shark and then used it to bash other sharks, and then set fire to the ocean.

I love that show ^^

And I recognise your avatar from "Better Than Life"

And you are a ... smeeeee... a smeeee.... smeeeee heeeaaaaaaaa!!!

Red dwarf became an absolute travesty, a fine example of why a series should stop at season 3. You might always be left wanting more, but I think thats preferable to burning out.

What, really?
I found it was pretty good during the first two series, it got hilarious after the re-tool (Kryten was the perfect 4th guy, the funniest robot you'll ever see.), sagged a bit at series 7 (But it gave us the Rimmer song, so all is forgiven) and became awesome again in series 8, when they were back on Red Dwarf. That is one of my favourite series of anything, with a personal highlight in "Krytie-TV".

Back to Earth was a bit weird, but pretty funny, and if my friend- who went to one of the .. how do you say it, he is part of the live studio audience (and I hate him for that) -is anything to go by, the new series is going to be one of the funniest yet!

EDIT:
For people who want to know what the smeg we are talking about, here is a clip of a bum teaching a robot to call a petty hologram a smeghead:

Yeah, it's that kind of show.

 

[Bassik]

Gotta be doctor who, they stopped with the sci-fi explanations, and went with the power of....love. REALLY!!! The power of love, and the inclusion of riversong didn't help matters either....

Well that's not fair, really. Doctor Who jumps the shark every few years, it has done so since the '60s. Don't worry if you don't like it in it's current form, it won't take long before the Doctor goes "eey!" again.

 

[Lionsfan]

I'm just gonna say Futurama. Last season when they came back, there was too many attempts to stay "current". Having the I-phone episode, the gay marriage one, the evolution one, etc. etc.

And then when this season started to use Meme's as advertising/introductions I just couldn't watch it, especially after the first few episodes (Presidential Election, Bender loves Film and not Digital)

 

[RipRoaringWaterfowl]

Sadly most shows seem to end that way...

ST:Enterprise. Such a promissing start, then they forgot what they had said the show was supposed to be about and lost it totally...

Yeah, the first two seasons were good, but as the third season marched on, it lost it. Mainly by going all grimdark most of the time.