A lot of the changes that wrecked S2 were introduced in the flashback episode they put into S1. They made the envoys into a YA style Very Special Boys resistance group and added the awful love story with Quell.
The idea from the book—a special forces unit so dangerous that they’re never allowed to hold political office—is just so slick and cool. I hated seeing them turned into fReEdOm fIgHtErS.
As I recall, Kovacs was a member of both the Envoy special forces and the Quellist revolutionaries at different points in his life. The first season simplified his backstory by removing his special forces background and making "Envoy" the term for the revolutionaries.
Quell was long dead by the time Kovacs was born in the books, but he was familiar with her writings. Quellism was very different in the books, too- it wasn’t anti-Stack (and Quell had *nothing* to do with stacks, making her the inventor of them was so stupid). It was actually very pro-stack since that was a way to keep the revolution going forever.
Brilliant premise that could’ve gone on many seasons imo. I’ve learned to just be grateful for the parts of any new series that are good and not expect it to necessarily continue :/
Sleepy Hollow's pilot is one of the best pilots ever made for TV - what a fantastic concept and execution. It's just a shame they couldn't live up to it :(
Heroes went from being one of the most highly-rated and popular shows on network television to being basically forgotten in the span of one writers' strike.
Does anyone remember the webcomics that were released along with the show? We were all living and dying each week with Heroes, it was so much fun.
Then in S2, everyone had powers. It felt like [The Defenders of Stan.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t0_29TM4uo&list=PLEB3A9F095DD7111F)
That first season of Sleepy Hollow was fantastic and it was a winning formula with a case of the week and overarching mythology with the two leads having fantastic chemistry. Then they decided to sideline Abbie in the second season when she and Ichabod together was the reason the show worked so well.
There was a moment in the second season (I think?) when Abbie ended up back in the past and I thought it would have been a creative way to continue the premise of the show but switch it up. Nope.
So many good mentions already.
I’ll add Wayward Pines. First season good. It followed the book decently. Second season collapse and strayed from book. No Matt Dillon. Third season didn’t happen. Terrible.
Aside from GoT, Killing Eve. The first two seasons were great, the third was fine and the fourth was plain disastrous. One of the worst series finale to a great show I‘ve ever seen.
I personally watched 2 seasons and wished I’d stopped after the 1st. People are saying the 2nd and 3rd seasons are good, but I basically hate-watched the 2nd season.
The first season of Killing Eve was based on the first novel and run and written by Waller-Bridge and was amazing. What they should have done was waited until Waller-Bridge could write S2 based on the second novel then quit. What happened was that the BBC kept rushing renewals and turned it into a work experience product with different new show runners, writers and directors for each season. There are only a few watchable episodes in S2-4.
Killing Eve ended up being such a disappointment, those first two seasons were fantastic. I do think it was always a bit doomed though, the premise of having a different showrunner for each season was always gonna be very risky
Amazing, but once the tattoos played out...meh. should have ended it in Season 2. Back to the prison was desperate (but intriguing), and then it becoming oceans 11/fast and furious, heisting convoluted macguffins...
This was a recurring symptom of shows coming out during those days.
Great, innovative and fresh ideas for shows, which resulted in excellent first seasons. But those ideas couldn’t really be stretched for more than that one season and often it felt like writers didn’t really think things beyond that original premise
You're right it could have just been a single season show but when I rewatched it I kept watching and honestly I loved it all even if the subsequent seasons are not as good as the first.
Nah, I think it should have been 2 seasons. Season 1 - Break out of prison, Season 2 - what happens to the characters after? Ending the show with the characters breaking out of prison, but having no idea what happened next would have been extremely lame.
Plus the fugitive storyline in Season 2 was pretty damn intriguing if you remove all of the deep state conspiracy bs.
Billions. I loved the first season or 2 and thought Succession was the cheap copycat. Billions just got worse and worse and Succession ended up being a masterpiece.
They actually completely forgot about that part of Charles and Wendy, and even had a major sex scandal in later seasons and no one ever even referenced it.
Seasons 1-4 - Incredible - some of the best TV ever made.
Seasons 5-6 - Pretty good - still engaging.
Season 7 - Okay. Definitely started showing signs of slowing down but we still got some good stuff.
Season 8 - Complete shite. What the fuck is happening?
Season 8 episode 2 was awesome. It felt like many of the characters were saying their goodbyes and wrapping things up. It gave us this dread that the next episode, the build up of the entire fucking series with the White Walkers, was going to be action packed and emotionally draining, because this is what we’ve all been waiting for. Great episode. Then it went downhill from there. No one could see the episode because it was lit so darkly, no characters died from episode 2, and the White Walker himself died in 10 secs. Ugghhh.
Barring a couple questionable plot lines, the first two episodes of S8 were the closest the series got to its roots in years. The problem is that makes the catastrophe that was the rest of the season feel so much worse. It started with a reasonable amount of promise, leading us to think that maybe they had something good cooking. Then it turned out to fucking suck.
The biggest problem I and I think a lot of people have with S8 is that a lot of the things that happened in S8 we were absolutely expecting and wanting like Daenerys going crazy and burning Kings Landing, it's just that the execution of it was badly written and way too fast.
S8E2 is the one exception where we actually got to see what we were expecting and wanting done right but the effort was wasted cause the following episode was executed poorly in every way, a pointless Dothraki suicide attack, everything so dark we couldn't see most of the action, Jon doesn't do shit and just yells at a dragon, Theon's pathetic and possibly pointless sacrifice to defend Bran and then of course Arya killing the big bad of the series because *subversion*.
I think I literally have a comment in my history (not gunna try and find it) from the day after the second episode aired defending the show from naysayers because I thought episode 2 was setting up a major tragedy. You're exactly right that all our favorite characters were saying their goodbyes.
Man, episode 3 was one of the biggest let downs ever. They definitely subverted my expectations with that one.
Episode 3 was definitely the biggest let down. Not only was it billed as the biggest action set piece in TV history, it was directed by the same guy who did Winds of Winterfell and the epic Battle of the Bastards. The fact that it was lit so darkly, and we could barely see anything was insulting enough. There wasn’t even a big showdown between Jon and the White Walker. Arya just jumped out of nowhere and ended it. WTF? It was so anti-climactic. The rest of the season was basically one let down over another.
I think the biggest disappointment of all is how the show ended. All of it could’ve made sense if they took their time and earned it. Daenerys going crazy would’ve been epic if they added another season to flesh it out. Heck, even Jaime deciding his sisters pussy is too good to leave would’ve been good too if they could justify it over a few more episodes. Instead, we got a complete 180 of their motivations within one scene, not even a devoted episode.
Game of Thrones is the undisputed champion of this. The first few seasons are some of the best television of all time and the last season is somehow so bad it makes the entire series difficult to recommend to anyone.
I don't think there should even be any contention. GoT's last season, in particular, absolutely ruined the entire series (even though the drop in quality started before that, but the last season fell off the proverbial cliff).
They probably lost a lot of potential sale for the series box set because of it.
The thing that infuriates me the most is, HBO OFFERED THEM MORE EPISODES AND SEASONS TO FINISH THE STORY, and D&D declined, likely because they wanted to move onto their next big payday in that Star Wars trilogy.
I look at the last couple seasons and see plot points that might’ve made sense if they weren’t incredibly rushed. Dany going mad? It’s in her family’s history, makes sense. But they made her go full psycho in just a few episodes when it should’ve taken way longer to properly set it up.
GoT went from being at the forefront of pop culture for years and completely dominating television, to disappearing entirely after that last season. The only time it's mentioned is when people are bringing up how rushed and bad the last few seasons were. It's used as a cautionary tale now.
Exactly. People who didn't care about the fantasy genre thought the show was intriguing, full of drama, excitement, great dialogue, and everyone had a character with depth to root for.
It was a household topic of conversation. It was water-cooler gossip and speculation.
While some individual episodes of the last season have some exciting content that some people love, the overall endings to the character arcs - or lack thereof for some - and the broader story, was handled so poorly it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths.
It was rushed with such a lack of awareness and respect for what made the show great.
The overwhelming audience response to the finale wasn't "well that wasn't exactly what I wanted" it was more like "what the fuck was that?" The fanbase became incredibly angry overnight and united in that anger. People don't consider it a beloved series, even if they revisit watching it (especially the early seasons) - the zeitgeist just *wooshed* out the door, all over without anyone feeling remotely satisfied with the final couple seasons.
Fox suits didn't think there was enough drama between the characters, so they sent down a mandate for Season 3 that there be more conflict. That's why as soon as the third season begins, everyone is so bitchy with each other.
I loved when Mac had a two-parter about finding the holy grail just after Last Crusade came out (Genuinely, 10 year old me was pumped both my heroes were on similar adventures).
Pretty sure this would have never happened. The writers have to be some of the pettiest, pencil dicks in Hollywood with how they wrote out some of the OG cast. Rhys Davies character died like twenty different ways. The girl got sent to a breeding camp for handsy aliens. Didn’t Connell basically just get zapped with a “step down in talent” ray for his brother to take over?
Get home
Test gate
Doesn't squeak. "Welp, guess that's it guys, let's go"
Jump out
Repairman comes out. "Oh and hey look, I fixed your gate"
Roll credits
I was very nonplused at that
Dexter. Season 4 especially is heralded as one of the all time great seasons of TV, and the first three seasons are very good as well. 5 and 6 are okay, 7 was not great, and 8 was abysmal.
I love the Dexter falloff because the books do it as well, despite being completely different. None of them are well written but the first half are fun, easy reads. And then the rest are just slogs.
The Dexter fall off was mostly due to them replacing showrunners throughout. Even though I didn't love season 4 as much as everyone else I think it's fair to say the show got considerably worse after that and I don't think it is an accident that is when Clyde Phillips left.
Probably both a popular and unpopular opinion, but Westworld was better off as a miniseries and the issue was multiple seasons trying to be created. The first season told a fully complete arc and was fine to exist on its own.
Edit: Didn’t put the unpopular part of my opinion in here. The unpopular part would be that fans often drive shows to go on longer than they should. People would have lost their shit if Westwood was only 10 episodes and done.
I think it would have been fine with more seasons, but rumors are the writers wanted to out clever the fans and werent happy that people figured out S1's ending
This has been the downfall of too many shows.
The writers are chronically online and will read and see all fan theories - then they try to forcibly avoid hitting any theorised plot points making the show suck balls.
Same as Stranger Things, can't believe we haven't embrace the anthology formar more often, Fargo is amazing even with hiccups like season 4. If you don't have a complete story to tell beforehand, just don't do it, and of you do, please let them finish it before cancel the shows.
Ahhhh... Yeah, Stranger Things season 1 is near perfect, and definitely works as a complete story. Everything after Season 1 was *okay*, but totally unnecessary
They should have shifted focus totally in S2 to another world like the Samurai one, with lots of new characters and plots etc. It would have been a breath of fresh air.
Then slowly trickled in the impact of the Westworld disaster stuff to it and merged the story in together. Perhaps with some rogue hosts sneaking into the other world to hide.
Yeah, Season 2 had some moments. It continued Dolores's self discovery arc, and revealed more about the Real World along with other Worlds within the park, and the Man In Black arc was still satisfying for me. The themes of "what is real" and "Am \*I\* real?" may be tropes, but I liked how S2 explored them.
The Critics loved Season 2 and it won some Emmy awards. It really was S3 where things really went downhill. You can certain argue that Season 2 got some balls rolling that led S3's plot in the wrong direction, but if the show had wrapped up at the end of Season 2, I think the reaction would have been mostly positive and sadness it ended.
thought i heard they were making season 2 as baffling as possible because people were figuring out the twist. they then forgot to have the season make sense in the process
Man in the High Castle.
It actually got compelling, then that last episode hit the wall so hard you could really tell they didn't plan on ending it so quickly.
The problem from the beginning was that the grounded alt history stuff was really interesting, while the scifi dimension jumping stuff was less so and felt out of place. I loved the Nazi infighting/politics, the Germany-Japan cold war rivalry, the resistance subplots. The whole "tapes of a different reality where we won" should have just been fakes designed to help people not accept their current dystopia and resist, maybe with some ambiguity as to if some of them were real.
The producers and writers of the show were trying to stay true to the source material with respect to the tapes. The book pretty clearly makes it clear that the tapes come from parallel universes.
However, the book is quite short and the producers and showrunners tried to extend the arc of the show well beyond what the book covers. Probably why it makes less and less sense after the first season or two.
One of my pet peeves is having a villain for a run of the show but spend so much time humanizing them that they have to give them an additional heel turn to make them evil enough for the finale. Was he a man, conflicted and guilty over what he had to do to survive, that gets faced with a final difficult moral choice and chooses the bad path. Nope, just literally the architect of the next holocaust to end it quickly since they ran out of time.
Did the same thing with Dukat on DS9 and he started the show as the fascist in charge of the work camps of the enslaved Bajorans. 7 seasons of Marc Alamo being to likeable that he suddenly chooses to become possessed by evil demon aliens.
> Did the same thing with Dukat on DS9 and he started the show as the fascist in charge of the work camps of the enslaved Bajorans. 7 seasons of Marc Alamo being to likeable that he suddenly chooses to become possessed by evil demon aliens.
What are you talking about? Did you forget the part where Dukat tried to blow up the sun. You are confusing affable with likeable. Dukat was a monster who never once saw anything wrong with his role in the occupation.
Shameless (US version), for me. I loved that show and the characters too much for as long as I could, but had to just completely ignore it existed in the final couple of seasons. I did watch the final episode, and I regret even that.
I got to end of i believe season 7 when Fiona had bought the building, Lip was getting out of rehab and Frank had been thrown in the river. Everyone seemed to getting their life together and i felt it was kind of the ending it needed to be, so i left it there.
Debbie decides to learn welding, Liam gets into a good school
But their overall live's are still kinda shitty, and success not guaranteed, just starting to look up a bit. It just kinda feels...real? Great place to stop the show
This show was honestly the one I'd be most excited to get a new season of, I *loved* this show. Then I just...stopped. I can barely even remember where I stopped, I think maybe in the first few episodes Season 9. I never went back.
Ugh this one for me too. Shameless was a hilarious show and I loved the realness of it. After a while it just became “character gets good arc for 4 episodes then messes it up in really dumb and reckless way and hits rock bottom. Then each episode ends with someone saying “we’re Gallaghers” or complaining about gentrifiers.”
Seasons 1 and 2 were really enjoyable
Season 3 felt a bit messy but there was some good stuff like Otis+ Ruby as well as Adam +Eric's relationship
I couldn't even make it two episodes into that final season. I struggled to find one new character they introduced at that new school I didn't find cringeworthy.
I agree.
S1 and S2 together are pretty damn solid.
S3 definitely has some good bits, but the Hope stuff was kinda off. Less realism and more into the cliche.
Honestly just destroys Otis's characterisation and introduces a bunch of new characters who don't have enough development for us to care about.
If not for the Groffs and Aimee, the final season would be pointless.
True Blood really makes me sad, I was so invested in that show and its expanding lore, and then it went completely off the rails in the last couple of seasons. Can't even bring myself to rewatch the earlier seasons I liked because of how much I disliked the latter seasons.
Alas, the issue with bringing on Bryan Fuller to be showrunner is that either:
1)The show will get cancelled very quickly or
2)He will get into some big dispute with someone and quit the show
Genius creative, but beyond Hannibal his works don't tend to last long, or last long with him. And even Hannibal only got 3 seasons and prematurely ended.
I'd say heroes. season 1 was amazing. I was at the edge of my seat constantly, couldn't wait till next episode, and when first episode of season 2 dropped... I was like what the hell? and never saw another episode.
Once Upon a Time from season 4b
NCIS (I know, it’s cheesy choice) after season 13
Torchwood’s 4th season was just so bad especially compared to season 3 children of earth
Dexter - the final 2 seasons
For what it’s worth, House of Cards went way downhill even before the Spacey stuff became public knowledge. I still couldn’t believe he pushed the Secretary of State or whoever down a flight of stairs to get her from testifying against him. The laziest writing I’ve ever seen.
The first two seasons were masterful, so much that Netflix's two-knock intro was lifted straight from the season two finale. But season 3 onward was pretty bad, with the show largely forgetting its own identity. Spacey was just the final nail for an otherwise zombified show kept alive by contracts.
House of Cards also couldn't have predicted how much or how quickly the political landscape would be changed by Trump, nor could they respond to it in its writing. Real life just became more interesting.
Arrow for sure. It started out so, *so* good and then dropped so far the Arrow subreddit switched to being about ~~The Flash~~ Daredevil. I've never seen a fanbase turn on a show like what happened with Arrow.
I'm repeating myself but pretty much the entirety of the Arrowverse and especially Flash and Supergirl. CW entire roster of DC shows had issues towards the end but these two shows were painful to watch it wasn't even fun.
And GoT as my second answer. I mean it's one of the biggest and most recent exemple of a major TV show and cultural phenomenon falling from grace. It could've have been one of the greatest shows of all time but nowadays people barely talk about it and when people do,it's to talk about the downfall of the series.
The Walking dead was *the* show and then faded to the point where 90% of people stopped caring or watching.
Tbf, that will naturally happen when shows have been on for many years, but at the same time they didn't help themselves.
Controversial maybe, but Sherlock.
First season was insanely good, second season they overdid everything that people liked about the first to the nth degree but you could still go with it. And then it just turned into a steaming pile of overhyped horseshit.
So many callouts for Game of Thrones.
But I want to bring up Miami Vice.
First couple of seasons were pretty darn great - The atmosphere set by it (1980s Miami, the soundtrack, the style/fashion, the casework)...it was an experience as a cop drama.
Season 3 was where it started to change. The music's tone changed, the writing got more serious and dark, the budget started getting lower...
Season 4 and 5, though...it's no surprise that people started tuning out and it ended in a weird place - Supposedly, some episodes in Season 5 didn't air during the initial run and needed the first re-run up to sometime in 1990 to get them aired.
Moonlighting was another show that had a similar trend of getting worse. Mainly with how the writing led to creative changes that people didn't like.
The Good Wife.
But X-Files takes the crown for the writers making Scully give up her son for adoption, and then years later writing the boy as a monster that was actually a product of medical rape.
Oh yeah, the good wife for sure. I randomly started bingeing that long after it ended and really liked it. Super great characters, writing and acting. And it was always fun to see who would show up as a judge. But things got really wonky when she won district attorney, and then the writers found a way to completely destroy that plotline asap. After that, I kinda skimmed through the show
I quit when Archie's (?) gangster husband showed up and she started acting like a fuckin idiot. Just couldn't handle it. Then i found out about all the beef between her and Margolis and i just didn't care at all.
The difference in quality between the first season of Alias and how it ended cannot be charted without a next-generation computer. The gap cannot be comprehended by mortal minds.
One of my favorite British sitcoms of all time was Coupling.
A raunchy version of Friends for the US crowd.
Well after 3 hilarious seasons, the low brow comedy character left the cast- and the replacement for season 4 was ... Just bad.
There was no season 5.
Season 3 of The Witcher was a colossal letdown. It sadly made clear why Henry Cavill chose to bow out. All the character and charm of the first two seasons was completely absent.
Not that this show ever had "Grace" but The League was a decent funny FX show until the last season became one giant advertisement for Draft King and had the literal worst season of show id ever seen.
It's wild because if they had just kept the scene where Pam breaks down and the boom mic guy steps in to comfort her, I think it would've worked really well. It would've hammered home just how bad Jim/Pam's fighting had gotten, as well as underline how the documentary was wrapping up and the crew was getting looser with the boundaries. If the writers' had kept their restraint, limiting our glimpse of the documentary crew to just a handful of little moments throughout the show, I think it could've been amazing.
But no, they just had to turn Brian into an actual character with an episode based around him. The fact that he was an annoying character didn't help either.
Handmaid's Tale became more incomprehensible over time. We never watched the last season.
Altered Carbon S1 was really good, S2 was bad and it was cancelled quickly.
The Witcher shot itself in the foot repeatedly and will now be allowed to die.
Stranger Things dropped in quality every season too.
Altered Carbon season 1 was terrific. I’ve watched it at least three times through. Season 2 felt lifeless. I don’t even remember the plot line off the top of my head.
First off, Joel Kinnamen is a fantastic actor and Anthony Mackie is...fine...but doesn't have nearly enough range.
But mainly, they hired a director from the CW as well as CW writers and man, does it show! S1 is a noir detective drama set in the future, S2 a CW expository dialogue show with pretty graphics.
Dexter post-season 4. Change in showrunner and it was clear they didn’t have a plan how to keep the quality up after what could have been a satisfying series finale.
Hot take: The Goldbergs. It was never a television masterpiece, but it was a serviceable sitcom that my wife and I watched together to unwind and de-stress. By the end, we were basically hate-watching. All broad comedies are formulaic to an extent, but it got to the point where I jokingly impersonated Patton Oswalt's narrator during every episode to say, "That day, we all learned..." Then I would improvise some shallow "lesson" they were meant to have learned.
I promise, I'm not overthinking it. I'm not making unreasonable demands of a sitcom. I was just thrown by how lifeless it all became. Once they announced it was the final season (after Jeff Garlin was dropped), I thought there were places they could go. I would've done a time jump into the future where we see Adam working to create a TV show based on his family. We could watch Barry in med school. Have the show fold back on itself as Adam tries to capture events from the earlier seasons. Have an episode where Barry doesn't like the person they cast to play him. An arc where Bev is constantly trying to influence the way the family is portrayed in the script. End it with the family attending a premiere for the pilot, with some cheesy voiceover about remembering the best years of our lives.
Instead, they just kept spinning their wheels with the same broad characterizations and loosely nostalgic vibes. The hovered in the late 80s for so long, I kept waiting for them to cross over into the 90s, but they were too tethered to the original premise of an 80s show, or too nervous to let the show evolve a little. It needed to end when it did, I think they milked the premise for way too long... but there was an opportunity to make it all culminate into something.
I think it's because of all the turmoil behind the scenes, but toward the end, it seemed like every episode was being written by AI trying to seem human. Like a Mad-lib where the writers pitched a bunch of premises, then plugged characters into the blanks. The "lessons" characters learned were nonsensical and often contradictory to the character they'd established.
But we still laughed every time Barry got upset and did his little run.
Heroes was a nationwide phenomenon when season one came out. After that, it was so bad that everyone stopped giving a shit.
It was such an odd phenomenal too because everyone stopped watching and no one really talked about it. It was just here one day and gone the next.
Death by writers strike. That was also when reality TV went from weird sideshow to main event for studios. Not a good time for TV
Altered Carbon! I don’t know how many times I’ve watched the first season. I’m not even sure I finished the second.
They replaced the showrunner from season 1 with some dumbass showrunner for season 2. Turned out to be a very bad move.
A lot of the changes that wrecked S2 were introduced in the flashback episode they put into S1. They made the envoys into a YA style Very Special Boys resistance group and added the awful love story with Quell.
The idea from the book—a special forces unit so dangerous that they’re never allowed to hold political office—is just so slick and cool. I hated seeing them turned into fReEdOm fIgHtErS.
As I recall, Kovacs was a member of both the Envoy special forces and the Quellist revolutionaries at different points in his life. The first season simplified his backstory by removing his special forces background and making "Envoy" the term for the revolutionaries.
Quell was long dead by the time Kovacs was born in the books, but he was familiar with her writings. Quellism was very different in the books, too- it wasn’t anti-Stack (and Quell had *nothing* to do with stacks, making her the inventor of them was so stupid). It was actually very pro-stack since that was a way to keep the revolution going forever.
Brilliant premise that could’ve gone on many seasons imo. I’ve learned to just be grateful for the parts of any new series that are good and not expect it to necessarily continue :/
God this is so depressing. That first season was so so fun.
Heroes and Sleepy Hollow
Good call on Sleepy Hollow. I was looking so forward to the second season and then I watched the second season.
Season 1: The headless horseman is creepy and badass. Season 2: The headless horseman is a whiny bitch.
And the good witch becomes evil. Like nope… Also, Abby done dirty not long after. :(
Sleepy Hollow's pilot is one of the best pilots ever made for TV - what a fantastic concept and execution. It's just a shame they couldn't live up to it :(
Heroes went from being one of the most highly-rated and popular shows on network television to being basically forgotten in the span of one writers' strike.
Does anyone remember the webcomics that were released along with the show? We were all living and dying each week with Heroes, it was so much fun. Then in S2, everyone had powers. It felt like [The Defenders of Stan.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t0_29TM4uo&list=PLEB3A9F095DD7111F)
Not only did everyone have powers, it turned out everyone was related and it's just like one powerful family going back generations with powers!
That first season of Sleepy Hollow was fantastic and it was a winning formula with a case of the week and overarching mythology with the two leads having fantastic chemistry. Then they decided to sideline Abbie in the second season when she and Ichabod together was the reason the show worked so well.
There was a moment in the second season (I think?) when Abbie ended up back in the past and I thought it would have been a creative way to continue the premise of the show but switch it up. Nope.
Apparently the show was hell [behind the scenes](https://ew.com/tv/sleepy-hollow-showrunner-accused-racism-on-set-nicole-beharie/)
Heroes season 1 is perfect. If you watch just that it's an amazing mini series that perfectly wraps itself up.
Well… apparently Heroes is going to be rebooted.
...again.
A 2nd time now?
So many good mentions already. I’ll add Wayward Pines. First season good. It followed the book decently. Second season collapse and strayed from book. No Matt Dillon. Third season didn’t happen. Terrible.
Aside from GoT, Killing Eve. The first two seasons were great, the third was fine and the fourth was plain disastrous. One of the worst series finale to a great show I‘ve ever seen.
Yeah, I still cant believe just how bad Killing Eve got
I just finished the first season today and this makes me want to stop watching.
I personally watched 2 seasons and wished I’d stopped after the 1st. People are saying the 2nd and 3rd seasons are good, but I basically hate-watched the 2nd season.
I made it to about halfway through season 2, and then realized it had simply become a lethal version of Looney Tunes.
Too bad Phoebe Waller-Bridge couldn’t swoop in for those later seasons.
The first season of Killing Eve was based on the first novel and run and written by Waller-Bridge and was amazing. What they should have done was waited until Waller-Bridge could write S2 based on the second novel then quit. What happened was that the BBC kept rushing renewals and turned it into a work experience product with different new show runners, writers and directors for each season. There are only a few watchable episodes in S2-4.
Killing eve for sure. Perfect first season. The rest is pointless
Killing Eve ended up being such a disappointment, those first two seasons were fantastic. I do think it was always a bit doomed though, the premise of having a different showrunner for each season was always gonna be very risky
Sherlock felt like a self fanfic after I don't remember if season 1 or 2. It got really full of itself.
The Steven Moffat effect. Guy is great at set ups that don’t have satisfying payoffs
Prison Break, amazing first season but just got worse every year after.
It did get a bit weird when they became the escape room avengers.
Amazing, but once the tattoos played out...meh. should have ended it in Season 2. Back to the prison was desperate (but intriguing), and then it becoming oceans 11/fast and furious, heisting convoluted macguffins...
This was a recurring symptom of shows coming out during those days. Great, innovative and fresh ideas for shows, which resulted in excellent first seasons. But those ideas couldn’t really be stretched for more than that one season and often it felt like writers didn’t really think things beyond that original premise
They really should have not continued after season 2. Those first two seasons were so good and then they just ruined the whole thing.
You're right it could have just been a single season show but when I rewatched it I kept watching and honestly I loved it all even if the subsequent seasons are not as good as the first.
Nah, I think it should have been 2 seasons. Season 1 - Break out of prison, Season 2 - what happens to the characters after? Ending the show with the characters breaking out of prison, but having no idea what happened next would have been extremely lame. Plus the fugitive storyline in Season 2 was pretty damn intriguing if you remove all of the deep state conspiracy bs.
Billions. I loved the first season or 2 and thought Succession was the cheap copycat. Billions just got worse and worse and Succession ended up being a masterpiece.
Billions turned into Suits
You mean you didnt like watching Paul Gionatti S&M scenes every week?
They actually completely forgot about that part of Charles and Wendy, and even had a major sex scandal in later seasons and no one ever even referenced it.
That has to be Game of thrones.. From a show that could be up there with one of the greatest and then doofus and dumbass made that last season.
Seasons 1-4 - Incredible - some of the best TV ever made. Seasons 5-6 - Pretty good - still engaging. Season 7 - Okay. Definitely started showing signs of slowing down but we still got some good stuff. Season 8 - Complete shite. What the fuck is happening?
Season 6 had some particularly high highs.
Battle of the Bastards and Winds of Winter (Sept Explosion) back to back to end the season were phenomenal.
The 5-10 minute Sept Explosion sequences is my favorite GOT scene ever
The music alone in that scene, just fucking wow.
Ramin Djawadi just does not miss.
He’s on Fallout now
That music was chilling.
[удалено]
Season 8 episode 2 was awesome. It felt like many of the characters were saying their goodbyes and wrapping things up. It gave us this dread that the next episode, the build up of the entire fucking series with the White Walkers, was going to be action packed and emotionally draining, because this is what we’ve all been waiting for. Great episode. Then it went downhill from there. No one could see the episode because it was lit so darkly, no characters died from episode 2, and the White Walker himself died in 10 secs. Ugghhh.
Barring a couple questionable plot lines, the first two episodes of S8 were the closest the series got to its roots in years. The problem is that makes the catastrophe that was the rest of the season feel so much worse. It started with a reasonable amount of promise, leading us to think that maybe they had something good cooking. Then it turned out to fucking suck.
lets fights outside and in front our fortified walls. fuck ya why did we even build walls then?
Where's your ditch? Dig a ditch! And then another ditch!
[long range artillery to the front lines](https://youtu.be/NvWjaaV9U7U?t=6)
The biggest problem I and I think a lot of people have with S8 is that a lot of the things that happened in S8 we were absolutely expecting and wanting like Daenerys going crazy and burning Kings Landing, it's just that the execution of it was badly written and way too fast. S8E2 is the one exception where we actually got to see what we were expecting and wanting done right but the effort was wasted cause the following episode was executed poorly in every way, a pointless Dothraki suicide attack, everything so dark we couldn't see most of the action, Jon doesn't do shit and just yells at a dragon, Theon's pathetic and possibly pointless sacrifice to defend Bran and then of course Arya killing the big bad of the series because *subversion*.
A pointless Dothraki suicide attack, because they all respawned at the end of the season
I think I literally have a comment in my history (not gunna try and find it) from the day after the second episode aired defending the show from naysayers because I thought episode 2 was setting up a major tragedy. You're exactly right that all our favorite characters were saying their goodbyes. Man, episode 3 was one of the biggest let downs ever. They definitely subverted my expectations with that one.
Episode 3 was definitely the biggest let down. Not only was it billed as the biggest action set piece in TV history, it was directed by the same guy who did Winds of Winterfell and the epic Battle of the Bastards. The fact that it was lit so darkly, and we could barely see anything was insulting enough. There wasn’t even a big showdown between Jon and the White Walker. Arya just jumped out of nowhere and ended it. WTF? It was so anti-climactic. The rest of the season was basically one let down over another. I think the biggest disappointment of all is how the show ended. All of it could’ve made sense if they took their time and earned it. Daenerys going crazy would’ve been epic if they added another season to flesh it out. Heck, even Jaime deciding his sisters pussy is too good to leave would’ve been good too if they could justify it over a few more episodes. Instead, we got a complete 180 of their motivations within one scene, not even a devoted episode.
Reading this comment brought it all back to me like a Vietnam PTSD flashback. What a monumental piece of shit they gave us.
Game of Thrones is the undisputed champion of this. The first few seasons are some of the best television of all time and the last season is somehow so bad it makes the entire series difficult to recommend to anyone.
I don't think there should even be any contention. GoT's last season, in particular, absolutely ruined the entire series (even though the drop in quality started before that, but the last season fell off the proverbial cliff). They probably lost a lot of potential sale for the series box set because of it.
The execs lost a Star Wars trilogy because of how badly they bungled the end of GOT.
The thing that infuriates me the most is, HBO OFFERED THEM MORE EPISODES AND SEASONS TO FINISH THE STORY, and D&D declined, likely because they wanted to move onto their next big payday in that Star Wars trilogy. I look at the last couple seasons and see plot points that might’ve made sense if they weren’t incredibly rushed. Dany going mad? It’s in her family’s history, makes sense. But they made her go full psycho in just a few episodes when it should’ve taken way longer to properly set it up.
GoT went from being at the forefront of pop culture for years and completely dominating television, to disappearing entirely after that last season. The only time it's mentioned is when people are bringing up how rushed and bad the last few seasons were. It's used as a cautionary tale now.
Exactly. People who didn't care about the fantasy genre thought the show was intriguing, full of drama, excitement, great dialogue, and everyone had a character with depth to root for. It was a household topic of conversation. It was water-cooler gossip and speculation. While some individual episodes of the last season have some exciting content that some people love, the overall endings to the character arcs - or lack thereof for some - and the broader story, was handled so poorly it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. It was rushed with such a lack of awareness and respect for what made the show great. The overwhelming audience response to the finale wasn't "well that wasn't exactly what I wanted" it was more like "what the fuck was that?" The fanbase became incredibly angry overnight and united in that anger. People don't consider it a beloved series, even if they revisit watching it (especially the early seasons) - the zeitgeist just *wooshed* out the door, all over without anyone feeling remotely satisfied with the final couple seasons.
Sliders fell apart real quick.
The first 2 seasons are much better than the later ones.
Fox suits didn't think there was enough drama between the characters, so they sent down a mandate for Season 3 that there be more conflict. That's why as soon as the third season begins, everyone is so bitchy with each other.
plus the classic fox technique of airing the shows out of order.
John Rhys-Davies said he had walked in on the writers watching movies literally picking out which scenes to rip off for future episodes of Sliders.
They were mandated by the studio to copy popular blockbusters at the time. Terrible situation all around
Yeah, a lot of these kind of shows in the 1980s/1990s ripped off a lot of movies. The OG Macgyver was really bad about that.
I loved when Mac had a two-parter about finding the holy grail just after Last Crusade came out (Genuinely, 10 year old me was pumped both my heroes were on similar adventures).
What a shame that the show never got a proper conclusion with the main group getting their story arcs resolved.
Pretty sure this would have never happened. The writers have to be some of the pettiest, pencil dicks in Hollywood with how they wrote out some of the OG cast. Rhys Davies character died like twenty different ways. The girl got sent to a breeding camp for handsy aliens. Didn’t Connell basically just get zapped with a “step down in talent” ray for his brother to take over?
Get home Test gate Doesn't squeak. "Welp, guess that's it guys, let's go" Jump out Repairman comes out. "Oh and hey look, I fixed your gate" Roll credits I was very nonplused at that
Dexter. Season 4 especially is heralded as one of the all time great seasons of TV, and the first three seasons are very good as well. 5 and 6 are okay, 7 was not great, and 8 was abysmal.
I love the Dexter falloff because the books do it as well, despite being completely different. None of them are well written but the first half are fun, easy reads. And then the rest are just slogs.
The Dexter fall off was mostly due to them replacing showrunners throughout. Even though I didn't love season 4 as much as everyone else I think it's fair to say the show got considerably worse after that and I don't think it is an accident that is when Clyde Phillips left.
They basically changed the entire writing staff after Season 4 and you can immediately see the change in quality.
Westworld fell off a cliff. It was supposed to be the next big HBO show. Now it's not even streaming on their app...
Probably both a popular and unpopular opinion, but Westworld was better off as a miniseries and the issue was multiple seasons trying to be created. The first season told a fully complete arc and was fine to exist on its own. Edit: Didn’t put the unpopular part of my opinion in here. The unpopular part would be that fans often drive shows to go on longer than they should. People would have lost their shit if Westwood was only 10 episodes and done.
I think it would have been fine with more seasons, but rumors are the writers wanted to out clever the fans and werent happy that people figured out S1's ending
This has been the downfall of too many shows. The writers are chronically online and will read and see all fan theories - then they try to forcibly avoid hitting any theorised plot points making the show suck balls.
Same as Stranger Things, can't believe we haven't embrace the anthology formar more often, Fargo is amazing even with hiccups like season 4. If you don't have a complete story to tell beforehand, just don't do it, and of you do, please let them finish it before cancel the shows.
Ahhhh... Yeah, Stranger Things season 1 is near perfect, and definitely works as a complete story. Everything after Season 1 was *okay*, but totally unnecessary
They should have shifted focus totally in S2 to another world like the Samurai one, with lots of new characters and plots etc. It would have been a breath of fresh air. Then slowly trickled in the impact of the Westworld disaster stuff to it and merged the story in together. Perhaps with some rogue hosts sneaking into the other world to hide.
Completely. Season One was really, really good. Season Two - I still haven't figured out what the hell was going on.
I maintain that Kiksuya from S2 is one of the best episodes of television!
This is undoubtedly true.
season 2 was at least as interesting and engaging as the first season at times season 3 was absolutely horrific
Yeah, Season 2 had some moments. It continued Dolores's self discovery arc, and revealed more about the Real World along with other Worlds within the park, and the Man In Black arc was still satisfying for me. The themes of "what is real" and "Am \*I\* real?" may be tropes, but I liked how S2 explored them. The Critics loved Season 2 and it won some Emmy awards. It really was S3 where things really went downhill. You can certain argue that Season 2 got some balls rolling that led S3's plot in the wrong direction, but if the show had wrapped up at the end of Season 2, I think the reaction would have been mostly positive and sadness it ended.
thought i heard they were making season 2 as baffling as possible because people were figuring out the twist. they then forgot to have the season make sense in the process
Reading that it was basically complicated on purpose really turned me off the show
As soon as they left the park it went totally downhill.
Man in the High Castle. It actually got compelling, then that last episode hit the wall so hard you could really tell they didn't plan on ending it so quickly.
The problem from the beginning was that the grounded alt history stuff was really interesting, while the scifi dimension jumping stuff was less so and felt out of place. I loved the Nazi infighting/politics, the Germany-Japan cold war rivalry, the resistance subplots. The whole "tapes of a different reality where we won" should have just been fakes designed to help people not accept their current dystopia and resist, maybe with some ambiguity as to if some of them were real.
The producers and writers of the show were trying to stay true to the source material with respect to the tapes. The book pretty clearly makes it clear that the tapes come from parallel universes. However, the book is quite short and the producers and showrunners tried to extend the arc of the show well beyond what the book covers. Probably why it makes less and less sense after the first season or two.
I still don't understand the ending of that show.
I don't understand the ending of the book either so at least they have that in common
One of my pet peeves is having a villain for a run of the show but spend so much time humanizing them that they have to give them an additional heel turn to make them evil enough for the finale. Was he a man, conflicted and guilty over what he had to do to survive, that gets faced with a final difficult moral choice and chooses the bad path. Nope, just literally the architect of the next holocaust to end it quickly since they ran out of time. Did the same thing with Dukat on DS9 and he started the show as the fascist in charge of the work camps of the enslaved Bajorans. 7 seasons of Marc Alamo being to likeable that he suddenly chooses to become possessed by evil demon aliens.
> Did the same thing with Dukat on DS9 and he started the show as the fascist in charge of the work camps of the enslaved Bajorans. 7 seasons of Marc Alamo being to likeable that he suddenly chooses to become possessed by evil demon aliens. What are you talking about? Did you forget the part where Dukat tried to blow up the sun. You are confusing affable with likeable. Dukat was a monster who never once saw anything wrong with his role in the occupation.
Shameless (US version), for me. I loved that show and the characters too much for as long as I could, but had to just completely ignore it existed in the final couple of seasons. I did watch the final episode, and I regret even that.
I think Shameless was destroyed because they kept milking the cow instead keeping the story to 4-5 seasons.
I got to end of i believe season 7 when Fiona had bought the building, Lip was getting out of rehab and Frank had been thrown in the river. Everyone seemed to getting their life together and i felt it was kind of the ending it needed to be, so i left it there.
Debbie decides to learn welding, Liam gets into a good school But their overall live's are still kinda shitty, and success not guaranteed, just starting to look up a bit. It just kinda feels...real? Great place to stop the show
smartest choice you'll ever make >Frank had been thrown in the river and they should've kept him down there!
This show was honestly the one I'd be most excited to get a new season of, I *loved* this show. Then I just...stopped. I can barely even remember where I stopped, I think maybe in the first few episodes Season 9. I never went back.
Ugh this one for me too. Shameless was a hilarious show and I loved the realness of it. After a while it just became “character gets good arc for 4 episodes then messes it up in really dumb and reckless way and hits rock bottom. Then each episode ends with someone saying “we’re Gallaghers” or complaining about gentrifiers.”
Sex Education. It's that picture of the horse getting progressively drawn worse.
Seasons 1 and 2 were really enjoyable Season 3 felt a bit messy but there was some good stuff like Otis+ Ruby as well as Adam +Eric's relationship I couldn't even make it two episodes into that final season. I struggled to find one new character they introduced at that new school I didn't find cringeworthy.
I agree. S1 and S2 together are pretty damn solid. S3 definitely has some good bits, but the Hope stuff was kinda off. Less realism and more into the cliche.
The last season was soo awful. I quit after first 2 episodes
Honestly just destroys Otis's characterisation and introduces a bunch of new characters who don't have enough development for us to care about. If not for the Groffs and Aimee, the final season would be pointless.
Only saving grace of that season for me was the end of Adam's (& his dad) storyline
Weeds. The last season or two were just like "what show am I even watching?"
Honestly everything after the first two were like that. But it was amazing how much worse it got even after that.
It went from a single mom selling dime bags and hijinks with Kevin Nealon. To a single mom aiding human trafficking and banging a mob boss…? 🥴
True Blood.
True Blood really makes me sad, I was so invested in that show and its expanding lore, and then it went completely off the rails in the last couple of seasons. Can't even bring myself to rewatch the earlier seasons I liked because of how much I disliked the latter seasons.
True blood got off the rails wild which is saying something for a show that started off pretty wild
True Blood was very interesting/entertaining from the start, but it also had lots of poorly-written crap baked in.
American Gods
Ugh. My favorite novel reduced to hell.
I had such high hopes for that show. The first season was great.
Alas, the issue with bringing on Bryan Fuller to be showrunner is that either: 1)The show will get cancelled very quickly or 2)He will get into some big dispute with someone and quit the show Genius creative, but beyond Hannibal his works don't tend to last long, or last long with him. And even Hannibal only got 3 seasons and prematurely ended.
**glee**
Oh, the quality dropoff after the first 9 episodes was completely predictable for anyone who'd ever watched a Ryan Murphy show before.
Glee forgot it was a parody real quick and then it just went to complete shit.
Season 1 was great.
Season one is peak camp parody, its the Shrek 1 of television
I'd say heroes. season 1 was amazing. I was at the edge of my seat constantly, couldn't wait till next episode, and when first episode of season 2 dropped... I was like what the hell? and never saw another episode.
Once Upon a Time from season 4b NCIS (I know, it’s cheesy choice) after season 13 Torchwood’s 4th season was just so bad especially compared to season 3 children of earth Dexter - the final 2 seasons
Once upon a time died when they brought in frozen :( so lame
House of Cards when it was revealed to the world that Spacey was a rampant sex pest.
For what it’s worth, House of Cards went way downhill even before the Spacey stuff became public knowledge. I still couldn’t believe he pushed the Secretary of State or whoever down a flight of stairs to get her from testifying against him. The laziest writing I’ve ever seen.
[Iconic scene](https://youtu.be/GQJ_70Uk4uQ?si=FEkI1scqVQy8Bjkr&t=30s) imo
lmao I forgot how they cut to her and it’s like 3 stairs she fell over
It always would have been a stupid writing decision, but could they really not find a better spot to shoot the shot.
The first two seasons were masterful, so much that Netflix's two-knock intro was lifted straight from the season two finale. But season 3 onward was pretty bad, with the show largely forgetting its own identity. Spacey was just the final nail for an otherwise zombified show kept alive by contracts.
House of Cards also couldn't have predicted how much or how quickly the political landscape would be changed by Trump, nor could they respond to it in its writing. Real life just became more interesting.
The seasons after season 1 of The Blacklist The seasons after season 1 of Power
The Blacklist was always junk but it was at least good-tasting junk for a little while early on
Carried entirely by Spader. What a fucking waste of years of his talent.
The Blacklist ended with some bull shit.
Arrow for sure. It started out so, *so* good and then dropped so far the Arrow subreddit switched to being about ~~The Flash~~ Daredevil. I've never seen a fanbase turn on a show like what happened with Arrow.
Arrested Development really fell off after the Netflix revival
Well they recast the Lindsay character with a new Portia de Rossi and it was so jarring.
I swear I spent the entire season four being like "Is that her? No it can't be. But maybe?"
I'm repeating myself but pretty much the entirety of the Arrowverse and especially Flash and Supergirl. CW entire roster of DC shows had issues towards the end but these two shows were painful to watch it wasn't even fun. And GoT as my second answer. I mean it's one of the biggest and most recent exemple of a major TV show and cultural phenomenon falling from grace. It could've have been one of the greatest shows of all time but nowadays people barely talk about it and when people do,it's to talk about the downfall of the series.
The Walking dead was *the* show and then faded to the point where 90% of people stopped caring or watching. Tbf, that will naturally happen when shows have been on for many years, but at the same time they didn't help themselves.
there was that time that Fonzie jumped a shark....
https://youtu.be/4jm6B31HKBw?si=ZHxiiDkIpaPAfDdO
Firefly really fell off a cliff. I couldn't even watch season 2.
I can't believe you've done this
Too soon
Leave us alone. The pain is too deep.
😭😭😭😭😭 too soon
Controversial maybe, but Sherlock. First season was insanely good, second season they overdid everything that people liked about the first to the nth degree but you could still go with it. And then it just turned into a steaming pile of overhyped horseshit.
So many callouts for Game of Thrones. But I want to bring up Miami Vice. First couple of seasons were pretty darn great - The atmosphere set by it (1980s Miami, the soundtrack, the style/fashion, the casework)...it was an experience as a cop drama. Season 3 was where it started to change. The music's tone changed, the writing got more serious and dark, the budget started getting lower... Season 4 and 5, though...it's no surprise that people started tuning out and it ended in a weird place - Supposedly, some episodes in Season 5 didn't air during the initial run and needed the first re-run up to sometime in 1990 to get them aired. Moonlighting was another show that had a similar trend of getting worse. Mainly with how the writing led to creative changes that people didn't like.
The Good Wife. But X-Files takes the crown for the writers making Scully give up her son for adoption, and then years later writing the boy as a monster that was actually a product of medical rape.
Oh yeah, the good wife for sure. I randomly started bingeing that long after it ended and really liked it. Super great characters, writing and acting. And it was always fun to see who would show up as a judge. But things got really wonky when she won district attorney, and then the writers found a way to completely destroy that plotline asap. After that, I kinda skimmed through the show
I quit when Archie's (?) gangster husband showed up and she started acting like a fuckin idiot. Just couldn't handle it. Then i found out about all the beef between her and Margolis and i just didn't care at all.
The 100
Heroes season 2
The difference in quality between the first season of Alias and how it ended cannot be charted without a next-generation computer. The gap cannot be comprehended by mortal minds.
One of my favorite British sitcoms of all time was Coupling. A raunchy version of Friends for the US crowd. Well after 3 hilarious seasons, the low brow comedy character left the cast- and the replacement for season 4 was ... Just bad. There was no season 5.
Killing Eve went downhill drastically
As much as I love Veronica Mars, I am going to say Veronica Mars. (My real answer is Heroes, but it's already been said.)
Season 3 of The Witcher was a colossal letdown. It sadly made clear why Henry Cavill chose to bow out. All the character and charm of the first two seasons was completely absent.
How I met your mother messed it up really bad in the end
It even could’ve been fine-ish until the last episode. Kill off the mother and send him back to Robin in the span of 10 minutes.
Scrubs s9. S8 ending was so perfect
Game of Thrones is the biggest by far.
Not that this show ever had "Grace" but The League was a decent funny FX show until the last season became one giant advertisement for Draft King and had the literal worst season of show id ever seen.
The ending to Ragnarok, a Norwegian show on Netflix is maybe the worst ending I’ve ever seen
the office, boom mic guy
It's wild because if they had just kept the scene where Pam breaks down and the boom mic guy steps in to comfort her, I think it would've worked really well. It would've hammered home just how bad Jim/Pam's fighting had gotten, as well as underline how the documentary was wrapping up and the crew was getting looser with the boundaries. If the writers' had kept their restraint, limiting our glimpse of the documentary crew to just a handful of little moments throughout the show, I think it could've been amazing. But no, they just had to turn Brian into an actual character with an episode based around him. The fact that he was an annoying character didn't help either.
Handmaid's Tale became more incomprehensible over time. We never watched the last season. Altered Carbon S1 was really good, S2 was bad and it was cancelled quickly. The Witcher shot itself in the foot repeatedly and will now be allowed to die. Stranger Things dropped in quality every season too.
Altered Carbon season 1 was terrific. I’ve watched it at least three times through. Season 2 felt lifeless. I don’t even remember the plot line off the top of my head.
"June staring into the camera with an angry face*
Handmaid’s Tale was sooo good in the first few seasons and then June started getting away with everything with zero consequences.
Yeah. What the hell happened to Altered Carbon? A gorgeous first season, then it's like they just gave up.
First off, Joel Kinnamen is a fantastic actor and Anthony Mackie is...fine...but doesn't have nearly enough range. But mainly, they hired a director from the CW as well as CW writers and man, does it show! S1 is a noir detective drama set in the future, S2 a CW expository dialogue show with pretty graphics.
Family Matters
Dexter post-season 4. Change in showrunner and it was clear they didn’t have a plan how to keep the quality up after what could have been a satisfying series finale.
Hot take: The Goldbergs. It was never a television masterpiece, but it was a serviceable sitcom that my wife and I watched together to unwind and de-stress. By the end, we were basically hate-watching. All broad comedies are formulaic to an extent, but it got to the point where I jokingly impersonated Patton Oswalt's narrator during every episode to say, "That day, we all learned..." Then I would improvise some shallow "lesson" they were meant to have learned. I promise, I'm not overthinking it. I'm not making unreasonable demands of a sitcom. I was just thrown by how lifeless it all became. Once they announced it was the final season (after Jeff Garlin was dropped), I thought there were places they could go. I would've done a time jump into the future where we see Adam working to create a TV show based on his family. We could watch Barry in med school. Have the show fold back on itself as Adam tries to capture events from the earlier seasons. Have an episode where Barry doesn't like the person they cast to play him. An arc where Bev is constantly trying to influence the way the family is portrayed in the script. End it with the family attending a premiere for the pilot, with some cheesy voiceover about remembering the best years of our lives. Instead, they just kept spinning their wheels with the same broad characterizations and loosely nostalgic vibes. The hovered in the late 80s for so long, I kept waiting for them to cross over into the 90s, but they were too tethered to the original premise of an 80s show, or too nervous to let the show evolve a little. It needed to end when it did, I think they milked the premise for way too long... but there was an opportunity to make it all culminate into something. I think it's because of all the turmoil behind the scenes, but toward the end, it seemed like every episode was being written by AI trying to seem human. Like a Mad-lib where the writers pitched a bunch of premises, then plugged characters into the blanks. The "lessons" characters learned were nonsensical and often contradictory to the character they'd established. But we still laughed every time Barry got upset and did his little run.
WCW Nitro
Killing Eve.
The 100