I stopped watching Heroes when I started watching it on TV. Previously, I had watched it online and would fast forward through plotlines that bored me. (Second season’s wacky adventures of Hiro and Ando in feudal Japan, looking at YOU.) Then I started watching it on TV and realized…there are a LOT of plotlines that bore me.
Meh. And from what I’ve heard about the most recent season, I feel okay about it.
I don’t watch sitcoms any more, and the last one I watched on a regular basis was the Drew Carry show.
I forget exactly when I stopped watching it, I think it was 2 or 3 years before the show ended, but I stopped watching it because I got tired of his character always being a loser in his career and in his relationships.
X-files: The stupid alien episode at NASA. (That was the first episode.) Too stupid for words.
Bones: I tried to stop after the Gormagon ender, but then got suckered back in to comment on
Zack helping solve the crime from prison. Was he going to continue to do that?
Gave up again after the ghost episode followed by the bad SF Con episode. Did watch the one where the girls had a pact to get knocked up together and raise their babies together, and almost liked the final scene with Booth, but not enough to make up for the rest of the crap going on. I decided the little snippets of good were far overwhelmed by the yuck.
CSI: When they trapped Jorja Fox under a car.
randwill said:
Was that when
They got arrested in South America and thrown into another prison?
Or was that third season? That was annoying.
Dead Badger said:
We’re still trying to figure out what next season will be. Running guess right now is zombies. But I like your idea.
Dexter, when Dexter Morgan gleefully set about to frame an innocent man (Doakes) for his crimes.
Now that you mention it, I believe I watched a couple of episodes in the South American prison before I bailed. And as I recall, that was at the beginning of the third season.
I stopped watching Numbers because math doesn’t really work that way.
Ditto for any of the CSIs because crime labs don’t work that way.
I stopped watching CSI regularly in about season 5 because the storylines were to me getting more ridiculous. I started watching it again when there were interesting Sara/Grissom storylines. I stopped watching again when Sara left and only watched when I knew from spoilers there would be some Sara/Grissom drama. I stopped watching for real when Grissom left.
Do you mean Space? It’s the 8th episode and one of the worst of the series. I’m surprised you never gave it another shot past that.
Stopped watching ER the episode before they killed Dr. Greene. Stopped watching Gray’s Anatomy when they didn’t kill Gray when she jumped off the pier.
After a while, every X-Files episode I caught seemed to revolve around Mulder trying to prove this big government alien conspiracy, the smoking old guy passing him cryptic messages, and Mulder getting chased by men in black (so to speak). Early on, the episodes I saw were things like the liver eating guy in the wall or the brain sucking kid at the fast food joint (not sure what season those were, they’re just examples from recent reruns I caught). My perception of the show, based on the episodes I saw over time, was that eventually the conspiracy stuff dominated most episodes, and if you didn’t know who the smoking guy was and what he’d been talking to Mulder about two weeks ago, or what high-up official Mulder was in trouble with from last month, you’d be lost. That was my experience, and why I quit watching; the conspiracy stuff got boring, and it was annoying trying to keep up with it.
As to Claire Beauchamp’s comment about the “mytharc” being a large part of the show from the start, maybe I just got lucky in the episodes I caught early on. /shrug It doesn’t change my perception of the show, and why I stopped watching it.
Stopped watching The Simpsons when Maude Flanders died. I had been less and less satisfied with the show for years, but that was the episode that signaled the end of the show I had loved. I still catch the occasional episode, but I don’t have anywhere near the connection with the show that I used to.
I gave up in the middle of season one. I had not watched the show and a friend bought it on DVD. The first 2 episodes had me completely gobsmacked. As the season went on, it wasn’t as sharp, but I hung in just in case. When Jack’s wife (iirc) got amnesia, it became a lame soap opera and I was done with it.
I stopped watching Roseanne the last season, because it just got horrible. I did watch the finale, and it was mostly okay, but the “twist” at the very end was dumb.
I stopped watching Mad About You, I think also in it’s last season, mainly because it changed nights and was on against too many other shows I liked better, but also it sorta lost steam after they added the baby.
I stopped watching Ellen when it went from being just another sitcom to The Ellen Is Gay Show. It’s not that I won’t watch shows with gay characters, I won’t watch shows where the whole focal point of the show becomes “look at me, I’m gay.” The quality had also been dropping quite a bit, even before the “coming out”.
I stopped watching ER for a while when they wouldn’t stop having all those damn Africa episodes (it’s called ER not Africa Doctors fer cryin out loud), but later got dragged back in.
I gave up on Boston Legal about six episodes before the series finale. I just couldn’t take the preachiness anymore. The last few episodes I did watch, I had to fast forward through most of the court scenes. I like Shatner, and Spader plays off of him well, but I just couldn’t take one more Alan Shore indignant liberal ranting closing argument. And I got really sick of “Hands” getting so much attention and the revolving door cast didn’t help either.
I haven’t watched Family Guy in months, but still have recordings of the episodes I missed. I’m on the fence whether to even bother watching them, mainly because the show has gotten really bad since it came back. Also, Brian is an asshole now. I never had a problem with Meg getting bashed, though. I know that’s why some people stopped watching.
I quit watching Friends when NBC kept pulling that extra long show crap, running them for 40 minutes instead of 30. The offset schedule interfered with my ability to tape that and cross-channel programming, and frankly it was annoying they couldn’t conform to the standard time blocks.
ER: I suffered through them making Carter into a drug addict. I stayed through killing off Dr. Greene. But when they had the psycho whack Kelly Martin’s character in the hospital, it was too much to take. That was the end.
Y’know, that’s what (partially) redeemed the previous season finale. I was raised Catholic and understand Zach’s conflating of a sin of commission and a thought sin. They are equally bad, and the punishment is the same. However, he remains the GOOD person he has always been, despite his temptations of logic.
Liked that one. Maybe you have a more positive view of the attendees of SF Cons than I. 
I quit watching The Wonder Years and Beverly Hills 90210 for the exact same reason: the dumbass network executives at ABC and Fox moved their respective shows into the same time slot as Unsolved Mysteries on NBC.
I used to watch Heroes, post in the episode threads… heck, for a while I was the one starting the episode threads here. Occasionally, I’d mention to people who’d seen their enjoyment of the show turn to bitter bile and vitriol why they were still watching something that wasn’t fun.
One day, someone asked me that, and I realized that the poor writing had finally overwhelmed everything I’d enjoyed about the show. Didn’t watch again, and haven’t missed it.
The Office, Scrubs, My Name is Earl, and most shows because I got married. It has really cut into my TV wathcing.
The West Wing and Angel both got scheduled on Wed nights. I had class, so I had to pick one, and I was annoyed by season 3 of Angel, so mid-season 4 I stopped. (In retrospect, I stopped just as the show was starting to get really damn good again.) Then I stopped watching West Wing about 3 eps into season 5. I just did not care anymore. I’m not going back and finishing anytime soon, because my enjoyment of anything by Sorkin has taken a massive hit after watching his ego spill into his last show. (For god’s sake Sorkin, keep your damn vendettas out of your script - I don’t need to see that much of your screwed up psyche.) I know that he left after season 4, but I still associate the show with him and don’t really enjoy it anymore. I still love Sports Night though.
Kind of liberating not to have to watch a show to completion anymore. (Yes, I know most people figured that out well before I did.)
Heroes : At the First Episode of Season 2.
You can’t simply rearrange the powers that the Heroes have with each other. That made NO SENSE AT ALL. IIRC, was Heroes on Opposite 24 for a stretch? Really made it easy which show to continue watching.
However, that being said. **24 **isn’t that out of the woods either.
Agreed, when the Prez was a Mole, I just couldn’t accept that. At all. It was a shame too, because I get back into it in Season 5 (or 6, was it?) where Palmer II takes office. And I was completely When TF did THAT happen? It is sad 24 once had something, they lost it, and they are trying to come back.
**24 **is too predictable now. They are doing nothing new. Just new ways of recycling the same old stuff.
PrisonBreak learned for all the Failures of 24, and made one of the BEST first seasons of a show I have ever seen. The show could have ended there, and it would have been fine. Season 2 was Icing. Pure Icing.
Season 3, not so much
I still don’t get what SONA had to do with anything. Agreed, it was shoehorned. Season One worked, because it was all mapped out ahead of time.** Literally.** But, After they got Micheal back into a prison, the snake had begun to eat itself. I loved that they got to get the Concrete Digging scene throwback in Season 2. Season 3, I tried to watch. I couldn’t
Does this count?
Wheel of Fortune
Our Local channel had the bright idea to divorce WOF and Jeopardy. J! got a 4:30 pm time slot. WOF had 7 or 7:30. It was enough to get me to stop watching. Well, that, and a Little show called The Screen Savers, on Tech TV.
I finally get back to WOF, and I was like “Since when does WOF have Handbuzzers!?”
**
The Screen Savers, Call For Help, et al**
Comcast canibalized it, and the entire channel into G4. G4 has changed formats how many times since then?
Yes, I watch Attack of the Show. Yes, it is obvious that Screensavers fed a LOT into Attack of The Show. But… you can tell the two shows are step brothers, AT BEST.