Back when it was on, my family and I would plan our Monday’s around Boston Public GREAT show. Funny, dramatic, poignant, this show had it all.
Then once they introduced the chick with the hook for a hand; I left.
This is about the same reason I quit watching Millenium, a show I dearly loved. Apparently the writers felt constrained by the universe they created and just decide to make a whole lot of crap out of thin air, totally contrary to the show’s internal logic. Millenium started out as a “what if” story: What if someone really could get someone’s emotions and memories by touching something touched by that person? And what if he was a consultant with the FBI? Ludicrous, I know, but it was played straight in a mature way, especially when dealing with the emotional ramifications for everyone involved. There were some great stories.
And then either 1) the writers got bored, or 2) the producers panicked when ratings must have slipped, and yelled, “Make it edgier! Throw in some spice! Hell, throw in religion! It works for Dan Brown!”
Then at the end of one season, we got a disease that was going to wipe out the entire world a la My Name is Legend, then no mention of it at the beginning of the next season. Because, you see, a disease that will wipe out the entire world is Really Dramatic. Oh, and we also got wood from Jesus’s cross, because that’s really powerful.
Man, I could weep for that show.
Oh, and Boomtown was great too, until they felt like they needed to have all the stars in the same room at the same time all the time. Oh, yeah, and lesbianism, too. That’ll bring in the ratings.
Gave up on Grey’s Anatomy in that two parter that had the guy with a bomb in his gut.
Grey was angry at the bomb squad tech for no other reason than to be mad at him. They blew up the hallway just to have a trite slow mo scene with her walking through the aftermath with the burning paperwork floating to the ground. Meanwhile, everyone in the hospital is sleeping with everyone else because apparently there isn’t another penis or va-jay-jay available in the entire Seattle metropolitan area. All the cliches and weak character developments just piled up by that point and I said “forget it.”
Amusingly enough, my wife flipped to it at the end of a season and Grey and Dr. McDreamy were having sex in a broom closet while his wife stood 100 yards away at a cocktail party while Izzy’s dying husband died and then all this other crap happened and it just reafirmed why I don’t want to watch it.
The worst part about X-Files for me* was that they tried to do the freaky stuff and the conspiracy stuff. I mean, you’ve just seen the evil Conspiracy’s plans to kill humanity/abet an alien takeover/clone and murder your family in the next couple of years, and the next week you go back to looking for Bigfoot? WTH?
*(well…aside from the fact that it was increasingly apparent that they were just making all up as they went along, had no intention of resolving anything, and just kept making the plot pointlessly oblique)
dropzone said:
Yes, I did find that partially apologized for the dumbness of the previous season ender. It explained the inconsistency of what the finale said with the prior episode that
showed the murder that Zack confessed to, and showed that it was some other kid and not Zack wielding the knife.
Which was partly why I kept watching again.
It wasn’t so much the Con, or even the portrayal of the con attendees, that made the episode suck. It was the inconsistency in Bones. Like, she understands when Sweets gives her “mad props” for her sword handling skills, but can’t understand other more common slang terms. It was a symptom of what’s wrong with the show now. The first season the characters were fun but treated with respect. Then the show began to make the characters the joke. Like having the two guys in the lab run their crazy experiments that always go wrong. Then there was the ghost. I just can’t take it any more.
Stopped watching Without a Trace when they moved it to Sunday nights. I had been getting tired of character stories that distracted from the missing person cases, but was still watching. But then it ran after football on Sunday night, but I wasn’t around to watch so had to tape it, and invariably football ran late and my recording didn’t. So I would get the last half of whatever show was on before, then the first half of WAT.
Stopped watching Lost when I got suckered into recording the shows for someone else. I was recording on my DVR, set to copy to video tape later. But I can’t watch and copy a show simultaneously, because I keep backing up to repeat lines I miss and such, which screws up the recording. So I started saving up the episodes to watch and tape in one fell swoop. Of course then found out I wasn’t on the hook to copy the shows, but by then was behind on watching. Finally got ready to watch a block in a row, was watching the “previously on” scenes and discovered I had missed an episode and apparently they had done a dozen things in the previous episode that totally changed everything. I just had no connection left to the story, and decided I was getting by plenty well without watching it so I just stopped. (Turns out I may have looked at the wrong episode - I’m not convinced that but it could be true. But either way, I’m happy with the decision I made.)
Gave up on Grey’s Anatomy when I realized it wasn’t a show about medical drama, it was a soap opera. This was after the bomb episode.
bouv said:
You’re right. Apparently I remember things wrong. I know I hated that episode, but you are correct that is why Carter got on the drugs. And I watched it for a while after Greene died too, now that I think about it. So when did I quit? Now I don’t remember.
Gleefully? Huh. I don’t remember it that way at all. I remember him being pretty conflicted about it to the point that he didn’t want to just kill him and let it be assumed that Doakes was the killer.
Californication I stopped watching this after the first season because it was so whimsical and had a great hopeful fairy-tale happy ending that I couldn’t imagine that another season of it could be anything but bleak. So my wife and I decided that it ended there and we haven’t watched any more of it.
Simpsons - stopped watching when Maude Flanders died. I was just too icked out by the callousness of it all. But I’ve started watching again and have since caught up. I just watch it expecting different things now.
Buffy - stopped early on in S7 when the stupid-ass wannabe slayers were everywhere and Buffy’s attitude toward the rest of the gang started pissing me off.
Roseanne - stopped in or around S8, pretty much after Jackie had her baby. The acting grew worse and the characters all seemed so angry. A sad way to end a brilliant show.
Mind you, these are the exceptions. I usually give up on shows when they kill off / write off my favorite characters. This happens rather frighteningly often – indeed, I am known in my family as “the curse” because I have such a lousy record. For example:
Law & Order - stopped watching when Chris Noth was fired and “Mike Logan” was dumped off in Staten Island.
American Gothic - stopped watching when Jake Weber was fired and “Matt Crower” was stuck in a looney bin.
ER - stopped watching when Mark died. At least Anthony Edwards quit of his own accord, so that made a nice change.
ST: Voyager - briefly stopped watching after the 3rd season opener, Basics, Part 2 'cause they killed off the one character I was interested in, Lt. Suder. In fairness, he was only seen in two previous episodes and he was a serial killer, and also he was confined to quarters as a result of his crimes. But he was still more interesting than the rest of the crew. I then started watching again in the fourth season only to have my second favorite character – Kes – written off when the actor, Jennifer Lien, was fired. Second time was the charm and I didn’t watch anymore.
Days of Our Lives - stopped watching when Matt Ashford was fired and “Jack Deveraux” was written off (1993); started watching again when Ashford was re-hired in 2002; stopped watching when “Jack” was killed off in 2003; started watching again when Ashford was re-hired in 2004; stopped watching when “Jack” was again killed off in 2004 again; rinse, repeat in 2005. I wish to God I was kidding.
Another World - stopped watching when James Goodwin was fired and “Kevin Anderson” was turned into a nutcase and sent to prison.
Guiding Light - stopped watching when Hunt Block was fired and “Ben” was killed off.
(Yeah, I pretty much don’t watch soaps anymore.)
South Park - Halloween episode. Kyle and Stan mistakenly zap the alternate universe Eric, and the real Eric gloads and struts and preens and taunts and mocks and says “Hella” a lot while Kyle and Stand glare and do absolutely nothing despite the fact that they’re still armed.
Samurai Jack - Episode 17. Exactly how the the trope that a hellion and ranting and raving and hurling insults all over the place for half an episode…and not face any repercussions whatsoever…was entertaining come to be?
The Powerpuff Girls - Shut The Pup Up. See Samurai Jack.
That 70’s Show - Eric tries to hide something from Red and tells Fez, who predictably blabs about in roughly 5 seconds, oh, and Laurie’s around. This was where the fine line between “quirky” and “offensively stupid” got crossed.
King of the Hill - A new season begins, and somehow Peggy’s turned into a neurotic, fussy, petty little nag.
The Amazing Race - Zack and that useless dead weight come over the hill. I wasn’t a thousandth as sickened when Richard Hatch got the final vote.
Moment of Truth - Aw, she wrecked her marriage and horrified all her friends and she still walks away with nothing! Ha ha! Them’s the breaks!
Man, almost frightening how many of these cutoff moments I remember clearly…
And a couple I don’t have clear cutoff moments for, Married With Children and The Simpsons. I never was a big fan of MWC, but it was pretty funny sometimes so long as you didn’t take it seriously and could get used to its heavy-handedness. (“I see a woman wearing a muumuu that must have been covering three or four hineys. She can leave by the big gate or the little turnstile, and guess which one she chooses!” 
) I kinda lost track and eventually gave it up altogether. As for The Simpsons, I felt it started falling off after season 7, and I flat-out loathed My Sister My Sitter (my personal WEE, and I’m flabbergasted that virtually no one else agrees), but I’d seen enough great episodes to hold out for a comeback. I eventually got tired of waiting and tuned out.
Angel: I loved the 4th season and they should have ended it there; Spike’s story line had damaged the myth seriously on Buffy and I had no intention to watch a repeat of that.
Battlestar Galactica: “Black Market” put me over the edge. But I had already lost my enthusiasm, when I realized that Moore took the religious mysticism seriously. I watched a couple more episodes in the following seasons but they only confirmed my suspicion that: a) the cylons had no plan whatsoever and b) they would never be able to put the pieces together in a way that I could accept. As far as I’ve heard I wasn’t wrong.
Scrubs: when the writers decided to let J.D. ruin the relationship of Elliot and Sean for the most childish of all reasons: J.D. couldn’t have her, so he wanted her, and when he had her, he didn’t want her anymore. I just couldn’t enjoy the “J.D.”-character any longer.
Lost: in the middle of season 1, when it became apparent for the first time that they would never manage to explain the island logically (although the producers had repeated that over and over before in interviews).
Desparate Housewives: the “tornado” episode. Granted, I had been getting more annoyed with the series during that season, with some of the characters (especially Lynette, but also Susan) taking on bizarro behaviours, but the hours-long warning of the approaching tornado pushed me over the edge.
I stopped watching ER after Romano was squished by a falling helicopter. Mostly because it was just so damn gratuitous.
Stopped watching Gilmore Girls after the Luke has a secret daughter episodes.
Stopped watching West Wing when Jimmy Smits showed up.
Stopped watching **Lost **when the polar bear showed up.
Stopped watching **Survivor **when the cast was too stupid to separate Rob and Amber
Stopped watching Earl for the entire jail story arc.
Shows I’m giving up on if they don’t improve dramatically:
Am ready to stop watching House because it’s the EXACT SAME STORY every week. Jesus writers, do you really think that he’s all that good if he simply treads for every possible disease until he finds the right one?
Am ready to stop watching Ghost Whisperer after the stupid killing off of the main character… but not really. However, I’m still watching because I’m not particularly picky and there’s nothing else on Friday nights.
Am ready to stop watching Bones, especially if the finale is any indication of the quality of the writing.
Would love to stop watching Lie to Me because the lead actor’s head is so tilted that it makes me think it might be too heavy for his neck, but my husband likes it, so I muddle through.
The Sopranos. After Nancy Marchand died, the show declined steadily in quality. I lost interest and started missing episodes. Eventually I just quit all together and blew off the whole last two seasons.
Deadwood. I was almost obsessive about watching this show, but I missed the last two episodes. To my surprise, I didn’t (and don’t) give enough of a rat’s ass about what happened to rent a DVD and watch them.
South Park - When Mr. Slave joined the classroom on a regular basis and Mr. Garrison decided that sending poor Lemmiwinks on an epic journey through the alimentary canal would be a good class project.
Ok, yes, I’m done here. . .
That was it for me too. I taped the season after that; the tapes are still somewhere in my bedroom, unwatched. And I obviously never watched the last season, though I did keep up with it here (I was a bit curious as to how everything would play out).
Six Feet Under - somewhere in the middle of season 2 Claire Fisher was once again bitching about her problems when it dawned on me I have enough of my own shit to worry about without adding other peoples fake problems into my life and I turned it off for good.
Lost - during that ‘Kate and Sawyer in the bear cage’ couple episodes I realized the writers were just making it up as they go along and what was once a fresh sci-fi show turned into Days of Our Lives. Everyone saying “I know you have no reason to trust me but you HAVE too!” got old as well along with the gem “we have to walk to the other side of the island, it’ll take 3 days but there’s still no time to explain whats going on”.
That’s when I stopped watching The Shield, too. I still loved Dutch and Claudette, and was curious about them, but ultimately, I realized that I didn’t want to be on that ride anymore. And the strange thing is that
I didn’t even realize Lem was my favorite until he was gone. I really didn’t expect that to be the moment I decided “Okay, we’re done here.” Storywise, it made perfect sense. I couldn’t really blame the writers for going that direction, but it was just the reminder that none of this could ever, ever end well for anybody.
I still have no idea how the series did end. I might check it out one day.
Nip/Tuck, after the revelation of the serial killer. I can’t even remember the character’s names. The brother/sister team. The main characters were getting so ridiculous, the storylines were so ridiculous, and I hated all of those people. I actually just wanted Christian and Sean to have sex and be done with it, but I didn’t think that would ever happen, so…
Rescue Me–I think I got the first two seasons and didn’t bother tuning in again. Once again, I hated all those people.
Deadwood–I didn’t have HBO when the final season started and I just never cared enough to track down the dvds. I don’t know why. I adored the first two seasons.
Scrubs–JD and Elliot are horrible for each other. They’re not destined to be together. They hurt each other, and they’re never, ever going to do anything except hurt each other. So I stopped watching when I realized that Elliot dumped Keith b/c the writers wanted her with JD.
Dark Angel is the only TV show I watched regularly in first run as an adult. Until a couple episodes into the second season, that is, when the Stupidest Grand Conspiracy Ever arc started. I’m not against mytharcs, heck, the first season was mostly an arc, too, just not when it became redonkulous.
Scrubs First episode of Season 5. When things got super-duper whacky I just couldn’t stomach it.
Alias Middle of Season 4. I just had no clue what was going on with the characters, then realized I didn’t care. I honestly never really liked the show that much and wondered how I even made it this far.
West Wing A few episodes into Season 4. The show was becoming difficult to follow. I’d get bored and stop watching mid episode. Then I’d try to pick up later on, only to forget where I left off. I eventually just stopped trying.
My Name is Earl Stopped watching after the Erik Estrada episodes. This show never really made me laugh but I thought it was entertaining enough. The Estrada episodes were painful. I should have stopped watching during the prison or Earl in a coma episodes but I guess I must like the abuse.
Prison Break Stopped in Season 4 when it was clear they were going for an Ocean’s Eleven vibe but failed miserably.
24 Stopped watching the beginning of Season 5. I loved Season one but it just got worse and worse every year.
Grey’s Anatomy, I stopped after the 2nd or 3rd episode of the Denny Crane ghost/tumor visions. The show quickly turned into a crap soap opera that season…“The continuing stooooorrrryyy of a quack who’s gone to the dogs.”
Heroes and Lost both lost me in their second seasons, when it was clear that they were both just randomly writing poor story arcs and cliffhanger twists on the fly.