Talking about Revolution got me thinking about breaking points. Thjere are shows you stop watching because they’re just dragging on and on (Smallville, Supernatural) and there are shows where you say “That’s it - I’m out.”
The last scene I saw of Revolution, Charlie and her uncle were trying to get a black marketeer buddy of the uncle to help with medical care. In exchange for his help, he requested they do a dangerous undercover op for him. The uncle says “Ok, I’ll do it.” and the frenemy says “No, I want her (Charlie) to do it.” Yep, not the guy he knows and worked with who has spec ops training; he’ll take the teen-aged girl he’s never seen before. I was out after that.
There was actually a good reason for that, not that i blame you for quitting that show. There wasn’t a specific scene that made me quit Girls, I gave it three episodes for being on HBO and having heard good things about it but I couldn’t force myself to watch more.
Walking Dead, episoooode…2 or 3? Anyway, when they’re down in the quarry and one of the dudes gets all misogynistic and shit. I had already decided that the writing was cheezy and the acting was bad, but that scene pretty much clenched it for me.
As I’ve gotten older my breaking point is a little different. It used to be all or nothing.
Now it’s like this; I don’t invest my time to watch individual programs that aren’t interesting to me.
Example: I enjoy the show The Mentalist. I enjoy watching Patrick Jayne solve crimes; and most of the episodes are about that. Every so often they get one that the main focus of the episode is about Red John. I delete those and try again next week. Eventually the main show will get boring for me; then it will reach the full tipping point. When there are more episodes that I’m not watching, then It’s pretty easy to give up.
The tornado episode of Desperate Housewives. The combination of a tornado that was predicted hours in advance, plus the over-the-top forced choices for the basement scenes.
I guess with most shows my interest just wanes, and then I realize that episodes have piled up on the DVR, older ones getting auto-deleted, and I don’t care enough to do the work required to watch the show from the point I stopped.
But I do remember quitting Weeds. It was when the older son deliberately sabotaged his girlfriend’s birth control, hoping he’d get her pregnant and prevent her from going away to college or something. I was like, “I have no desire to watch these asshole characters anymore.” (Later I believe I read that the girlfriend got pregnant, but had an abortion and went to college. I was in full Grumpy Cat mode: “Good.”)
Melinda Doolittle’s departure from American Idol was all the evidence I needed to demonstrate that Americans are not qualified to decide what kind of music they like.
I quite watching Revolution after a couple of episodes because I just couldn’t get past wondering where the hell a teenage girl got machine made clothes from years after the power stopped.
The Mentalist I gave up on because I couldn’t get over them letting Jayne anywhere near the Red John case.
Survivor and American Idol I gave up on because I stopped caring and the same formula just got weary.
24 I quit because I couldn’t suspend disbelief for more than 2 seasons.
Hell on Wheels kept spinning them, going nowhere with an absolutely fascinating setting, setup and cast. Gave up about three eps into Season 2 and haven’t seen or heard anything that made me question the decision.
Watched the first season of Boardwalk Empire and the same sense of “yeah… and?” permeated it so much I haven’t bothered to look up the subsequent seasons.
I am going to grind out this season of Walking Dead through sheer inertia and am very unlikely to pick it up again next year. I trust my choice needs no explanation.
Starting the second season of Lost, I realized that I had absolutely failed to give a damn about any of the characters and whether they lived or died, so I stopped watching.
Grey’s Anatomy. Meredith falls off a peer and “drowns.” A while later they not only rescucitate her but she wakes up as if from a nap. I drpped the show tight after. I’ve stopped watching other shows but it’s usually gradual.
Greys Anatomy when George cheats on his wife with Izzy. He was the most sympathetic character and the romance was so sweet and then he just dumps his wife cause he lusts after Izzy. I felt manipulated and jerked around. The Mentalist when he kills Red John, but it is not really Red John it is actually an associate. I hate it when a show tells you something important happened and then goes back on that. How I Met your Mother when Robin had the pregancy scare. I realized it was a soap opera and not a comedy anymore. Desperate Housewives after Susan had amnesia and forgot about Mike. When a show does not care about its characters it makes me feel stupid for doing so.
Most of the time, shows just start to grate on me, particularly as the writing goes downhill and the formulas start to become too tired.
Criminal Minds - My interest was waning for a while, since it seemed like they were solving fewer and fewer cases through any sort of clever deductive efforts, but the final blow was in a scene where a bad guy and a hostage go into the water in a car. One agent dives in, and there’s a struggle. Then, out of the blue, the lead agent rises up from below the car to cap the bad guy. Sheer, stupid nonsense.
e.r. - I had a semi-rule for a while that I didn’t want to watch shows that relied on children in jeopardy to generate interest or drama. I gave e.r. three strikes, and there were a series of shows that they blew through those three strikes in short order.
The wife and I are getting pretty tired of the show, for various reasons - I’m curious as to what yours are. We think that the show is just running out of reasons to like the characters. Really the only ones we like are Daryl, Michonne, and there’s a tiny bit of sympathy for Carl, simply because he’s an innocent (for the most part, despite him killing someone). I guess I like Hershall, Glen and Maggie alright, but they don’t DO anything.
I was a latecomer to E.R. (started watching in Clooney’s last few episodes), but I became a big fan and remained one for a while until it started getting too many pathos driven multi-episode arcs. The African episodes were what ultimately did it for me; I totally lost interest.
There haven’t been all that many shows that I have just bailed out of after getting into them for several episodes. I drop many after one or two bummer episodes. Red Widow is the latest of those. I was intent on liking The Following but the feedback here (SDMB) persuaded me to let it go.
Grey’s Anatomy was just a slow slide into blah and I gave it up after several seasons when the goddamn “background music” made it hard to read the captions! Pure shit music at too loud a volume. The characters had gotten dull, too.
I try to pick shows that look like they may have promise and have been better than 75% lucky with such choices. My biggest disappointment in that regard was Terriers which that network really screwed up with. One of the best shows of the past 10 years and it only lasted a season.
ABC and NBC continue to start new series that get cancelled before one full season so I am really gunshy of those networks. Right now, I give the best odds to FX. Even HBO and Showtime have let me down in recent years. AMC almost ran me away with The Killing but I continue to anticipate new seasons of Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
Lost after the zillionth time that lives could have been spared if two people just had an honest two minute conversation. If the writers wanted to keep the secret of the island from us the audience, that’s one thing. But with the characters not even knowing the secret when it was crucial for them, that was not acceptable. I also decided that even if the island was protecting an army of time-traveling dinosaur-riding space Nazis, that secret was no longer worth my time. I’m glad I dropped out while watching season 3. I enjoyed the emotional resolution of the finale. I knew there was no way the writers could wrap up the entire textile industry’s worth of loose threads they created in one episode or season. But I’m glad I didn’t spend any other time paying attention to Lost.
End of the episode:* “Get the boring bearded protagonist and hung him!”* Start of the next episode:“Wait, Colm Meaney, you can’t kill me for whatever contrived reason I’m just coming up with.” “Fine, let him go, men. Again. See you in 40 for this episode’s cliffhanger.”
**Glee ** when Bunny the Sociopathic Cheerleader took in sweet-as-pie Marley’s costume to make her think she was getting fat and Marley was all “OMG I’M FAT” and went bulimic. The sheer stupidity of that storyline was the final straw. I watched a few more episodes out of habit but that was really the point when I knew my Glee-watching days were over.
CSI: Las Vegas I actually did stop watching when Gil Grissom left, but caught up again when Sara Sidle came back. I only watch it now for something to look at while I’m eating dinner on Fridays. I don’t enjoy it at all like I used to. I can’t stand Finn.
Yeah, pretty much, and repeat for the five or six other plot threads as well. Such a waste of good materials…
The only thing that kept me watching into a second season is that they use Canon 5Ds to shoot all the interior scenes, and as I use a 5D professionally for video, I was interested in what I could discern of the technical details. Pretty pathetic reason to watch a show…