There have been a number of threads, mostly on individual episodes, in which I’ve posted my gripes, which are hardly unique. Basically, the characters are morons dumber than the zombies, who can’t make a sensible move to save their lives. If of all the options at a critical juncture, there’s one that’s short-sighted, compromising, dangerous, likely to get someone killed, and ends up getting them nowhere… well, don’t make a drinking game of it unless you just want to chug the bottle.
This. It’s a shame, because the episode where he kills Red John was very good, and there were plenty of ways they could have handled it without a full reset. But no, they just took it back to the status quo. I’ve seen maybe 2 random episodes after that (enough to know that, as one would expect from the first take-back, they haven’t made any progress since then).
I put up with **Weeds for three seasons but I just couldn’t get into the fourth - I think I was just bored with the stupidity of it all.
**
Criminal Minds lost me because it was just too damned tidy all the times. Every theory they came up with was absolutely correct - they never made a wrong assumption. And the blonde super-computer-whiz was just too completely and instantly connected to every single database in the whole world. I know it’s TV, but can’t they at least pretend that some things take time - “OK, I’ll call you back as soon as I find what you need…” That would give just a little credibility, IMHO.
I saw a handful of episodes of Bones and I just couldn’t force myself to believe that someone so tactless and obnoxious could rise so high in any organization. Plus the whole 3-D projection/simulation silliness caused far too much eye-rolling. I’d given up long before the Bones-Booth pregnancy.
I never quit a show if it pisses me off. If I’m pissed, I still care.
I quit the show when I don’t care anymore.
I didn’t think I’d go back after they did the Red John death take-back.
But like the cowboy in Brokeback Mountain, I just can’t quit the Mentalist. The Red John stuff still is the least interesting and most credulity straining stuff.
I really wonder why shows like that think they just have to have a larger story arc involving a nemesis. Plenty of mystery shows were eminently successful without one. Columbo, Murder, She Wrote, Barnaby Jones, Diagnosis:Murder…
Gave up on House when it became the House/Cuddy Love’n’Snoozefest. It had been, IMO, treading on thin ice for a few years at that point anyway.
Tried Walking Dead, but dropped it after the first episode ended with that loving, slow motion, long shot of a horse being killed, in oh, so careful detail. Yes, I know it’s probably directly from the comic book. I don’t like zombies in the first place, and if that type of shot is what this show’s going to be about, it’s not for me.
I quit Survivor because I found myself getting bored with it and then one season a few years ago they had one particularly hateful and obnoxious contestant. The fact that I couldn’t stand her gave me the impetus to just stop.
I quit House because I found I only cared about the medical mysteries and not the characters and that essentially every episode played out the same way.
I quit Spartacus when I realized I had four of them sitting unwatched on my DVR and I didn’t care.
Those are some recent ones.
FCM-Garcia constantly tells them she has to do some digging. To the poster who doesn’t like that their 1st guesses are always right. That almost never happens, they have many false leads. BTW, I quit because I’m a Prentiss fanboy.
I stopped watching **Star Trek: Enterprise ** after that episode where the Vulcans who practiced mind-melding were depicted as a persecuted fringe group.
Really. That was one of the better twists in ST:E, I thought, and they placed it in proper ‘historical’ context as well. But okay.
I’m Quoting Carmady
(who
quoted puddleglum
“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.”)
"This. It’s a shame, because the episode where he kills Red John was very good, and there were plenty of ways they could have handled it without a full reset. But no, they just took it back to the status quo. I’ve seen maybe 2 random episodes after that (enough to know that, as one would expect from the first take-back, they haven’t made any progress since then). "
I agree with both of you. The darn Red John thing should have ended with that episode. It was an excellent hour of TV, ruined by the inane follow up. I do miss the character of Patick Jayne and that handsome actor who plays him.
The only one that really sticks in my head is Battlestar Galactica: All the rapey-rape rapist rape drama. And the frat boys joking about rape. And one of the characters getting raped into insensibility. And another major character almost getting raped.
At that point I was so horrified and disgusted I shut it off and never went back. That was at the end of Season 2 or 2.5, I forget.
(I am still watching Supernatural, though I skip around and don’t watch boring episodes).
It might be happening for me with Dexter now. I’ve been catching up and now I’ve made it to season six. The last few seasons, plot holes have been growing and it’s been more difficult to suspend disbelief, but the show’s still been entertaining.
Now, for the sixth season, I’m finding it more difficult to keep watching, not so much because there’ve been major plot holes - not more so than before. Rather, it’s because
the writers have decided that this season, they’re going to deal with religion in all its aspects. So the serial killer-du-saison is a bunch of religious nut jobs, and Miami metro is slow to catch on because they’re just a bit … slow. But that 's not the only thing. In addition, Dexter is noticing religion everywhere now, as though before he’d never been introduced to it. The treatment of the subject is just about as subtle as an ice pick to the forehead. First Dex takes this kid to this catholic pre-school and does not know how to answer a question about what he believes in. Then he’s making this friend Brother Sam who is this born-again Christian. Over the course of a few episodes they have this conversation about religion. This conversation is also not very sophisticated, just basically what you’d expect from a bunch of pre-teens asked to comment on the matter. Neither position (atheism and theism) is presented very eloquently, but particularly the atheist position gets a really poor treatment. Now I don’t really expect the writers of Dexter to present me with insightful commentary on the issue of religion, but why could they not just have left it well enough alone? Fuck!
I’ve given up on The Walking Dead.
It’s more soap opera now than survival show.
But the main thing is I realized there is no hope for anyone, no teensy ray of sunshine. The situation for the characters will only get worse. Even the baby will in all likelihood be eaten alive. Failing that, it’s caregivers will put it in a “safe” place, then they will be eaten, and the baby will starve to death.
Even when you die someone has to destroy your body. I haven’t watched since two episodes into the current season.
I gave up on Followers when the blond chick shot a stranger with a spear-gun, turned it right off. Gratuitous violence and nothing more. bleh.
I’m not sure which season it was, but there was an episode of The Sopranos where a waiter follows Christopher and someone else out of a restaurant complaining about his tip and the two of them beat him to death. Granted that up until that point there have been many, many worse instances of random, casual, gratuitous violence, but that did it for me. I think of it more as hitting my saturation point than a last straw.
I gave up on The Walking Dead for the same reason Baker did after the whole Governor plot began to pick up. Just too relentlessly depressing. Not bad for a movie or miniseries but just too much for an ongoing series.
I gave up on The Following after the gay/bi couple and the girl got away with the killer’s son by having moles on the local police department. Just way too ominipotent and all powerful for me to suspend disbelief.
It’s ironic, but my beef with Supernatural is that it’s still going on. I grew tired of it last season and only watched this season because I thought it was the last one. When they announced it had been renewed, I quit.
My problem with **The Walking Dead **is the show presents a situation that is completely survivable with basic common sense and has them screw up week after week after week. It’s freaking Gilligan’s Island with all Gilligans.
Posting the one that’s unique in my experience: Breaking Bad. I’ve watched other shows with ambiguous moral characters, but for some reason when Walter turned down the job and money from his friend, that was the end of the show for me - I didn’t even make it to the end of season one. I don’t know why I reacted so strongly.
Well, the key issue in **Breaking Bad **is that Walter’s ego and arrogance are so massive that no one else really exists in his world. I’ve lost count of the times he’s pointlessly screwed himself by swelling up and getting pissed at a challenge to his ego.