I don’t watch a lot of TV (comparatively), so when I do choose to watch a new show I try to give it five episodes before making a decision. Here are recent shows that lost after a single episode for me:
NCIS – just so silly, sillier than Murder She Wrote or Walker Texas Ranger even.
Fringe – I don’t think they could have cast two leading characters with less charisma and personality if they tried.
Dollhouse – I felt like I was watching Joss Whedon’s private sexual fantasy, especially since he’s already made known his proclivities for slave girls, sex zombies, and sub/dom stuff in several episodes of his other shows. It was just kinda creepy and sad.
30 Rock – I’ve actually seen a couple of episodes of this since people keep trying to convince me it is good. Baldwin is funny, but Fey and Morgan are possibly the unfunniest people on TV, they have no sense for comedy and never did. And the blond guy with the bowl cut, his little shtick wore thin in one episode. I can’t imagine watching that over and over again.
Pushing Daisies – way too cutesy and knowing. It reminded me of something a high school drama kid would like just because it is so “random”.
24 – came across like Michael Bay for TV. Forced suspense, no character, like a B action movie.
Being a fan of the sitcom genre, there are any number of them that I sat down fully prepared to enjoy and gave up after one episode. Sometimes I turn them off after the first commercial break.
One scene. I thought it was a show spoofing bad TV sitcoms for a second. Then I realized they were actually presenting the material as “funny” in and of itself. UGH!!!
If shows are set in a specific time period, they should remain true to that time period.
Happy Days started to blow it after the third year – everyone’s hair started to get longer even though the show was still based in the 50s; there’s no way anyone in the 50s would have had hair the length Ralph or Potsie had (without getting beat up for it).
That 70s Show suffered much in the same way, although in that case it had to do more with speech and idiom. There’s no way anyone in the 70s said things like “You rock”; sorry, that didn’t come out until the 90s, but this is just one example.
Things like that kill the enjoyment for me. If you’re going to show me a certain decade, remain true to it.
I’ll give most series at least two episodes before giving up, assuming the first episode isn’t a total stinker.
That said, I lasted about twenty minutes into Journeyman before I turned off the TV. Since it was cancelled soon after that, I guess I wasn’t the only one.
I also stopped watching **Curb Your Enthusiasm **after two episodes (Larry David’s character feels like someone took every asshole customer I’ve ever dealt with and distilled them into a single whiny middle-aged man… shudder).
Two and a Half Men because it’s nothing but sex jokes.
30 Rock because it’s a TV show about a TV show. Of course it wins all sorts of awards because the press, media, and entertainment industry loves itself and by default, loves this show.
Heroes stupid and hard to follow. Same reason I hated comic books when I was a kid.
First use in the OED of “rock” in the sense of “to be excellent” is from 1969 (and the source is an Ohio Newspaper, so the idea that they were using it in Wisconsin in the 70’s hardly seems a streach.
Heros lasted 1 week
Friends was one
Lost was 2 episodes
Never watched Office, or 30 rock
I don’t get 2 1/2 Men ,too childish
I had no interest in Nite Soap operas like Dallas
Never watched Day time soaps
Weeds - Kept hearing good things about it and it’s going for multiple seasons (I assume it’s still on) so I got Season 1 from Netflix. After 1.5 episodes, I couldn’t find anything remotely entertaining about it and called it quits.
Amen brother/sister. The final nail in the coffin for me was (oh okay, I’ll spoiler it for those five people out there that haven’t seen it yet): the sheer number of times they kept trying to pull the same shit with “Sylar’s dead/incapacitated - GOTCHA! He’s not!”. In the final scene of S1 I was practically screaming at the TV “JUST. CUT. HIS. FUCKING. HEAD. OFF!!!”
I caught most of the first season of Lost and thought it had good potential. By the time they found the bunker and had to reset the beepy thing regularly to prevent the apocalypse or some such notion, I was gone.
Fringe got 1.5 episodes. Watching the pilot I thought, “This has to be a fluke. There’s no way they can insist on insulting viewers’ intelligence this badly.” They did. I left.
Heroes lasted a season and a half for me as well. It started so good and… epic fail.
Since I love So You Think You Can Dance so much, I tried watching this season’s American Idol. It held my interest for 1.5 weeks. Good thing I really don’t have time to watch TV anyway.
I’m sad for the people that hate House, because I think it’s one of the best shows ever aired. You aren’t really supposed to like the main character, but you are supposed to understand him. He was abused by his father, betrayed by his ex into a lifetime of chronic pain, and he suffers a serious addiction. Try ‘‘House’s Head,’’ ‘‘Locked In’’ or one of the many other unique and daring risks they took in writing and directing. You really do have to start at the beginning, I think, in order to ‘‘get’’ the character. Otherwise he just seems like your run-of-the-mill asshole.
in exchange for watching **Jeopardy **with me. Same episode and jokes every time
