TV series that have fallen the farthest

Cafe Society
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[QUOTE=Frostillicus]
I’m currently in the middle of Season 1 of Alias via Netflix and I think it is great. Are you saying I should stop watching after I finish Season 2? Damn.
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I think it’s worth watching in its entirety. I have the entire series on DVD. The series didn’t really move to the self-contained feel until season 4 IMHO, and even then there were continuing story arcs across multiple episodes.

Plus if you stop watching now you’ll miss some great guest stars, including Isabella Rossellini, Sonja Braga, Joel Grey, Peggy Lipton, Angela Bassett, etc.

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Buffy yet. That’s one that usually gets slammed in these sorts of threads, sometimes at “There was only one Highlander” levels of denial about seasons 6 and 7. Personally I was pretty OK with Buffy throughout its history but I do agree that the last two seasons did suffer in comparison to the first five.

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Cheers: The Kirstie Alley years.

Moonlighting. Once Brilliant, died exausted.

Most of the popular shows of the 80’s

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[QUOTE=Otto]
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Buffy yet. That’s one that usually gets slammed in these sorts of threads, sometimes at “There was only one Highlander” levels of denial about seasons 6 and 7. Personally I was pretty OK with Buffy throughout its history but I do agree that the last two seasons did suffer in comparison to the first five.
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OK, there was no sixth season of Buffy. No show that could be that perfect for five years could fall so far so fast.

Of course, since Marti Noxon decided to work out her suicidal slutty college days on my favorite show, things had to get weird.

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Happy Days

After Richie left…

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All in the Family/ Archie Bunker’s Place after Mike and Gloria moved out, doubly so when Stephanie moved in.

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[QUOTE=Otto]
Plus if you stop watching now you’ll miss some great guest stars, including Isabella Rossellini, Sonja Braga, Joel Grey, Peggy Lipton, Angela Bassett, etc.

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But I have already seen the 2-parter with the brilliant and never hammy Quentin Tarantino. :rolleyes:

67

[QUOTE=aldiboronti]
The Simpsons has such a large place in my heart that I try to make excuses for it. But honestly, trying to recall the last Simpsons episode that I would call a classic, I have to go a long, long way back.

Damn shame. Groening should have retired the show at the top of its game and concentrated on Futurama.
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I thought Groening was kind of booted from the day to day of the show very early on.

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“Enterprise” started off with some promise, but eventually the gravitational pull of a of a big pair of catsuited Vulcan breastses proved too great, and the proud ship was pulled into a dimensional space of sweaty sponge baths, and gratuitous Porn farr.

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[QUOTE=Captain Lance Murdoch]
I’m sure I’m the only person who will go here, but I’ll throw out She Spies.

Season 1 was a clever send up of Charlie’s Angels and it’s ilk.

Season 2 saw a re-imagining of the show of a serious action-drama-failure-something. This was the very thing the show was originally intended to ridicule.

I’ve never seen any show change so much from one season to another. Imagine if season two of I Love Lucy had been a half-assed drama about a mixed race couple trying to make it in New York. Were we just supposed to forget season one ever happened?
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I felt like I was being beaten over the head with the yes-we-are-mocking-spy-shows stuff in Season 1, so I was open to seeing the show go in a different direction. It’s too bad it didn’t last long enough to go anywhere with the hinted Cassie-Mr. Cross pairing; that would have been pretty cool.

70

[QUOTE=winterhawk11]
Another one is Roseanne, which started out as a smart, funny, “realistic” portrayal of a blue-collar family and then spun off into la-la land with the whole lottery plotline and the fantasy sequences.
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Agreed. I came here to say exactly the same thing.

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I have to mention Veronica Mars. I loved the first season. I thought it was witty and had a theme that went throughout the season but also had clever side plots along the way. I really didn’t see the ending coming. It was a twist I hadn’t expected.

I stopped watching about 2/3 of the way through the third season. It was just a totally different show. It was no longer cohesive and the mysteries weren’t as interesting because they weren’t as developed as they could have been. The endings also became somewhat predictable in that I knew that they would twist. Just blah for me.

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Oh…and Malcolm in the Middle. I thought it was a funny show about slightly quirky, but still somewhat believable characters who had flaws but were ultimately lovable. In the end, the were all completely crazy and obnoxious.

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[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor]
Happy Days

After Richie left…
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I thought Potsie and Ralph Malph could have carried their own show. Maybe they could have moved to Milwaukee, worked in a brewery, and had crazy female neighbors named vernie and shirly.

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I definitely agree with ER, which I finally stopped watching 3 episodes from the end of this season. As someone pointed out upthread, it wasn’t that the acting and dialog weren’t good, nor that I didn’t like the characters (and, oh, the hotness of the ER women…). But the show just ran out of ideas.

The Simpsons has actually been better in the past couple of years than it had been for a while, imho. And I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I think people overstate its decline. So ymmv.
Two that no one has mentioned:
Nip/Tuck - The first two seasons were very good. Then there was a big hiatus. Then it was just amateurish and incredibly contrived and stupid and insultingly ridiculous and had no connection to reality. I gave up partway through season 3.

The L Word - Season 1 was a reasonably good drama with compelling and realistic characters, at least some of the time. Season 2 was pretentious twaddle.
One that fall far and has mostly come back is Lost. Season 4 was as good as it’s ever been, but I almost gave up on it during slow parts of both seasons 2 and 3. (Granted, it’s a stupid, stupid show in many ways, but I really enjoyed almost all of season 4.)

75

[QUOTE=bouv]
1996? Seriously? That’s only up to season 5…season 6-8 were gold (in there we have “You Only Move Twice” with Hank Scorpion (but don’t call him Scorpion…it’s Scorpio, but don’t call him that either.)), and 9+10 were good too, at least on par with seasons 1+2, which weren’t that great. Go back and watch “Bart the Genius,” “Moaning Lisa,” or that one where Marge gets drunk at Mr.Burns party and sings that weird song. Very few laughs.
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I’ve a long running argument with a friend about the Simpsons and when it went wrong, I own the first seven series, not sure if 8 was per se…

It was superb up till five, though some people argue the first season wasn’t very good, I’d say its far better than now… 6 was ok, and the next couple of seasons have key very good episodes interspersed with a marked decline of the general episodes. The Scorpio one being good and one of my favourite episodes, when Lisa reinvent herself at the seaside:

Homer: (trying to casually buy illegal fireworks) Let me have one of those porno magazines, large box of condoms, a bottle of Old Harper, a couple of those panty shields, and some illegal fireworks, and one of those disposable enemas… eh, make it two.

Later…

Marge (seeing Homer’s purchases): I don’t know what you’ve got planned for tonight, Homer, but count me out.

I’d say the rot started in six, the shark was jumped with the Grimes episode, and while classic episodes were in there, they became less frequent and disappeared altogether in the end.

I’d say the shark was jumped with the Grimes episode, because thats the one where things changed direction… My friends says its an excellent episode with a satire on how Homer is treated on the show…

However, to me, its the first time they introduced the idea that Homers idiocy is positively celebrated, rather than tolerated by his work colleagues. In effect it introduced Jerk Homer, with none of the self realisation and guilt he used to have. It also brought satire in there much more, one of the changes which made Simpsons worse (its always had satire in there, but was not that focused on it before).

After that, Lisa stopped being witty and carefree, Marge stopped being anything but a whiner, Bart, well, Bart stayed the same and then… Any minor character around got a storyline (I think I saw the Judge guy get some storyline recently). Guest stars filled the spaces.

Ok, so Futurama started about then, and Hartman died around then and that might be the reason, but the Grimes episode makes a milestone past I’ve not bought a dvd…

76

[QUOTE=Mahaloth]
I’ve even previously written rules based on these shows failures.

Rule #1: If you have a well planned secret, don’t spoil it early like Twin Peaks.

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Having a well planned secret doesn’t work, because you need to either reveal it or tease the audience until its patience runs out. You need to have a series of secrets, setting up new mysteries as you solve old ones.

That was the problem with the last season of Babylon 5 – by the time JMS knew that he was going to get a fifth season, the show was already set to wrap things up at the end of Season Four, and it was too late to hold back some of the final planned reveals and plot developments.

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[QUOTE=Abby_Emma_Sasha]
I have to mention CSI: Miami here. For the first two seasons it was a pretty good crime drama, but then Horatio became a parody of himself and the writing went to hell.

I still watch it, mostly for the snark value. And A-Rod.
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ditto csi miami.

The csi miami drinking game.

horatio + profile = 1 shot
horatio + profile + removing sunglasses = 2 shots
horatio + profile + removing sunglasses + talking … like … this. = 3 shots.

78

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]

The L Word - Season 1 was a reasonably good drama with compelling and realistic characters, at least some of the time. Season 2 was pretentious twaddle.

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(I’m going to hate myself for this…)

Max, don’t you mean “twattle?”

(Oh my, that was totally gratuitous and worse than my usual odious puns.)

79

[QUOTE=randwill]
I second “Heroes”. It could have been about the the psychology of super-powers or how the real world would be affected by super people. Instead it turned into action/adventure, slapstick and teenage romance. Better for ratings but not nearly as interesting as it could have been.
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I’ve been enjoying “Heroes,” but I’ve also been disappointed that a, in my opinion, far superior show about regular people getting superpowers has been cancelled - “The 4400.” That’s the way she goes in the world of tv programming, I guess.

I would put forth “That 70’s Show” for a fallen show. We all know why it fell (losing two of its main characters), but it still fell. We’ve given the last year a fair shot, and it’s just painful. It’s like watching people who stay at a party long past time to go home.

ETA: And Donna’s blonde hair. Donna’s a redhead - Laura Prepon should have known that.

80

[QUOTE=devilsknew]
I thought Potsie and Ralph Malph could have carried their own show. Maybe they could have moved to Milwaukee, worked in a brewery, and had crazy female neighbors named vernie and shirly.
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They always lived in Milwaukee. Richie and Potsie once dated LaVerne & Shirley.