Two parody shows “Soap” in the 1970s and “Desperate Housewives” in the 2000s had great first seasons but became unwatchable in later seasons.
Good Times started out as a decent program with two talented stars, John Amos and Esther Rolle. But at the end it was dumbed down and just a vehicle for setting up JJ to utter his inane catchphrase “DYN-O-MITE!”
Beverly Hillbillies went to pot when they started doing asinine things with Jethro, making him fancy himself as a talent agent or secret agent or such. The B&W years were definitely the best, making it one of several shows that went to shit when the went to color.
More recently, Sleepy Hollow turned into the Monster Of The Week and became too formulaic. Jesus, just have Abby and Ichabod get it on already. You know they’re going to.
Sleepy Hollow makes me especially sad. Many of these shows had a few good years before decay set in .
SH had one short season of batshit wit. Then one season (with a new showrunner), ignoring the good bits (character chemistry) & concentrating on the bad.
The third season, returning this week, has been limping along. The evil showrunner is gone but the charm of the first season is also gone. (Still, I’ll watch.)
Farscape lost its way after “the big blue bitch” left the show and didn’t find it again until the wrap-up TV movie.
Get Smart and Bewitched were never as good once the principles were married with children.
Totally disagree. Life was great in its second season.
I don’t know that they were the worst ever but to me the most disappointing were Dexter and BSG. I’m sure many of the shows mentioned like Lost and Heroes had worst drop offs but I never really watched those. Dexter seemed to just become ridiculous after the 4th season or so. And BSG had one of the best 1st seasons of a show I’d ever seen and then slowly it sunk over the next several. Each season seemed to have really strong episodes but overall it seemed like it slowly unwound to a really bad final season.
seaQuest DSV was a decent ecology-based Star Trek clone, but quickly degenerated into ludicrous paranormal silliness after the first season.
While not the worst, Andromeda with Kevin Sorbo has to be up there.
Men in Trees tanked badly after Patrick got struck by lightning. I think that’s the only show where I actually saw it “jump the shark” - when she put that bobby pin in his hair I thought “Aw man. It’s all over.” And I was right.
3 shows got walloped by September 11 and the need to worship policemen and firefighters:
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The Weakest Link. They tried to soften the nastiness of the show with endless charity episodes. Also, the shtick of the women ganging up to vote the men off, regardless of performance of the contestant.
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Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. OK, the format was getting stale anyway, but the endless fireman and police officer makeovers got tiring.
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Star Trek: Enterprise. The Xindi plot and the “You’re either with us or against us” Bush like attitude makes the last 2 seasons completely unwatchable.
I loved every episode of that show.
I’m one of the people who actually saw the episode where Fonzie jumped the shark, the first time it ran. In fact, I’m one of the people who hadn’t watched Happy Days for years, but tuned in to find out where Fonzie, who supposedly lived in Milwaukee, had learned to water-ski. Turned out it was just more “Fonzie is magic.” I didn’t ever watch it again, so while the stunt got me to tune in for one night, it didn’t make me a regular viewer, which was its intent (I think).
nm… Beaten by RivkahChaya.
Eureka. The first three seasons or so were a lot of fun, lots of geeky science shout-outs, and great chemistry among the top three-four characters. Then they killed one off and pushed the great big red ‘Total Reset’ button a season later- literally. The show degenerated into wandering in a script wilderness that never went anywhere, resorted to stunt casting in a desperate move to rehook viewers, and never recovered. Huge mess by the last season, and it became clear the writers were flailing. Sad.
Heroes was the first that came to mind. Loved the first season. Second season was OK, but not great. Third season I couldn’t finish.
Dexter is also in the running for this as well.
Simpsons…enough said
While The Wire did have some good things in Season 5, I had no interest in the newspaper storyline, and the McNulty/Lester fake serial killer was dumb. (If I even remember that correctly) Huge drop off from the first four seasons. Yeah I loved season two as well.
Dukes of Hazzard after Bo and Luke were replaced by other cousins (I think they came back, but never cared after that)
Sesame Street - the arrival of Elmo. (OK so not the target audience at that point…but he still irritates me)
ETA:
Warehouse 13…Loved the first three seasons, but couldn’t finish Season 4 for some reason, and don’t care about finding Season Five (since amazon never streamed it via prime)
Speaking of BSG, as I understand it the one in the '70s got cancelled because there weren’t enough people tuning in to see a wannabe drama about serious-minded folks in space looking for the lost tribe of humanity; it just wasn’t popular enough, and so wasn’t profitable enough, to stay on the air.
But, hey, so long as we now have all these props and costumes: how about we do a Buck Rogers series? It won’t aspire to serious drama; it’ll be swashbuckling fun, with guest stars like Cesar Romero and Frank Gorshin and Julie Newmar just so everyone can say I See What You Did There. And we’ll give our hero a wisecracking robot pal voiced by Mel Blanc, and cast Erin Gray as a sexy fellow officer in skintight spandex, and have Buster Crabbe save the day with a wink to how he played Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon – and cue the scenery chewing by Roddy McDowell and Ray Walston! We’re doing light-hearted sci-fantasy here, people!
And it was a hit: it wasn’t hamburger trying to be filet mignon; it was ice cream trying to be dessert. And so it got renewed. And so they said, say, now we can drop all of that and go back to my favorite plot: serious-minded people searching for the lost tribes of humanity in space!
So, no BATMAN villains, and no Mel Blanc; and no skintight spandex, dammit; and no light-hearted swashbuckling fun, because who wants that? Throw in a stoic sidekick and stand by for Season 2: BSG!
There was no Season 3.
The fifth season of “Walker, Texas Ranger” started rather dark. An undercover DEA agent murdered by a drug lord and agent’s family wanting revenge, a 7-year-old AIDS patient looking for his mother, and a veritable Dr. Mengele working in a nursing home. These three were followed by a Hayes Cooper two-parter, then the series was abruptly Disneyfied with a precocious kid raised in a research center where his best friend was the center’s talking supercomputer.
I had the good fortune of missing the first season. Season two was better than most anything on TV at the time, and I had the benefit of not being able to compare with season one, until my Sister in Law gave me the DVD set for Christmas.
Not sure where it happened but the smug preachiness on MASH got dialed way up at some point and Alan Alda’s character especially, become almost insufferable.
While not the worst decay I’ve seen, one that I don’t think has been mentioned is Once Upon a Time.
I liked the show for the first season while we were still guessing which fable characters all of the townspeople were. By the time all of that got sorted out, I realized that I didn’t actually like the show much.
Well Samantha and Darren were married starting with the first episode, so according to you it was never any good.