Married with children, meaning the Prof. thought it was okay until Tabitha came along.
[VOICE OF SHELDON COOPER]: “Original”? Really?!? ** “Original”?!? ** :dubious: :eek:
*Saint Elsewhere *was great until … let’s see, they threw in a serial killer, a couple of personality meltdowns, etc.
It was okay until Dick York left. After that, it sucked noogies. 
It happened when Alda became the show’s “Creative Consultant.” :mad:
After the first season wrapped, the story was over. There was no need to continue.
Uhmmm … Lake Michigan? :dubious: 
Or more likely one of many inland lakes that Wisconsin has, since the waves will be much more manageable.
Remember how everyone compared Star Trek with the classic sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet?
Don’t forget the serial rapist and the psychotic killer nurse! :eek:
After reading this thread, it seems to me that we have one of three things happening with TV shows that decline significantly.
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Good old decay. The show just gradually gets worse- writing gets sloppy, key cast members leave or reduce their presence, and it just sort of coasts along in general, raking in cash, until it’s eventually euthanized. Most shows tend to follow this trajectory in reality- it’s just that some shows have it set in early, or were so good early on, that the slope of the decline is much more steep than with other shows.
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Something or someone whacks the show in the head with a bat, leaving it seriously brain damaged, and it staggers/shambles off in some random direction with blood coming out of its nose, and saying almost-coherent nonsense, all the while having a big dent in the side of its head. I tend to think of shows like *Andromeda * as shining examples- went from a sort of “let’s rebuild civilization in this really dark future” to something incoherent in the second season that was very tenuously related to the first season.
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Shows are born with what amount to congenital diseases or birth defects. BSG is probably my favorite example of this. I have a feeling that the show runners had a plan, and in broad strokes resembled what we ended up with- they probably did have the whole idea that the Cylons were going to interbreed with humans and be our progenitors, for example, and that the Galactica would ultimately prevail. But the whole concept was kind of dumb from the beginning, and as a result, they started having to make other stuff up on the fly.
Hey, he was** the Fonz! ** The Fonz and Lake Michigan would be like Moses and the Red Sea! 
The show started out being ostensibly about the Korean War, but really about Vietnam. When Vietnam ended, it started searching for a purpose. When it was in the process, it was actually more interesting than when it “found” it, because it seemed to decide to be an anvil a week, while the searching phase contained some interesting character growth (particularly MAJ Houlihan), and the transition from farce to dramady, something shows usually can’t pull off, but the show actually managed.
But yeah, I agree that Hawkeye because insufferable. Particularly since he was such an unrepentant womanizer, and yet was supposed to be all-virtuous. Women were really objectified on that show.
I live in Indiana. Lake Michigan is freezing most of the time, and isn’t water-skiing really expensive? My point was that the show had become the “Fonzie is magic” show, and strained credulity, especially for people who had seen it from the beginning (which technically I hadn’t because I was too young, but I watched afternoon reruns and caught up with it before the “Fonzie is magic” phase).
And I once lived in Milwaukee. One of the few things I liked about the place was its beachfront.
If you owned a boat, wouldn’t you take the Fonz water-skiing? :dubious:
Sons of Anarchy. Despite the horrible people they were, the first several seasons had most folks rooting for them as little more than rascally underdogs. They were lighthearted moments and plenty of laughs to be found. It truly was must see TV in our household. And season four was the cherry on top, with me thinking Gemma would get an Emmy nod for her rape scene. Great stuff.
But then came season five with them in Ireland and everything ground to a halt, never to recover. All the good parts slowly slipped away and then you were just watching a show about monsters on Harleys. By the time it ended, it was a drudgery to watch and I hated every single character on it. When Jax did his thing (there’s not enough roll-eyes in the world to convey my disgust at how that was handled), no one gave a shit, nor were they impressed.
Like what was said about Lost, it left a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing. I now almost can’t look back and appreciate how good it was for so long without acknowledging just how much Sutter screwed it up. Gah.
I’m old enough to have seen the original run after the second season. Caught a sixth season episode on MeTV last month and couldn’t believe how silly it was!
I liked Due South when Fraser was basically a hyper-observent Sherlock Holmes type genius using skills learned from an outdoor life in Canada but always being underestimated because colleagues mistook his exaggerated politeness for stupidity.
By the time the original Ray Vecchio was dropped the show was in trouble. By the end of the show Fraser could ‘listen’ to radio by chewing on a wire and the show was doing fart jokes. The shame.
TCMF-2L
Each to their own. I enjoyed all the regular seasons of Farscape although it was a shame Zhaan had to drop out - allergic reaction to the blue make up. I recently watched the two TV movies and thought they stunk.
“The Big Blue Bitch” seems a harsh appellation for Zhaan. Other than the early episode where she willingly joined in the forced amputation of limbs from a non-consenting Pilot, she was basically presented as a sympathetic “Earth Mother / New Age Hippy / Spiritual Healer” type.
TCMF-2L
Lost is the poster child for this, IMO. It started off intriguing, became confusing, progressed to annoying, and then fell apart. Every time I tried to watch an episode, it was “why are you bringing in more plotlines when you haven’t even begun to resolve the previous twenty?”
I thought MASH* started off OK, got much better, and then collapsed in the final season. If they had done the finale when they still had the creative energy to do the POV episode or the one with the timer or even the dream one, it could have been a finale to rival The Bob Newhart Show. As it was, it was just recycled stale gags and overblown drama.
My current is The Good Wife. I only watched a bit of this the last season, but all the freshness was gone.
I am currently binge-watching CSI:NY, and I am worried that it might be taking a dash towards the shark. A sci-fi episode about time travel, a Halloween one about zombies, Mac’s mysterious phone calls at 3:33am - where are we going with this? I want intriguingly far-fetched murder mysteries, implausible technical gadgets that do ten-minute DNA analyses, and watching Anna Belknap and Carmine Giovinazzo getting it on.
Regards,
Shodan
They wanted the original Ray back when they decided to do a third season, but he didn’t like the money they were offering. The scenario they came up with to explain his disappearance was just … plain … stupid.