# What series most wasted a promising premise? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 17, 2009, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752 "2009-03-17T14:43:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mahna\_Mahna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@Mahna\_Mahna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahna_Mahna)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/41 "2009-03-18T18:12:46Z")
> [@Meeko](#): > > I’m going to guess you didn’t watch any episode from season 2. I did, actually. As someone else mentioned upthread Season 2 was actually half-decent… as far as I’m concerned, that’s because it was the logical extension of the escape, so it still made sense. By Season 3, though, they had pretty much run out of stories to tell and were resorting to some pretty silly plot twists just to keep things going. Things never go well when you have to start dragging in a convoluted mess of conspiracy theory to keep the storyline moving (unless you’re J.J. Abrams… but even **Lost** is starting to falter as far as I’m concerned) ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/42 "2009-03-18T18:36:57Z")
> [@Mahna\_Mahna](#): > > I did, actually. As someone else mentioned upthread Season 2 was actually half-decent… as far as I’m concerned, that’s because it was the logical extension of the escape, so it still made sense. And you have to admit, the “Digging” scene in Season 2 was an EPIC throwback. I mean, you could have seen it comming, but, hardly anyone did. (At least, that was how I encountered it, and I think that was exactly what the writers wanted.) ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/43 "2009-03-18T18:53:33Z")
**24** was a great idea: a show in ‘real time’. But it just seemed to become another action show. Way too much going on, and too much focus on a single character. ---
**Author:** ![Frostillicus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Frostillicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frostillicus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/44 "2009-03-19T02:54:30Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > I quickly lost interest in _Jericho_. I had hoped it would be a true post-apocalyptic story of a small town, cut off from the support of civilization, not knowing what was to come. Instead, they seemed to quickly come upon virtually unlimited sources of food and energy and the rest of show devolved into a soap opera. Good example. I watched about the first eight episodes and went from “wow” to “meh”. Then I removed it from my Netflix queue. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/45 "2009-03-19T03:59:22Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] What series most wasted a promising premise? [/quote] That’s easy! It’s – [QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] Otherwise known as the Star Trek: Voyager awards. [/quote] . . . nevermind. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/46 "2009-03-19T11:48:22Z")
I’ve maintained for a while now that as **24** has become a parody of itself, and can only get worse, they should run with it and go batshit mental. Make it about an alien invasion or something. Hell, a Marvel-style Secret Invasion of shapeshifting Skrulls would tie into the feel of the show absolutely perfectly. Cripes, has someone got Joe Quesada and Kiefer Sutherland’s numbers? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/47 "2009-03-19T12:18:23Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > That’s easy! It’s – > > . . . nevermind. My sentiment precisely. Though for shows that started out cool and gradually spun away from their core premise, I nominate _Third Watch_. By the later seasons, no fire-fighter character was significant enough to appear in the opening credits and the show had become largely about the unlikable Sgt. Cruz. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/48 "2009-03-19T12:48:31Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > I’ve maintained for a while now that as **24** has become a parody of itself, and can only get worse, they should run with it and go batshit mental. Make it about an alien invasion or something. Hell, a Marvel-style Secret Invasion of shapeshifting Skrulls would tie into the feel of the show absolutely perfectly. > > Cripes, has someone got Joe Quesada and Kiefer Sutherland’s numbers? Personally, the only thing that could drag me back to the show now is if Jack becomes a no s\*\*\* bad guy, with the entire point of the season being to finally hunt him down. Season 7 got me watching again(after the awful final hours of season 6) by having Tony be the bad guy. And then it turns out…he’s not. Not long after that, I rapidly began losing interesting. Yet another internet universal remote control of doom didn’t help either. Can we have one damn season where the terrorists DON’T have a WMD of some kind? ---
**Author:** ![MrBerious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MrBerious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrBerious)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/49 "2009-03-19T13:21:36Z")
It’s cheating but can I say season 5 of The Wire? Watching the previews I was really looking forward to an unvarnished look at the media in the same style as season 4 did with public schools. Instead we get a McNulty acting so out of character it’d make a Simpsons writer blush and one douchebag we don’t care about making up some news stories. Quite a let down. ---
**Author:** ![vertizontal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ad7895/32.png) [@vertizontal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vertizontal)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/50 "2009-03-19T14:07:40Z")
Before it aired, I thought this show had great potential. I was hoping to see the weekly adventures of Joey, a young actor, as he goes on auditons, playing characters who he knows nothing about, researching and training for various roles, getting caught up in the politics and sleezy nature of casting, dealing with the up and down of fame, etc. And I was expecting it to be funny, because of the clueless nature of the Joey character we already knew. Instead, it was just another show where people sit around talking about dating and relationships, occassionally throwing out one-liners. ---
**Author:** ![Ro\_Carter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7feea3/32.png) [@Ro\_Carter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ro_Carter)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/51 "2009-03-19T14:10:36Z")
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip gets my vote. The pilot was amazing, and I was very much looking forward to the rest of it. After just a few weeks, though, I started to feel there were better things to do with my time. It started being far more about possible romances between characters and got very soapy and preachy very very fast. A shame, in my book. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/52 "2009-03-19T14:17:21Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > **24** was a great idea: a show in ‘real time’. But it just seemed to become another action show. Way too much going on, and too much focus on a single character. I watched the first season, it was good. Tried to watch the second. Skipped all the rest up to the current season. I’d like to see more action and less plot twists and layers of conspiracy. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/53 "2009-03-19T14:28:48Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Heroes. The promise was of a few ordinary people gaining superpowers on a certain special day to save mankind. It almost immediately turned out that dozens of people had superpowers, had had them forever, that huge networks of superpowered people existed that had been warring for generations, and that the entire premise was a lie, exchanged for something with no brains at all. I don’t think that was the premise at all. It seemed to me that the conspiracy plotline was there from the first episode. There was never any cause and effect set up with the eclipse. It was just a style choice. > [@Captain\_C](#): > > **Lost**. Many of the ads for Lost hyped the show as survival on a deserted island after a plane crash. I was honestly looking forward to this. I was picturing a TV series similar to the movie **Castaway**. What I got was confusing psychological drek that the writers were making up as they went along. > > Now don’t get me wrong, most of the first season was absolutely phenomenal. There were episodes where the survivors had to forage for food, water, and shelter. They were attacked by a bear, which was neat. There was the possibility of savage natives (the Others hadn’t been introduced yet) and even a mysteries creature we hadn’t seen that could eat people from trees (turned out to be a cloud of black smoke). > > It had a great premise. Then they opened the hatch, and things went from ‘survival’ to ‘made up woo-woo magic stuff’. I stopped watching the end of Season 2. I would have to disagree. Just having a survivor story would get boring very fast. The woo-woo magic stuff happened from the beginning. Otherwise no one would have survived the plane crash. ---
**Author:** ![Carl\_Corey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Carl\_Corey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carl_Corey)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/54 "2009-03-19T14:52:00Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Oh, that’s not true, if you change “Jack” to “Kim” and “piss” to “shower.” **Skald** , why do you want to see your wife showering on TV? 😉 😛 ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/55 "2009-03-19T16:05:36Z")
Vertizontal, it’s funny you should mention ‘Joey’ because I was just discussing that show with a friend this week. I so agree with you, it could have been an interesting look into an actor’s journey. Instead, it was just another lame sitcom with lots of big boobs, one-liners, and wacky neighbors. “Joey” never appeared to be struggling much at all; as for wanting to be an actor, he might as well have been wanting to be an insurance salesmen. (My friend feels the REAL life of an actor involves using/delivering/selling huge quantities of drugs, and leaving that reality out gave “Joey” way too much free time, hence the dating, etc.) Also agree about Jericho, the first few episodes were really interesting. Then it turned into Men With Guns/Soap Opera/Troublesome Little Deaf Sister. I still watch the reruns on the Sci Fi Channel in the daytime, if I’m home and notice they are running it all day. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/56 "2009-03-19T18:42:28Z")
**The Brady Bunch**. I’m serious. A few early episodes touch on issues about remarriage and stepfamilies, but before the end of the first season all that was forgotten, and if it wasn’t for the theme song a new viewer would have never known anything about the premise. ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/57 "2009-03-19T19:59:13Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > I’ve maintained for a while now that as **24** has become a parody of itself, and can only get worse, they should run with it and go batshit mental. Make it about an alien invasion or something. Hell, a Marvel-style Secret Invasion of shapeshifting Skrulls would tie into the feel of the show absolutely perfectly. At different points in time, I considered what would happen if “CTU” would infiltrate Prison breaks “The Company” or Fringe’s “Massive Dynamic”. Just me, or is FOX missing a great 24 crossover with Fringe? (Prison Break has 6 Eps left. Just enough time to tie up all of it’s loose ends.) ---
**Author:** ![Shark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Shark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shark)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/58 "2009-03-19T20:09:44Z")
There was once this show advertised, where these people would be dropped off in a remote location, and the last one standing would win the title of Survivor! I know there is a show of that name, and I quite enjoy it, but that’s not the show I thought they were making. I wanted to see people have to actually survive in the wilderness. I guess I thought Survivor was going to be more like the later SurvivorMan, only with more people. Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/59 "2009-03-19T22:56:21Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > **24** was a great idea: a show in ‘real time’. But it just seemed to become another action show. Way too much going on, and too much focus on a single character. Wow. My feelings about the current season are the exact opposite. There isn’t enough action. There isn’t enough going on. And there isn’t enough focus on Jack. The political crap in the Whitehouse with the pres’ daughter and her chief of staff are just boring, boring, boring. When Jack is on screen, the show is at least interesting, even if far-fetched. I gotta say, though, that neither 24 nor Prison Break belong in this thread. Those shows did, at least for their first season or two, stick with their premise and lived up to their promise. That later seasons got worse doesn’t put them in the same category with Voyager, about which I totally agree with the OP: the writers never even tried to live up to the premise. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2009, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752/60 "2009-03-19T23:08:53Z")
> [@Roadfood](#): > > Wow. My feelings about the current season are the exact opposite. There isn’t enough action. There isn’t enough going on. And there isn’t enough focus on Jack. The political crap in the Whitehouse with the pres’ daughter and her chief of staff are just boring, boring, boring. When Jack is on screen, the show is at least interesting, even if far-fetched. > > I gotta say, though, that neither 24 nor Prison Break belong in this thread. Those shows did, at least for their first season or two, stick with their premise and lived up to their promise. That later seasons got worse doesn’t put them in the same category with Voyager, about which I totally agree with the OP: the writers never even tried to live up to the premise. I don’t think they NEVER tried…they just didn’t try very long, and they weren’t consistent. The most interesting story arc was the bit with the Kazon, who were dangerous to Voyager ONLY because the ship was without backup. I always thought they did that well, even to the point of realizing they couldn’t use it forever; either Voyager would leave the Kazon’s territory eventually, or get worn down by sheer force of numbers. I wonder what would have happened if they had forced some real, non-TNG dilemmas and solutions on Voyager? If, for instance, Janeway had actually agreed to bear Q’s child in exchange for a help on the return trip? That could have been marvelously, horrifyingly intriguing, particularly if she had been forced to negotiate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-series-most-wasted-a-promising-premise/489752.md?page=4)