Deadwood and The Sopranos. Near the end of its run, I missed an episode of Deadwood and decided I didn’t want to see the remaining episodes til I had seen that one first. I never did get around to seeing it and eventually just stopped caring what happened. From what I’ve read, the series just kind of stopped instead of having a real ending anyway.
In the case of The Sopranos, the series went downhill rather badly following the death of Nancy Marchand, IMO. The decline in quality and the lengthy hiatus between seasons combined to make me shrug and walk away. I’ve never seen most of season 4 or any of season 5. Reading about the final episode and discussing it with people who have seen it makes it sound like it was a big “fuck you” to all the people who did make the effort to keep up with the series.
Heroes went bye bye for me when it piled up on my crappy cable company DVR and then the DVR blanked out on me and erased everything. House, Ugly Betty and Hawthorne (Jada Pinkett’s series on TNT) went at the same time.
Grey’s Anatomy I gave up on I’m not sure when, but I had a DVR conflict and said eh. It was getting silly.
And Glee. I gave it the benefit of the doubt for the first five episodes, I think it was, but the ableist premise upon which they’ve built all interaction with Artie was absolutely too much. (Not to mention Tina’s stutter.) Subsequent failures in representations (as I’ve heard from friends discussing it) make me glad I gave it up.
I just gave up on Glee last week. I wouldn’t say I was “impassioned” about it before, but I thought it was kind of fun. For some reason last week I was trying to watch the episode and was thinking to myself “ugh, I wish someone would just blow this school up!” I guess I’m just done with it.
I’ll jump on the Heroes bandwagon. Absolutely awesome first season, interesting but flawed second season. I think I watched the first episode of the 3rd season before deciding it wasn’t worth my time.
Smallville
Me exactly. I was watching it on DVR and turned it off to fold laundry. The laundry genuinely held more interest for me.
** CSI** We were hangin on, then Grissom left.
** Desperate Housewives** I think I stopped at the end of the second season, but interest had waned over that season
Lost.
Started watching the first series, loved what I saw and wracked my brain for an explanation.
Wondered how they were going to escape etc.
Stuck with it even when it started getting a bit formulaic, life stories to pad out each episode, where if they’re bad guys it turns out that really they’re good guys etc.
After a while I realised that the writers were putting "weird"in for weirdsake , and were going to make up a reason for it later on.
Or quitely let it drop and hope that the viewers would forget to ask for an explanation after it’d faded from memory.
Flicked it on out of curiousity a couple of seasons later and it seemed more like Times Square then a lonely Pacific island and more like a soap then a bizarre mystery.
I understand now that its ending, for brevitys sake the writers won’t be able to explain everything.
(How convenient)
And I expect that many of the explanations that actually are given will be pretty lame.
Doesn’t matter now though, after stringing along the viewing audience for all this time .
They’ve got your money and theres no refunds.
What a con.
Me too! I loved this for the first three seasons, and then my desire to watch it faded away. Everything got so stupid, and I hated Lois from the moment she appeared on screen. For someone who avidly watched the first seasons, I have zero interest in what ended up happening to any of the characters.
Heroes - I never actually started watching series 2 given that at the end of series 1 I was screaming at the television “JUST FUCKING CUT SYLAR’S HEAD OFF!!!”. They never listen… Then I heard it got all stupid so didn’t bother to go back.
Brothers and sisters - I wouldn’t say I was impassioned about this, but I really did enjoy the first series and was looking forward to the second one. After thirty minutes of the cute and kooky “we all love each other so much we can’t stop fighting” and scene after scene after scene of family members arguing with each other I just hit the eject button on the DVD and didn’t bother after that.
Desperate Housewives - didn’t even make it to the end of series 1.
Heroes, for a lot of the reasons already enumerated in this thread.
Lost - I think I got through about 3 seasons, then stopped caring what happened to any of them. I also got the impression the writers didn’t care either, and where just having crazier and crazier things happen to avoid resolving anything.
Weeds - loved it until about the 4th season, when they left Agrestic/Majestic. Once the setting changed, I completely lost interest. Plus, I found storylines with the youngest son boring and annoying. I actually liked him a lot when they didn’t try to make his issues a focal point.
Lost - Season 3 For all the usual reasons. Although I’m back for the wrap-up.
Survivor - Various seasons. If I don’t like the group as a whole, and the location doesn’t interest me, then I’ll bail on the season when they vote out the last hot female. (I’m shallow that way.)
Flash Forward. I WANTED to like it, but I was interrupted by things while trying to watch it, couldn’t seem to follow it, and finally had to give it up because I was hopelessly lost. That’s unusual for me, I tend to hang in there until the bitter end with programs I like, no matter how bad they get, if only to find out how things work out. I need closure!
The same exact thing happened to me with this show — couldn’t fall asleep one night, watched the first three episodes on netflix, thought “wow great.” Next night, I started to watch episode four and halfway through I said, “actually I don’t care at all” turned it off and never thought about it again until this thread.
The Shield
I got bored with the Forest Whitaker season. Before that I LOVED the show.
The Riches, I really think this was a great premise and could have been a fantastic vehicle for Eddie Izzard. I watched the first few episodes, raving to everyone I could find about this gem on FX. And…it slowly declined. Then it greatly declined. My wife gave up halfway through the season. I stuck around through season one and gave season 2 a chance. One episode in and it lost me.
Agreed. I still have the last three episodes on the bottom of my DVR list. I don’t think I’ll ever watch them, but there they sit.
I’m a bit surprised that V has been mentioned. It’s only like 6 episodes in, and people have given up? Granted, I’m two behind, but that’s more a function of business then apathy. They seem to be progressing the story pretty quickly so far.
In fairness, V took a four month break after airing only four episodes so it wasn’t hard for people to give up on it.
I just remembered one my parents gave up on. Over Easter we were talking about Damages, which they got really into in season 2. Apparently they tried season 1 but gave up after the first episode because Patti killed Ellen’s dog, and they can’t forgive something like that. Only the consistent rave reviews led them to give it another shot when season 2 rolled around.
I had fun poking fun at them for that. “Season 1? Oh man, that was awesome. Way better than seasons 2 or 3.” hehheh.
Jericho. Oh my lord, Jericho.
It actually was pretty lame from the beginning, but the premise was so darn good that I stuck with it. I just love post-apocalyptic stuff anyway. I was holding out hope that they would do something good with it.
But as Bean_Wrangler said above, it totally degenerated. There were so many ways the show could have gone. So many interesting themes they could have explored. So what did they do?
They turned it into YET ANOTHER show about conspiracies!
I gave up after the second episode of the second season.
Count me as another one who has stopped watching Flash forward.
I liked the early episodes and their setup, and the real mysteries going on. Lately it seems to be becoming more of a soap opera and I just can’t get motivated to watch it anymore.
Plus when I first started watching it everyone said it was trying to copy from Lost, and back then I hadn’t seen Lost. Now that I’ve caught up to the latest episodes of Lost, Flash Forward seems a lot more stupid in comparison.