While your observation does make sense, I interpreted the theme of the thread to be something like, “other than just ‘I didn’t like it anymore’ what was the straw that broke the camel’s back for you in the weirdest way?”
Shows “jump the shark” for all sorts of reasons. I see the issue as more of “what was the weirdest ‘shark jumping’ for you?”
As I mentioned in my first reply, the crummy loud music on Grey’s Anatomy which drowned out dialog and seemed to have no connection to the scene it was covering up was what convinced me that there was nothing more of value in that show for me. It was a last straw, because I had already tired of the characters and the silly subplots.
My husband and I tried watching Mad Men on DVD getting a disc at a time from Netflix. I liked it quite well a first, but we stopped about halfway through the first season. It was bad enough that the main character was cheating on his wife (Husband can’t stand shows with cheating spouses. It really, really bothers him.) but when the psychiatrist called Don to tell him exactly what his wife said at her last appointment, we were done. It may have been a common thing in the 50s but it was still yucky and underhanded and we couldn’t watch anymore.
Which terrible girlfriend ? The crazy one or the clingy one ?
As for me, while it didn’t immediately make me drop the series, my enthusiasm for it went into a stalling nosedive when Lili Taylor became more than a bit character. I had nails-on-chalkboard issues with her voice for some reason, and the character itself annoyed me anyway.
I started watching *Fringe *in the second season, when I realized that it wasn’t just a clone of The X-Files. Curiously, a friend of mine stopped watching it around the same time for exactly the same reason.
I watched the first two seasons. I’ll eventually catch up. But it was obvious from the beginning that they always had much more idea where it was going than Chris Carter ever did.
Burn Notice. Ok, it was always over the top and requiring a level of Suspension of Disbelief putting our greatest suspension bridges to shame. But it was the bank robbery episode that completely broke it for me.
I so badly wanted to get into Breaking Bad and went and bought the first season. Was only able to get to about the second or third episode and just found the pace too slow to keep me interested.
I stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy shortly after they literally threw “George” under the bus. They missed a good attention-getter by not showing the accident as it happened.
I stopped watching Roc (Charles S Dutton sitcom) when the plot had some comedic twist with his wife going to do something for a breast cancer benefit, or some such. Somewhere in there, she said “And did you know, Roc, that blah, blah, the sisters…blah, blah numbers, percentages, early detection…” She was giving some sort of PSA about breast cancer. On the alleged comedy show. It was then I knew that the producers/writers had run out of funny, and were going with…tedium?
Ditto all those damned Africa episodes. I actually stopped watching ER when they brought Noah Wylie back just to shove him into yet another damned Africa episode. It’s called ER, it’s set in a Chicago ER, it’s not called Africa Doctor, it’s not set in some African medical camp.
I looked forward to watching Revolution right before it ran. Two minutes into it, I started having misgivings because I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. The two things that bugged me right out of the gate was when they transitioned from the “Day the Lights Went Out” to “Fifteen Years Later”. The houses in the town looked remarkably freshly-painted for being 15 years later, and then some guy came out wearing a dark-black rock T-shirt (Metallica, maybe, possibly Rolling Stones). I figure that after 15 years, that black T-shirt would have been gray.
Then, when the heroine turns out to be someone wearing a leather coat and handy with a bow and arrow, I thought, “Wow, it is almost like someone in Hollywood said, 'Hey, I know … We should do a show set in post-apocalyptic America with a young girl who acts like Katniss from Hunger Games. In fact, how can we rip off the Hunger Games without looking like we are, you know, ripping off the Hunger Games?”
I sat through the whole first episode, but couldn’t wait for it to end.
I didn’t even make it through the first episode. All of that bothered me too, but the thing that made me shut it off was right after the little party started traveling. It was some time after breakfast that the inciting action happened, and I’m assuming it took them a little time to pack some food and clothes and whatnot.
So, there’s the bigger guy, sort of the uncle or whatever, he’s a little chubby, but whatever. This guy has been living on a tiny farm commune type thing for 15 years. 15 years of helping with the harvests that everyone has to pitch in on when you don’t have tractors. 15 years of every bit of traveling being by foot or maybe by horse. This guy walks for half a day, and they’re sitting around a fire. “Man, I was expecting to be tired, but I wasn’t expecting the chaffing.” (or something to that effect) And that moment I closed the tab and never looked back.
The Sopranos: “D-Girl”. Christopher’s sex scene with the redhead just came completely out of nowhere. (Though I did like how she pulled his pants down with her bare toes).
I can’t remember my exact breaking point with Star Trek: Voyager, but my general reason was, too much technobabble. With Enterprise, it was when the guy got pregnant.
