When Good TV Shows Go Bad

In My Humble Opinion
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Law and Order: I didn’t like when they began replacing all the characters with new ones.

Quantum Leap: I actually liked the chimp episode, but when they put him in Dr. Ruth … thank God they were cancelled before they put him in a dog like they’d planned.

Sliders: when they kicked out Wade and began focusing on Kari (the queen of non-acting).

X-Files: when it became obvious that Duchovny hated being there.

MAS*H: I will say that I was fine with all the cast changes, but when Alda was made creative consultant (or whatever), and the show got serious, that was it for me. Every episode was either a documentary or a Hawkeye psychological evaluation.

Babylon 5: I didn’t start watching until the Boxleitner days, so I like him. But that whole last season sucked hard.

Star Trek Deep Space 9: when they added Worf (whom I loathe). Also, when they replaced sexy, witty, smart Dax with new, spunky Dax.

Also, any sitcom that resorts to adding kids to the cast should just hang it up.

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I suppose next year, we’ll be complaining that Spin City isn’t any good anymore, forgetting that Michael J. Fox had to bow out, due to his illness (Parkinson’s).

Quantum Leap was one of my favorites and I really hated to see it go. It did have a few episodes that weren’t up to snuff, but they seemed to come back. The two-parter where Al was eliminated from the timeline and got temporarily replaced by Roddie McDowell was a classic. (And not just because of the Surprise Guest Star factor.)

What I’m trying to say is that QL never jumped the shark. It came close, but veered off at the last minute. Its final episode was one of the greatest pieces of television I’ve ever seen.

The New Twilight Zone (1985 version) was great in the beginning, but there was a noticeable drop in quality after Harlan Ellison left after a dispute with the network over a script he had written featuring a racist department-store Santa Claus. It would’ve starred Ed Asner.

I agree that Sliders never should’ve continued without John Rhys-Davies and/or Jerry O’Connell. It was another series whose best season was its first.

DS9: Ezri Dax is a girl. Jadzia Dax was a woman. Rowrrr!

I Love Lucy declined after she had little Ricky and they moved to the suburbs.

Lost in Space declined after they decided to turn it into The Doctor, The Boy and The Robot Hour after about the tenth episode. By the third season, Guy Madison and June Lockhart were so upset, they didn’t even appear in the last three shows.

SNL declined after they let the Muppets go… :wink:

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If you’re saying that everything has been bad, then I disagree. I think the last few seasons have been much better, though this show does seem to lend itself to more bad episodes per capita than any other version of Trek.

DRY-“Is There In Truth No Beauty?” Though this show did guest star Diana Muldar( I think that’s right) who went on to be a regular in TNG for season two. (Dr. Pulaski)

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Something people are missing here, shows need to keep fresh.

From HELLOKITTY:

Please… Have you seen the any of the old ones with Johnny? It’s about as funny as watching Bob Hope try to crack a joke these days. Painfully obvious and stale. While Jay stumbled out of the block, he made up ground soon after. It would have been tiresome and dated had Johnny stayed on. Besides, Monday nights just wouldn’t be the same for me without Headline News.

From Jean Grey:

Again, change is often good. It took a while to get used to the new characters in my favorite show, but after a while, I kind of liked it. I especially liked the change in babes.

The problem with my change argument is that we’re dealing with T.V. here. Most of the time it doesn’t work, ie., MAS*H, Cheers, Dallas, etc… But when it does, it can be a refreshing change of pace.

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Actually, I think the show really hit its stride during the first couple of seasons after Little Ricky was born. The two “Hollywood” seasons were, for me, the high point of the series. It wasn’t until the Ricardos and Mertzes went to Europe that the show started to slip. And definitely by the time they moved to the suburbs, the storylines weren’t near as enjoyable. (But I still watch the show religiously on Nick at Night because IMHO it is the best “classic” TV show ever.)

As for another good show that went bad, how about Family Ties after the 4th kid was born? All of sudden it was all about how Alex was really a softy at heart. The other family members just became stage props in the “Alex P. Keaton Show”.

Or how about The Cosby Show after Rudy got to old to be “cute” anymore and they brought in that other little girl? That’s when it became stinko.

And Friends came perilously close during the Ross-Rachel season, but fortunately they pulled out of that nosedive in time.

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First, a comment on the OP:

I cannot give a cite, but I distinctly remember that right about the time this show first started airing, one of the principals involved was interviewed and stated flatly that the audience would know the show was headed downhill if they ever saw Lois and Clark getting romantically involved; that would be the signal that they’d run out of ideas.
The Six Million Dollar Man: the moustache

Good Times: James Evans is killed off by CBS

All in the Family: the Jeffersons move away

Mary Tyler Moore Show: Mary’s second apartment

MASH*: Maj. C. E. Winchester, III, M.D.

WKRP in Cincinatti: Gotta Dance!

ER: the guy from Amistad

Roseanne: “Hi, Rosie, I’m Tom Arnold, and this is my friend the white pony.”

Home Improvement: son has a disease

The X-Files: X-files closed, burned, re-opened. There’s a trick! Can we get those guys on top of that Nixon tape?

Taxi: Simka

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In regards to Family Ties, The Cosby Show, The Brady Bunch, Good Times, et al., I think everybody (with the possible exception of some of you die-hard Lucy-lovers) can agree that a show is doomed anytime a new child is added to the cast, but most especially if they are younger than the previously-youngest cast member was when the show started.

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Teletubbies: When the buzz wears off.

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I first started watching Dr. Who years ago during a Davison period and enjoyed him very much. When Colin Baker replaced Davison in “The Caves of Androzani,” I was so irritated – I was quite surprised to discover how short Davison was on the show – that I stopped watching.

Recently, I noticed that the local PBS station was running some Colin Baker episodes. I had read on all the fan Web sites that Colin Baker was wretched and hideous, but I decided to give him a chance. The episodes seem pretty decent to me. Not as good as Davison or Tom Baker, but nonetheless fine.

30

KneadToKnow states the truth, and by this measure my current favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is doomed as a younger slayer-in-training is joining the cast. Bah!

31

Oy vey ismer… I wasn’t too thrilled with Pertwee, since it would be hard to find an actor who less matches the physical description of Hugh (they sure managed that later on though,) but I had no quarrels with the acting. But when they brought in the second actor (Eoin something, who I liked fine in the only other thing I saw him in,) I had the “fun” experience of watching bad physical casting, bad writing, and complete mischaracterization of an important character. And general cliched adaptation. As one might imagine, I stopped watching the series.

Homicide: Life on the Street - I think the biggest quality drop was between the 4th and 5th seasons (although the 4th and 3rd seasons both had a few problems,) but the show jumped the shark in between the 5th & 6th seasons. When they fired Melissa Leo and lost the wonderful character of Kay Howard. Bastards. There were isolated good (and one or two very good) moments and episodes, but it never recovered. Especially with the new “talent.”

32

Ah Buffy. I’ll wait and hope. They haven’t fired Nick Brendon or Anthony Stuart Head (criminally underused last year) for not being fuckable enough, so there’s still a chance. IMHO of course.

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That’s Guy WILLIAMS, BTW.

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I can see the beginning of the end with Friends. Chandler and Monica being in a serious relationship (marriage next season) ruins a lot of Chandler-self-deprecating jokes. Oh and why is Chandler getting so fat?

35

Ugh, no, nonono…

I agree the CONCEPTS behind the early slides were good, but the execution generally SUCKED - although the world without men was quite well done - probably the best combination of a good concept and good excecution in the whole series.

The best episodes were generally between it’s first near-cancelling and the introduction of the Kromags…though it never got BAD until they got rid of Quinn (Although, the first few episodes after they lost Wade were pretty close to the recent ones.).

Blech. Ezri is a human - a real person. Jadzia was - save for about 2 episodes - too perfect. She was never wrong, never scared, never insecure. And worst thing about her was - she KNEW IT. She was a smug, arrogant prick - espescially for most of her marriage to Worf.

::Gets ready for his inevitable roasting as a heratic by the Church of Jadzia.::

36

Ah yes, thank you.

I didn’t even find this episode as painfully bad as “Spock’s Brain”, “And The Children Shall Lead”, or (especially) “The Way to Eden”. But it WAS overly melodramatic and overacted, and yet, was still dull in a mind numbing kind of way. (That’s actually a difficult combination to acheive.)

Wasn’t Diana Muldar on another episode as well? “Return To Tomorrow”, or some similar title?

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“When Good Tv Shows Go Bad,” hmmm sounds like new FOX series! :smiley:

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‘Chandler’ is getting ‘fat’ because he’s no longer addicted to pain killers. Matt Perry was heavily addicted to pain killers for a few years, that’s why he was so scrawny. He’s not getting fat, he’s slowly coming back to his natural size. I’m sure he’d start up again if he knew how you felt.

–Tim

39

Huh…where to begin. :rolleyes:

That 70’s Show - The instant Eric’s virginity became an issue. From there it was a slow but sure descent into Married With Children territory. It was also this time that Fez, who I never liked to begin with, became totally unbearable.

The Simpsons - Season 7. Almost overnight this once-proud show turned into an unwatchable cliche-ridden uglyfest. And then they started taking cheap shots at the viewers…which, to me, was one of the most appalling things I’d ever seen on television.

Futurama - Put Your Head on My Shoulder. See The Simpsons.

South Park - Three words…second Halloween episode. One of the few times I’ve actually been infuriated by a TV show. This, of course, was the episode that solidified Eric Cartman as the invincible god who could get away with murder and never face any kind of comeuppance. I haven’t watched an episode since.

Saturday Night Live - Don’t know quite how it happened, but one day I could tell that this show wasn’t funny anymore. It also stopped being fun, for both the audience and the actors. They really seem like they’re just keeping the show alive for its own sake.

Roseanne - About midway through the second season. Man, was she hard on the eyes…

Moonlighting - Never really all that funny or compelling, but when Maddie Hayes got pregnant (and it ended in a miscarriage, of course…cop out), I knew it was the beginning of the end.

Notes on a few others: I was going to add King of the Hill (and the appalling “de-feministing” of Peggy Hill), but I’ve heard that they’ve actually done some good things with the revamped show, so I don’t know for sure. I liked Avery Brown and thought he fit in very well in the episodes which he appeared, and Kay Carter-Shepley worked out surprisingly well (who could forget her ego battles with Murphy), so Murphy Brown gets a pass. I never really hated any part of Night Court, even though a few episodes were kinda flat. Friends got dangerously close to going in the tank with the waaaay-too-long Rachel/Ross tiff (“WE WERE ON A BREAK!!”), but thankfully it’s managed to recover.

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Mork and Mindy: pregnant Mork. Sheeesh :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: