As yet another follow-up to the threads dealing with favorite shows still going strong, which of your own favorites has the best chance of pushing the envelope too far in trying to be cute or inventive?
My current favorites:
Justified
The Good Wife
Sons of Anarchy
Breaking Bad
Homeland
(I have other shows I watch with regularity, but these are the “favorites” for good writing and acting and whose creative folks seem to value the quality of their work more than other shows.)
With that in mind, I suspect SoA will break before the others. I think BB will be the last to fail.
I think it’ll be House…they jumped it pretty hard last season, but I’ve been enjoying this season again. I hope they can keep it up until the end, since this is the last one.
(I only have two “favorite” shows that I watch regularly; *CSI *is the other one and I think it can pretty much go on indefinitely unless they have one of the cast members have a baby or something.)
Shows that I watch that have definitely not jumped the shark, as of right now:
Breaking Bad
Game of Thrones
The Daily Show/Colbert
Community
Treme
Of those, I feel the most confidence that Breaking Bad will maintain its level of quality… hard to choose between the others. Maybe Game of Thrones, just because the scope of the books just keeps getting bigger, plus the show has been enough of a cultural phenomenon that the pressure must be immense.
For my current favorite shows, I’d have to say Modern Family will get there first. They’re already starting to get a little too broad and slapsticky with their comedy, and I’ve already seen a couple of times where they their established characters going waay out of character for a joke.
I loved Homeland’s Season 1 but I can easily see the creators (who originally made 24) fall back into their 24ishness. They used that prejudice against me a few times in season one where I rolled my eyes because I thought they were gong that route but each time they surprised me pleasantly.
I’m not too sure that Mad Men will be able to keep it up forever, if only because it doesn’t seem to have a clear, well-defined plot arc with a beginning, middle and (most importantly) end. That leaves it wide open to go just one (or more) seasons too far without even realizing it at the time.
*Breaking Bad *is pretty safe, I figure–next season’s the last.
Glee, at the start of next season when they have to find ways to keep this year’s seniors involved in the show. (I think that, if it makes it to a fifth season (and it probably will), they’ll pull a 90210 by having everyone end up at Lima University (including Will, Emma, and Sue, after the high school burns down as the result of “a cheerleading stunt gone horribly, horribly wrong”); that will be a definite jump, if not an outright “tried to jump but got its legs bitten off”, moment.)
A close second will be Parks & Recreation; either Leslie will losing her City Council election and the first thing the council decides to do is to replace her in the P&R department with somebody else, or she’ll win; in either case, we’ll have to sit through months of watching the rest of the P&R staff put up with a new boss (and, in the first case, with Leslie looking for a new job), until (choose as appropriate: she gets her old job back; she does something that gets her removed from the Council).
Breaking In. Jumped the shark when they retooled it for Season 2, and they kept on retooling it. Shoulda been sold to the USA Network insteada Fox. It woulda fit right in at USA.
I think Mad Men is already on the brink. The second half of the last season already started to feel a bit like “just more Mad Men” and the current season has been a total snooze for me so far. They need to shake things up again.
The British comedy/drama Misfits is dangerously close as well. The next season features a lot of new cast and the remaining cast has gotten somewhat dull; they really need to find some sort of new hook.
Doctor Who. They’re running out of classic series villians to bring back, the Daleks are played out, and the most iconic new villians (the Silence and the Weeping Angels) are pretty much one-trick ponies. Barring a major change like a Doctor who isn’t a photogenic young British man, or a companion who isn’t an attractive twentysomething from present-day Britain, it’s going to get repetitive and boring.
Agreed. They started out so clever, and avoiding going where you thought they were going to go (or going there anyway, and doing it so well it was still funny). They seem to have lost some of that magic.
I just discovered the show this season, and I adore it! I’ve bought the first season on iTunes and I’m loving that, too. Next up, Season Two!
The show has been completely repetitive since Day One in 1963; “boring” it ain’t, though. “Repetitive” works for them.
I think Glee has jumped the shark already; I can’t stand it any longer. My conscious suspension of disbelief ended this year.
I’d say that Criminal Minds is teetering close to the precipice. The formula is wearing thin, and they’re about to lose one of the female cast members for the second (this time final) time at the end of this season, and seem poised to do bad things with at least one, if not both, of the others before the season ends, just because they can.
I’m also thinking that NCIS has a shark a’circlin’ and that shark is named Jamie Lee Activia, er, uh, Curtis. If she comes back again…
I’m not entirely caught up, but I’m gonna guess this means that Will finally threw the strop that’s been threatening, and left. But we know that we’re going to meet JJ’s mom in the season finale, so maybe he’ll be back? Or it’ll just be random Mrs. Jareau, and Garcia and Kevin’s wedding, is my guess.
Breaking Bad has come very close to jumping the shark. I was extremely dissatisfied with the way a certain mystery was resolved in the final couple episodes of the latest season.
My expectations for the final season are so high, and the elements of the story that need resolving so many and multifold, that the writers have to be on the top of their game to craft anything but a disappointing series finale. If their writing is as sloppy as it was for the last episodes of season four, they could very well be heading for a trite, simplistic climax to what has been an otherwise incredible story.
I was thinking the season finale wedding would be JJ and her baby daddy. Guess not.