Worst television show you watched to the bitter end

What’s the worst show you’ve watched every episode of - multi-season shows only, no five episodes and out cancellations.

Tough battle between Sons of Anarchy (which got dumber and more offensive over time) and Las Vegas (always dumb and offensive but just mildly) for me.

Battle Star Galactica. If I’d known, I’d have stopped after they made it off that shitty camp/planet in season two.

I think I watched every episode of Due South. The only part that was good was the second half of the first season, but that handful of episodes was so good I watched four whole seasons in hopes that it would happen again.

pretty little liars, which is mostly a real bore with some outrageously campy intervals

Good question. I don't know if I've stuck one out yet where I felt like it was a waste. I've still watched comparatively fewer than most people (guess: 20-25), but I if I made it to the end, I always felt like it was more or less time well spent. Maybe I've selectively forgotten something.

Star Trek Voyager

My Mother the Car.

My excuse was that I was 8 and loved tv. It was aimed at my demographic. It starred Jerry Van Dyke and I already liked Dick Van Dyke so I kept hoping it would become funny. I was gullible. I was often bored on weekday evenings.

I am still a bit ashamed of watching it. It was very, very bad and I may not have watched all 30 episodes. It was long ago.

Sleepy Hollow? It's not even that bad tbh, but I am generally happy to cut and run.

Expecting a strong showing here for Lost, of course.

Gilmore Girls should be part of this discussion. The last season was OK, but then the revival movies made pretty much everyone who watched them wonder what they'd ever seen in the show in the first place. (Or so I am told. I didn't watch them myself.)

For me, Battlestar Galactica is up there for sure. Mad Men got pretty shitty toward the end but never completely fell apart. Most shows, I give up on when they start to suck.

just watched lost for the first time recently and, while it is flawed in many ways, i didn't ever feel like giving it up and didn't mind how it ended

Despite working in the ad industry, I just kinda checked out of mad men... maybe 4 seasons in? 5?

Never did bother with the last season of Sons Of Anarchy. Hard to believe it got worse than whichever one was mostly set in "Belfast".

I feel like I could count on one hand the multi-season shows I've actually seen all of.

i don't think i've seen seasons 6-7 of gilmore girls in their entirety... and idk, i'm not really rushing to do it. year in the life was so often a parade of everything that sucked about the show

I watched a lot more of House than I should have, but I did eventually give up on it.

I liked Gilmore Girls, it was a comfort show. didn’t see the reboot.

thought Mad Men had a pretty good ending

how did they end it?

Don Draper, cyborg

Last couple of Mad Men seasons felt rushed more than bad, the characters (except maybe Don) remained compelling enough to justify them.

I thought Mad Men was pretty solid to the end, and ended where it needed to.
My benchmark is Last Man on Earth. Relentlessly, cringeworthily juvenile and unfunny, boring, repetitive, endless, but my teenage daughters loved it so I stuck it out with them.

Mad Men could've said what it was trying to say in one fewer season, easily, but it was never bad and the actual ending was superb.

breaking bad

Challop received by the commission.

i even watched the movie. it was shite

I said "challop received", u need to wait for next steps from the ombudsman

I hate-watched Breaking Bad, resented that it was hours of extreme boredom with minutes of terror, and the premise was preposterous, but ultimately it was really moving

ok you all gotta get in the Challop line and wait until your number is called

i liked Last Man On Earth!

Breaking Bad was exactly the sort of thing ppl like, if they like that sort of thing.

I'm still sort of onside with Killing Eve, but if it meanders any more, that may well be my answer a year from now.

My Mother the Car--funny! I was limiting myself to the post-Sopranos world--which wasn't at all implied in the original post, that's just kind of a dividing line in my mind--but if I don't, I'm sure I watched many dubious shows as a kid.

I can't remember if I made it to season two of Breaking Bad. It should have been a one-season show. Get in, tell your story, get out. Ninety percent of shows should be no more than 13 episodes.

yea last man on earth was great imo

Battlestar Galactica is such a fantastic premise, but I wonder if there's any way to do it that wouldn't lose momentum.

Probably BSG for me too. After some point in a show this convoluted, all your hopes just rest on the ending being good. it was not

xp it would take a lot more planning than the writers put into it, but I think it could be done

not completely winging it with the writing while stringing people along pretending you have a coherent overarching narrative that will all make sense in the end would help (see also x files, many others)

actually BSG is the worst I've seen, I don't remember when or how quickly it fell apart but at some point towards the end I realised I actually hated it and just hoped they wouldn't fuck up the ending too bad (it was even worse than I feared)

I think it was the dylan bit that broke me

Weeds. I don't recall details. I have less patience for TV shows now.

I don't generally hate-watch bad shows very long, and certainly not to the end, but there a few shows I liked or loved and that I watched to the end even as they unaccountably spiraled into an inescapable hot garbage vortex. Lost and Roseanne immediately spring to mind.

(And I remembered as I typed that I have the Roseanne reboot and multiple seasons of The Conners sitting unwatched on my DVR so I guess I haven't technically made it to the bitter end.)

But Roseanne is particularly heartbreaking as the first five seasons in isolation are pretty much all-time top...three, let's say? tv for me.

I just started Weeds and read the Weeds thread on this board and accidentally read a spoiler that made me realize I don't want to keep going with the show. not because I know what's going to happen, but because it looks like it will make the show really terrible

The Conners is actually pretty good!

didn't bother to watch the first-season of the Roseanne reboot with her bullshit Trumpism

I think I've watched almost every episode of Becker and I don't think I've liked a single one

lol I liked that show in my 20s buuuuuuuuuuut I doubt I would now.

pseudo-edgy "angry middle-aged guy" show

Love Monkey, buti t was only one season

It’s obviously not bad TV, but I was so sick of The Wire by the time I got to the end of it.

Weeds

Season 5 did ask us to accept a whole lot of non-believable shit from multiple characters

but I did enjoy it if not as much as the previous four seasons

so compared to the first season, why did Weeds suck? or do you all think it always sucked?

I've watched about 6 or 7 episodes and it's fun enough but nothing sucks me into it to where I will watch more than one or two at a time. plus I read about the Shane murder bit and....eesh.

first half at least was fine? i think i did read about roughly where it went bad and i should've listened. i had so much time once. Now I'm just here.

Terrace House. Started out so great and the last few seasons were just absolute toxic dreck.

the show was good but the last season of the magicians sucked a lot, unbelievably aimless

anybody finish Dexter? I stopped after S4 (which I liked, but S5 was not gripping me - then I read summaries of later seasons and...YIKES).

A lot of people say that about s5 of the wire, but not season 3 for some reason.

o fuck I forgot abt Lost but really it only took a nosedive in S6, albeit a brutal and unforgivable one

True Blood, although I skipped an entire season somewhere in the middle and didn't miss anything.

Buffy was a real slog by the end. I only watched a little of season 9 x-files but that was probably too much, and I tuned in for the finale and it was real dumb. Otherwise I don’t tend to stick with shows that have clearly lost it. Got to the end of s3 of BSG and figured it had been a pretty good show but it was becoming pointless.

But I guess Buffy isn’t a good answer given that it kept up a standard of quality for a long while.

Oh I definitely stuck with House M.D. until the end, idk if it got really bad per se but the final season I definitely only watched because I wanted to see how it ended

I can't remember if I made it to season two of Breaking Bad. It should have been a one-season show. Get in, tell your story, get out. Ninety percent of shows should be no more than 13 episodes.

Breaking Bad didn't even get to the end of the first season! Writers' strike hit about ep seven.

Last two seasons aren't as good as the first three, and Better Call Saul is way better, but it's a ludicrous thriller from the start, hard to hold it continuing to be ludicrous in the search for thrills against it.

not completely winging it with the writing while stringing people along pretending you have a coherent overarching narrative that will all make sense in the end would help (see also x files, many others)

X-Files was and remains dope as long as you just watch the standalone episodes by good writers, and avoid all the ones that have anything to do with the overarching alien conspiracy plots.

all the ones that have anything to do with

there are like two that mention that stuff a bit which are v good, but you can either ignore the mentions or skip those eps for safety. great show.

I am only partway into season 6 but if I survive through season 8 i can sat with confidence that LA Law will be the worst show I have watched to the bitter end

you guys dont even know

in season 5 corbin bernsen’s character Arnie was fucking his former secretary in the CRAWL SPACE and they fell through the ceiling into the boss’s office ~inflagrante delicto~

it’s truly the dumbest show i’ve ever seen

modern tv is fkn fassbinder by comparison

I have watched every single episode of Mulaney. I am the one person who has done that.

I like his standup. I love the one nutball skit he writes whenever he hosts SNL. And I love Martin Short. After the second or third awful episode of Mulaney, the utter lack of anything funny or even slightly appealing about it became a source of fascination to me, and I had to see it through to the end. I regret nothing, but I also wish the show never existed. It’s all a rich tapestry.

I liked Last Man On Earth, but Will Forte's character was so annoying that it was sometimes hard to watch.

And I watched Dexter to the end just for closure, but it wasn't that bad.

There's another category of shows, several of which have been mentioned itt (X-Files and Gilmore Girls particularly), that I love a lot and have rewatched huge swaths of several times over but which I never finished watching because I could see a bitter end in sight and I knew I just couldn't bear the pain. It's almost like I'm physically incapable of watching them self-mutilate (I rewatched both again somewhat recently with the intent of actually plowing through and I didn't get any further than I'd gotten before).

xp I was gonna say Dexter was easily the worst show I watched to completion but I actually skipped season 7

I don’t regret watching X-files to the end fwiw!

Doc Martin. The family liked it so we kept watching. Miserable annoying bastard.

where u get to in X-F OL

I'm usually pretty good with abandoning series that I don't like. I abandoned Picard and Discovery last year and I think I made the right call. I can think of two series that I regret watching all of:

Torchwood - two bad seasons followed by a pretty good 5-episode mini-series, followed by a very bad American season.

House - season 3 was tired, season 4 gave the show fresh life with more characters and more comedy; at the start of season 6 there was a two-parter about House being in rehab with Lin Manuel-Miranda that was the low point of the show. It never got good again although I watched all 8 seasons.

I think Lost was redeemable up until the last season. BSG reboot had its good moments until its last half-season too.

Discovery's third season was way better than the previous two, so I'm glad I stuck with it even though the second season especially was pretty bad. Seems like it suffers from the same "Star Trek series curse" as TNG, DS9, and Enterprise, where they don't become constantly good until season 3,

I stopped watching Red Dwarf after the first two episodes of series VIII. Seems like everyone else stopped watching as well as there wasn't another full series for another 13 years.

I've still only seen the X-Files up through maybe S7 and I regard 3 to 6 maybe as some of my fav television of all time.

Maybe.

This thread reminds me that I actually watched through all of Heroes, lol (not that recent revival season though)

I honestly though BSG was good up until the last few episodes, and the ending didn’t bother me too much.

Oz got pretty terrible in the last two and a half seasons, but I couldn’t stop watching

Season 7 of Homicide: Life on the Street was a train wreck but I watched it to the bitter end.

There's a lot of optimistic talk in this thread about the end of the X-Files

Probably friends

Absolutely loved ‘Dark’ but there’s a point in the third season when you realise the show you loved in season one (and parts of season two) is never, ever coming back now

in season 5 corbin bernsen’s character Arnie was fucking his former secretary in the CRAWL SPACE and they fell through the ceiling into the boss’s office inflagrante delicto

I watched every season and this scene is the only thing I can recall clearly! Except for the bit when I can’t remember fell down the elevator shaft

It was the actress who plays Dr. Pulaski in season 2 of ST:TNG.

It took the pandemic to slow down HBO Max"s Friends reunion; much as I'd be up for a Darin Morgan episode every two years until we all die, Duchovny and Anderson both said they're done with X-Files after S11.

do you have to have watched every episode, or does it count if you treated it like TV and just watched in weeks you were home, because it was on before something good?

I confess I do tend to treat TV like TV, which is obviously not the done thing.

Lost was at least a lot of fun to dunk on in its last two seasons. BSG also to some extent.

Seems like there are way too many shows that have a last season that really shouldn't have been. NOt sure how the Simpsons have spent half their time or longer doing that.
Resting on laurels of previous formula and using more of the formula than inspiration.

First thing that comes to mind for me was Teachers the bristol set slightly surreal sitcom from the 90s with the guy who would later star in Walking Dead. THought it was quite good for 3 seasons but really massively falls off for the last one which seems pretty desperately unfunny.

i'm one of the rare peeps who enjoyed BSG throughout *shrugs*

where u get to in X-F OL

Duchovny and Anderson both said they're done with X-Files after S11.

Also seasons 7, 8 and 9, is what I'm saying.

Come Back Mrs Noah maybe

Community

> Dr. Pulaski in season 2 of ST:TNG

who also appeared twice in ST:TOS (as different characters each time)

True Blood, although I skipped an entire season somewhere in the middle and didn't miss anything.

I reached a stage of watching True Blood by sitting on the sofa, knitting or looking at my phone, and only looking up at the screen if someone I liked (Eric) appeared. A terrible series.

Why doesn't anyone pay off an audience that sticks with their show to the bitter end the way The Colbys did? I guess because things never disappear now.

"Duchovny and Anderson both said they're done with X-Files after S11."

Also seasons 7, 8 and 9, is what I'm saying.

― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, January 17, 2021 3:15 AM (two hours ago)

If Anderson said she was done after any of those, she must have forgotten to say it to anyone else. (And I can't see a Doggett and Reyes series going down better in 2024 than it did in 2002.)

I still have never made it all the way through season 7, after watching the series at least three times up to that point. I swear I'll do it someday. (NB, I did watch the two reboot seasons, so I at least experienced that particular bitter end.)

― Looks like I'm gonna be the filling in a missile sandwich! (Old Lunch), Sunday, January 17, 2021 12:17 AM (five hours ago)

Soft recommend for S07e08, with Ricky Jay in it. Hard recommend for e12, X-Cops, which is exactly what it says on the tin (by Vince Gilligan). e17 is not good but is written and directed by Gillian Anderson, if you're curious. e19 is fun, written/directed by Duchovny and basically a parody / deconstruction episode (that also pays off his Larry Sanders appearances). e21 is another Vince Gilligan solo ep, the last standalone "Mulder/Scully investigate a case" story in the original run, and a great place to stop watching.

(S08e04 is a Gilligan that focuses on Scully rather than Doggett, and is OK. There are five interesting-or-good S09 eps, if you want recs, and three great eps out of the 16 reboot ones, as you already know.)

S08e04 is a Gilligan that focuses on...

Looked at the end first and thought "Really? That lasted eight seasons? I thought they were only stuck there for a couple of seasons."

Quoting Wikipedia regarding X-Files series 9: "Likewise, Anderson signed on at the last minute, with her contract extension only lasting until the end of 2002; she specifically stated that she would leave the show following the conclusion of the season." The three references for this sentence are all non-web.

I'm not sure what your point is here - I'm not suggesting that it's likely, just that it's a plausible bad idea.

Which one is the non-Morgan reboot episode worth watching? I finally watched/skimmed the Mein Kampfs last week and they are astonishingly mediocre.

S11e07, "Rm9sbG93ZXJz" by Shannon Hanblin & Kristen Cloke.

(I didn't even skim the Carter episodes in S11.)

The season 8 episode Via Negativa is really good. S11E7 is a fun and worthwhile experiment though it’s not really an x-files episode.

The O.C which is p bad all the way thru even though van pelt from the mentalist is in it as kiki's wayward sister.

I probably wouldn't have stuck thru the last season of Dark if I hadn't been aware that it WAS the last season.

also kinda always really enjoyed Castle but the final season was really hard going.

i love the o.c.!!!! it is a properly ott soap opera that is imo pretty decently written until season 3. season 3 is the pits. season 4 is a gonzo version of the show and despite the horrible presence of chris brown it is kind of my favorite season

also it is a perfect time capsule of the era during which it aired

Six Feet Under. Not sure if I ever liked anyone on this show, but nevertheless invested countless hours of my brief existence in their neurotic whining.

I wonder how many people flipped on oc vs gilmore girls in retrospect.

Dexter for sure

lol I can't believe watched Dexter right through to its useless flop of a finale. The penultimate season with Ray Stevenson playing an eastern European gangster with a terrible accent was bad as well, but sort of funny but the last season was pure tedium.

Still ongoing, but Doctor Who (post 2005).

Xpost Who's gonna watch the ten ep limited series?

the absolute nadir of Six Feet Under was that Kurt Cobain's death flashback ep, lol that was so unbearable.

xp

oh no, why have they done that? WHY!

American Gothic

I bought a bootleg DVD set a of Six Feet Under at my corner store so I had to keep watching because I had money in it. Good finale, though.

Streaming took away that investment angle so these days I won’t even remember to finish seasons and series I like.

xpost how dare u

I watch lots of bad TV that's probably time better spent doing something else but the only show as of late that I hated myself for finishing is Ted Lasso

cannot tell you how bored I am of these shows about holding hands with everyone and hugging away our anxieties

I think Weeds was the last time I tortured myself like that. Never Again.

First season of the OC was great! 3rd and 4th season were definitely pretty bad, though.

Agree with sic that the X-Files kept having good episodes even in the reboot, and I'm a pretty big fan of S7 as well. The mytharc had tanked by then but otherwise I think the main problem with S7 was just that it wasn't the last season of the show. It had an interesting winding-down energy to it that could have made for a satisfying ending if Chris Carter had been willing to wrap things up.

I deliberately quit watching Homicide, Life on the Street at the end of S5, and I'm happy about that decision.

I would just like to go on the record saying that I thought the ending of BSG was Actually Good

xxxpost how dare you!

I figured out that the Dexter writers didn't know what they were doing early on in season 2. Season 1 had such a perfect ending, making it clear that the show is a power fantasy, and then season 2 started with all the characters pondering whether the serial killer killer is good or evil -- ugh. I think I finished that season and then quit.

Regarding Doctor Who -- The Chibnall era (2018- ) is awful but I'll probably keep watching it for completion's sake. I made it through the Colin Baker seasons, I can make it through this.

I deliberately quit watching Homicide, Life on the Street at the end of S5, and I'm happy about that decision

Then you missed "Subway", which is probably the greatest H:LotS episode ever.

there's an incredible amount of really bad shows on netflix these days, but the umbrella academy is probably a recent one

The first season is weighed down a bit by what it's adapting, but the second season is the best thing I watched last year.

I'm terrible for bailing on TV shows. It's the fatigue, maaan. Recently: abandoned Dark in S3, Hannibal early S3, Whitechapel S2 (one of the seasons of television I think I've ever seen), Staged early S2. I'm currently 8 episodes into American Horror Story S1 and am already considering the off. Eck.

I think I'd mostly moved on to other things by the ninth season of Rentaghost but probably caught the occasional episode and I do remember it ending. Nine. Seasons.

Definitely watched the original BSG until it was sadly, as I only learned once the www was invented, unceremoniously yoinked from the production schedule mid season.

I only had a vague inkling that Galactica 1980 was "bad". They wee going around on futuristic motorbikes in those helemts with lights inside, what's to complain about?

I loved Hannibal S3, although I get how it's not for everyone.

I figured out that the Dexter writers didn't know what they were doing early on in season 2. Season 1 had such a perfect ending, making it clear that the show is a power fantasy, and then season 2 started with all the characters pondering whether the serial killer killer is good or evil -- ugh. I think I finished that season and then quit.

And season 2 is one the better seasons! Really, I'd only recommend season 1 and maybe season 4

In terms of wasted potential, I rarely saw anything go downhill as fast as Sleepy Hollow. Only morbid fascination kept me going till the end.

i watched all of smallville

i’ve seen horrors you people wouldn’t believe

pretty little liars, which is mostly a real bore with some outrageously campy intervals

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Saturday, 16 January 2021 01:05 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

made it far, far, far, far further along this than I should have

think I made it 6 and a half of the 7 seasons, it definitely needed to end at the latest at the mid-S6 break

i watched all of smallville 

lmao i didn't want to admit this but so did I. what's sad is that Alison Mack/Chloe was just about the only tolerable actor/character on it and then well, NXIVM happened... 

other contenders: Dexter, LOST (it was good until season 5 though), Gossip Girl. Homeland somehow got better after season 3 and ended surprisingly well, but it was definitely mostly bad throughout.

Terrace House. Started out so great and the last few seasons were just absolute toxic dreck.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Saturday, 16 January 2021 03:30 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

:(

I didn't even realise how much so until the very end

Anyway my actual answer to this is kind of a weird one: Rex The Runt. Only two seasons. S1 was brilliant and a pinnacle of Aardman. Then a few years later they subbed out the entire writing team and did an S2 that was unendingly disappointing, and yet which I watched all of in the hope of something being recaptured. It hardly was.

Making A Murderer also a singularly abusive experience, albeit not badly-made

BSG is a good choice, getting stuck on that planet really killed the momentum of the show and took away all the cool spaceship dogfights that were the heart of the show.

No one will agree with me on this, but I hated the last season or two of The Sopranos so much that I've never wanted to revisit it. Sticking Tony in a coma for the better part of a season was also a terrible momentum killer.

yeah it was great

late sopranos > early sopranos

i was dreading the moment someone mentioned gossip girl bc gossip girl is amazing

i think my defense of the o.c. upthread prob accounts for why i think that

The first few seasons of Gossip Girl were amazing! And then all the characters, including mf-ing Blair Waldorf, forgot how to scheme and then the whole Dan/Blair thing happened, and Nate kept dating horrible women, and Serena was just the WORST, aaannnd the final reveal was just... lol

i actually stopped watching the show when dan/blair happened the first time. i’ve gotten over it

anyway show is too good to qualify for this thread still imo

lol just remembered I also watched all of The Vampire Diaries, another show that started out great and then petered out in later seasons

tbh i'm dreading the gossip girl reboot, that i will no doubt end up watching

Making A Murderer also a singularly abusive experience, albeit not badly-made

Didn't know there was a second season. Can someone summarise it in two or three sentences?

the gang does a law; they get nowhere

do you feel any closer to concluding that blokey (Brendan?) dunnit or nah

oh the brother theory? that kind of recedes throughout S2. just continues to be very obvious that the whole thing was a stitch-up and yet there is no catharsis or let-up

ohhhh wait, you mean the younger guy who had a false confession extorted on tape? yeah he gets freed from prison

that is the only good thing that happens

i watched all of smallville

Who will roll in and trump this with all of Supernatural?

I did watch this.

(Invasion 2005)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460651

Unshockingly it only ran a single season, although an ambivalent take on body snatchers isn't the worst premise.

i liked Invasion! corny but enjoyable. Bill Fichtner is great, i like him in pretty much anything.

also i realized i dont hang w a lot of terrible tv - if it’s actually bad then i bail.

Who will roll in and trump this with all of Supernatural?

I started watching Supernatural when I noticed it was on Netflix. I stopped after maybe four episodes, when I realized that a) it sucked and b) there were fifteen goddamn seasons, twenty-some episodes per season. That's more than 300 hours carved out of a finite human lifespan.

I watched both seasons of Revolution until it was cancelled. It was all built on the dodgy af plot foundation of: what happens if all the leccy stops working and loosely held electrons stop moving from one to atom to the other by the push of electromotive force ..lol!

Gossip girl was classic, and the ensuing fame of Blake Lively and not Leighton Meester is an eternal mystery

The first season is actually good-good, and the rest of the seasons are trashy-good but still good

Twin peaks

challop thread is thataway

bahahaha we are currently hate watching Supernatural but are def not gonna make it through 15 seasons

ohhhh wait, you mean the younger guy who had a false confession extorted on tape? yeah he gets freed from prison

― imago, Sunday, January 17, 2021 2:28 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Brendan Dassey is still in prison in Oshkosh, which I think is bullshit. I've probably mentioned this before but I know this family, when the whole case went down a lotta people in my community were shocked that they were pinning a life sentence on a guy who was coerced and clearly wasn't all there. it's still surreal to me.

the fact that ultimately nothing changed makes S2 a failure, too bogged down in obscure legal proceedings and I think there is kind of a desperation to spin not very significant developments into major breakthroughs. plus there's that fucked up mannequin scene. ultimately it feels a lot like the OJ case, the cops screwed up big time but they still almost certainly got the right guy

It has to be True Blood

that was so bad that most of us now pretend to have even ever had a vampire series.

*never*

i don't even own a vampire

did anybody ever watch the US version of Life on Mars?

keep wondering how pissed off the average viewer was at the final reveal

I gave up on Vikings a couple of years back, Hitler would have loved the consistently very hot cast!

have a feeling Stranger Things might show up in this thread a bunch next year

Vikings seemed like Svens of Anarchy to me

the first season of Norsemen > Last Kingdom >>>>>>> Vikings AFAICT

Alf

did anybody ever watch the US version of Life on Mars?

keep wondering how pissed off the average viewer was at the final reveal

― Looking for Cape Penis house (Neanderthal), Sunday, 17 January 2021 22:09 bookmarkflaglink

I did and yes that would probably be my nomination for this thread

I gave up on Vikings at its logical endpoint - Ragnar's death. Everything revolving around his asshole sons, I could care less about.

isn't Vikings still going?

yeah the sons of Ragnar were all quite tedious to start with. I don't doubt they just got worse to the death!

xp

Odin knows!

nah there was some cool stuff later on, Floki accidentally led a colony to Greenland instead of Iceland and there's good early UK history political drama iirc, it's been a while

Vikings seemed like Svens of Anarchy to me

IRLLOL!

oh i remembered one that’s much worse than pretty little liars

fucking glee

yeah i avoided that one :D

my roommate was into it and i was like “whatever” but it was truly the worst

being a theater dude, I had to suffer through everybody I knew talking a bout it. that and Smash

Vikings was great until Ragnar died & then that shit nosedived directly into the ground - i never caught up bc every time i tried i was like oh hey turns out I DONT CARE

American Horror Story has been that vibe for me every season without fail, I dont why I keep trying to watch it. I think Season 1, and Hotel are maybe the only ones I could hang with.
Usually it:
episode 1-2: I think I could maybe get w this?
episode 3: flames & smoke pull the chute peace out NOPE

Im really good at never going back once a shows writer's reveal their lack of preparation for having gotten *this far*, or once a show turns into x-of-the-week, end result being i never actually watch complete runs of anything because no shows has avoided this in history afaict

Struggled through a couple where i was convinced it would be worth it and didnt regret it, but couldn't in conscience offer them for this list. Sopranos, Friday night lights,twin peaks, which were all worth the odd trough (or whose troughs had their charms)

Shows im glad where i stopped when i did, consider them 'complete' wire after season 4, deadwood (not the movie, does this count?), Boardwalk empire end season 2

Notable "shouldve stopped sooner": breaking bad, cant recall exactly but think jesse was in buddhist rehab or some shit after wednesday adams had kicked the bucket. Show was nonsense.

NONSENSE I SAY

Unsure if comedy shows can be considered here rly, few enough attempt ongoing plot developments, few that i wouldve watched

But boosh/conchords could be added to "completed, didnt regret" if so

Deadwood was awesome to its end, I wish it had continued

I’m in season 5 of 6 with The Americans, I’m still interested and am hopeful it will have a good ending

Season 5 of The Wire is worth watching. I don't think it could have continued for another season, having burned up a lot of its credibility for realism, but it ended at a good spot.

I loved the last season of The Americans

have a feeling Stranger Things might show up in this thread a bunch next year

Even more than Killing Eve, that's my future #1 answer unless there's a sudden turnaround.

embarrassed that I watched one season of The League, much less all of it, but here we are.

I watched both seasons of Revolution until it was cancelled. It was all built on the dodgy af plot foundation of: what happens if all the leccy stops working and loosely held electrons stop moving from one to atom to the other by the push of electromotive force ..lol!

― calzino

I admit to watching all of this too, and liking it well enough, though it a kind of guilty pleasure.

ER is a show I felt obliged to watch to the end, as I had watched from the start and it never got bad (imo), just maybe extended its natural end date by a year or two.

Who will roll in and trump this with all of Supernatural?

lol I’ll cop to watching way more Supernatural than I should’ve (stopped two eps into season 7) but maintain that it was good for at least half of seasons 2-5, when Eric Kripke was showrunner. Sure there were a ton of dire filler episodes but it also always had a couple of good standalone horror/meta/comedy episodes per season, a few decently scary villains, and the main plot was well-thought out and ended on a genuinely good note in the s5 finale. afaict even hardcore fans seem to agree this is where it should’ve rightfully gone out instead of limping on for 10 more seasons, jesus.

The OC was kind of trashy but I loved it and watched it to the end. Watched Gossip Girl through all 6 seasons up until the last half dozen episodes, when my communal experience watching it fell apart. I haven’t gone back to it yet, and still haven’t found out the identity of gossip girl

Killing Eve has been slightly disappointing over its three seasons so far, but there are a lot of worse tv shows

xp The Americans gets great again in S6 and has one of my favorite TV show endings. Worth sticking with it

Game of Thrones tbh

I'm working my way through The Office (US) at the moment. I'm only up to S3 but I've already learned that Steve Carell isn't in the final two seasons so I'm planning to bail at the end of S7. Can't imagine how the show could possibly work without him.

He should have left earlier.

The end of season 5 is the best place to bail.

"I admit to watching all of this too, and liking it well enough, though it a kind of guilty pleasure."

the science was bad, but at least the fascist dystopia where people do civil war militia cosplay and look very foolish was spot on.

The true trump card would be the Simpsons.

I copped the hump with Killing Eve midway through S2. A terrible mess. I'm already preparing myself to lose faith with The Bridge S2 as well.

S5 of The Wire was where Simon finally gave into sentimentality but wasn't as bad as is made out. S6 of the Sopranos is class.

I watch all the Ryan Murphy shows, just to see how bad they are.

I had been watching all the CW superhero shows but I'm done with them except Legends (probably, this may be a lockdown promise I don't keep).

Riverdale and the spinoffs (counting Nancy Drew in there though it technically isn't) were dreadful, and Katy Keene so bad even I bailed after 3 eps.

aldo do you watch anything you *do* like?

Yes, on dvd and blu.

Seriously though, lots of contemporary stuff. But I'll also put things on that aren't good as background noise in the evenings.

And I do get pleasure from watching things that aren't any good, I'm just honest that they aren't.

I do get pleasure from watching things that aren't any good

tbh this clarification was already taken as read :)

Lost for me, I hate-watched the last season fast-forwarding through all the sections that weren't on the island because I simply couldn't stand it anymore, so at least it took roughly half the time. But I should have just jumped off at around S3 and then maybe watched the bit with Allison Janney.

The amount of time wasted in that show over absolutely nothing: go here, do a thing/find/rescue a person/item. Oh! now we have to get to the 'other' side of the island to see a person about another thing, still doing that deep in S5, it was one colossal eyeroll.

True Blood.

These have been mentioned, but:

Lost: I watched this when it was on air, and should have checked out in S2 when they were in cages. Characters became or were revealed as nothing more than chess pieces to be moved where the increasingly stupid plot required. My brief enjoyment of isolated later moments/episodes, such as the switch from flashback to flashforwards, was washed away by the terrible overall grind of last half of the show and the asinine conclusion that everyone guessed as early as S2 but the showrunners continued to deny for 5 more seasons.

Game of Thrones: The show had a brilliant set up and was good through S3, though imo the Daenerys storyline was a complete dud from S2 on (endless variations on Checkov's Dragons). After Joffrey dies, the show loses any coherence or logic and the characters begin their relentless sojourn through the plotgrinder. Like Lost, the last 2-3 seasons were laughably bad and the ending retroactively showed that brief moments of perceived inspiration were in fact rigor mortis of a long dead show.

Re: Mad Men discussion above: I understand criticisms of the latter half of the show as the penultimate season was a bit of a grind. For me, the execution was so high that even when the show was a grind, or at least, unlike Lost and GoT, the grind was rewarded by a good final season and a fantastic conclusion.

I suppose we'd best mention Arrested Development S5 here too, which apart from Alia Shawkat was absolute misery. I am a rare S4 proponent (original mix) though

I don't get the idea that Mad Men ever really dropped off. I'd say the first two seasons (especially S2) were a lot less engrossing than the last couple of seasons

I got burned so hard by Lost that I no longer watch high-concept epic shows in real time, preferring to wait until they're over to see if people are still raving about them. My brother used to urge me to start watching GoT all the time but, curiously, he hasn't mentioned it at all since the show ended.

Always worth mentioning fairly long-running shows that just continued to get better and better, or at least never remotely feel like dipping in quality, like Veep

or Always Sunny, the gang still bangs fuiud

maybe that idea should have its own thread

I don't get the idea that Mad Men ever really dropped off. I'd say the first two seasons (especially S2) were a lot less engrossing than the last couple of seasons

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Monday, 18 January 2021 14:29 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Marketing metaphor of the week was a baked-in issue right from get-go

"___ of the week" is a good format tbh a lot of shows thrive on it

Its a good viewing format, handy for tv guides

It is not a good way to pull out your "do u see" points

Dawson's Creek

I have no regrets

have not kept up with The Simpsons at all but I'm weirdly curious about it...has a single new character been introduced in the last 25 years?

Instagram Sam

Blart Simpson (voiced by Kevin James)

I'd be curious to know who even watches The Simpsons at this point, particularly the subset of viewers who've stuck it out since the early days. You know there's at least a few.

i havea friend who insists new Simpsons is better than old

his MRI is scheduled for next Thurs

Most recent episode:

Homer and Marge team up with Comic Book Guy and his wife Kumiko to win a trivia contest. After spending time with Maggie, Kumiko decides she wants to have a baby, only for her husband to disagree. But just as Comic Book Guy begins to come around on the matter, the pressure to offer emotional support to a distressed Bart and Lisa sees him fleeing his wife and problems back to his family home.

Do you think they just pick characters out of a hat in writing the scripts?

Always worth mentioning fairly long-running shows that just continued to get better and better, or at least never remotely feel like dipping in quality

There's also a specific case of shows that are always kind of bad/enjoyable and which, in their later seasons, kind of double down and become eye-poppingly insane; here I am thinking of Continuum and Hemlock Grove but I'm sure there are many examples.

his wife Kumiko

yiiiiiikes

I suppose we'd best mention Arrested Development S5 here too, which apart from Alia Shawkat was absolute misery. I am a rare S4 proponent (original mix) though

Yes I was deliberately making myself not think of AD. I love the first seasons so much but it really shouldn't have come back.

There's also a specific case of shows that are always kind of bad/enjoyable and which, in their later seasons, kind of double down and become eye-poppingly insane; here I am thinking of Continuum and Hemlock Grove but I'm sure there are many examples.

Walker, Texas Ranger

"plane crashed here"

also Family Matters. went from an enjoyable blue-collar family sitcom that managed to tackle some heavy issues (Eddie's racial profiling) and just had the annoyance of the annoying catch-phrase character..... to bat-shit insane when it turned into shit like Stefan Urquelle, or the ep where Urkel shrunk himself and Carl and they were fighting off giant ants.

which is why I love the Key and Peele Family Matters sketch

also, WEird Science the tv show. It was stupid. and I loved it nonetheless. every ep.

who is gonna fess up to watching all of According to Jim?

i havea friend who insists new Simpsons is better than old

his MRI is scheduled for next Thurs

― Looking for Cape Penis house (Neanderthal), Monday, January 18, 2021 10:57 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe an argument to defer to: https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/zs1/

Walker, Texas Ranger

Apparently the CW is about to roll out a Walker prequel series starring Sam from Supernatural. I've been seeing ads for it.

Finally we will learn how Walker got his powers

I will occasionally watch a current Simpsons if I'm sitting there with nothing else to do. And there was a two-parter this season or last in which the Simpsons' church gets a new, young preacher who shakes things up, and it was better than I thought the latter day Simpsons was capable of. Mostly part 1, because I remember being disappointed after part 2.

yeah current Simpsons is alright, probably better than most animated shows on TV right now, still nowhere near the 90s episodes

Hannibal! And I sort of documented the experience here! "It's going to get better!" they said! It did not!

some people just hate the best television show, it takes all kinds

I'm in the midst of Hannibal! Just starting the red dragon arc -- should I slog through or cut losses?

I watched Dexter to the end. Unlike normal people, I actually quite liked the final episode. However, pretty much else about that final season was terrible and I had already disliked every other even season (S2, S4, S6); I really hated how -without any explanation- Dexter moved from catching baddies who had escaped the system to interfering with police investigations as he 'needed to be the one to catch/kill the criminal'; thought that giving Dexter a kid was a really stupid decision for the show (didn't seem like they knew what to do with it - the kid was always with a babysitter anyway). Apart from the first season, I only thought highly of the fifth (the whole suspense around the Lumen character) but in the end I really didn't know why I decided to watch this show all the way through at all.

I did like the twist of his sister finding out that he was the killer, although for the life of me now I can't remember how that played out.

a knock knock joke

The actress was so shocked she divorced him IRL

I watched all of Hannibal despite not liking any of the characters, plots or writing. but it was so gorgeous to look at that I persisted.

I was tempted to mute the dialogue tho just embarrassingly risible.

Always worth mentioning fairly long-running shows that just continued to get better and better, or at least never remotely feel like dipping in quality, like Veep

Veep got so drastically & immediately inferior that I jumped ship early in the first written-by-Americans* / shot-in-Los-Angeles season, dropping back in for the final.

* just looked 'em up for the first time, and most of them were former SNL writers who'd put in time on network sitcoms.

probably the prisoner

Alcatraz was only a one season wonder I stuck with to the end. But I used to watch anything back then on my sadly dusty and rusted exercise bike. I can barely remember anything about it other than it was just as daft as Lost.

didn't The Prisoner have only like, 16 episodes

yeah but nine of them were filler episodes added to make it long enough to sell to America

(trufax! but I'm guessing KM was joeking)

I did like the twist of his sister finding out that he was the killer, although for the life of me now I can't remember how that played out.

Didn't she find out they weren't blood relatives and try to seduce him? Or was that before?
It was sooo bad. They pissed away so much audience goodwill for nothing.

Ha! I don't remember that either. Most of what I remember about Deb is people saying what terrible actress Jennifer Carpenter was (I thought she was fine).

her character's gratuitous swearing seemed a bit lazy and overdone, but that wasn't the actor's fault.

I suppose we'd best mention Arrested Development S5 here too, which apart from Alia Shawkat was absolute misery.

This would have been my answer but I actually don't think we made it through S5.

So: Degrassi. Jr High/High are classic, but the later seasons in the 00s 'next generation' reboot were pretty dud. I should've given up but I found it hard to abandon a series that I pretty much grew up with.

No mention of The West Wing yet, (in either thread) I'm surprised.

didn't The Prisoner have only like, 16 episodes

Long enough for a TV series, imo.

I think I watched The Prisoner on VHS with my Dad when I was 13, even then I could tell that it was a really intriguing 6-episode series that was bound to fall apart once they actually had to explain things a bit

for me this has to be friends. many people will query that friends was ever "good" but whatever it was i enjoyed it. i was a child when it started so my faculties were not yet as hardened i suppose. viewing it nowadays engenders feelings of nostalgia in me.

taking as a given that friends was ever "good", and that there are "classic friends episodes" - they occur almost exclusively in the first 3 or 4 seasons. later season are hugely forgettable with lots of painful plots. the absolute nadir: the brief joey and rachel romance.

First two seasons, id have said

The ensemble had gifted performers and those first few seasons were a decent mix of zany and tight

Yes you're probably right

Two and a Half Men is like that too, I've never thought the show was particularly good but some of the episodes in the first two seasons are kinda funny

I don't think I ever made it much further than halfway through Friends. Probably a good stopping point? Inasmuch as I'm still able to say that I enjoy Friends, probably so.

Friends was amazing and I’ve watched many episodes twice. I loved it to the end.

for me the peak of Dexter was the NA meeting in season 2 where he comes forth in front of the group about his dark passenger

Friends is why I asked if you have to have seen every episode - no way that I did, but saw the first and probably the last and the vast majority along the way, just from scheduling and being paired with other good or half-dece American sitcoms of the time.

The only time I really cared about what was going on was the chunk where Monica and Chanandler were secretly boning after someone else's wedding. Rewatched that in '00s repeats too, and still enjoyed it.

Friends cameo poll imo

I have loved every episode of Will and Grace too, even the reboot

Fun fact that I didn't realize until I read Littlefield's book: James Burrows (the director of almost every episode of Cheers) directed every episode of Will & Grace. Which is literally the only thing that has piqued my interest wrt watching Will & Grace (which I still have never done).

Yeah I don’t know for sure that I’ve seen every Friends episode and don’t care to find out, but it feels like I have? Def watched it a lot when it was first airing (for all the criticisms against it, it did feel genuinely groundbreaking then - like, I’m Malaysian and Friends was prob the first time I heard the word lesbian on TV) and then over the years, it became one of those shows that’s always on somewhere - go to a foreign country, and it’s somehow the only show being aired in English, go to a friend’s house and they have it on in the background, and now my stepkid and her friends are watching it on Netflix etc. So yeah... unclear if I’ve in fact seen every episode but it’s entirely possible.

I've seen every episode of Friends. it peaked in seasons 2-4, then had a bunch of uneven seasons but always gems here and there. even the last season has a couple episodes I love