For me, it was The Walking Dead. It obviously suffered seriously quality decline over its run - but because it was so long, I could’ve instead watched so many other shows instead.
I’m surprised nobody said Supernatural yet. It’s still one of my favs series, but I keep to the first few seasons and rarely go up to 10 when I’m really bored. Never watched the last 2-3 seasons or I forgot about them if I did. I read about the ending and I am just sad about it.
Stranger Things is also one that I wish they ended after S1. Though I did kinda like S2, I have yet to watch S3 and up… Can’t we get good short series anymore? It’s not a long series, but still feel it is going to end one…
I’ll pop in to actually defend Stranger Things, and actually recommend watching S3 & S4 ahead of the final season launching at the end of this year!
Comparatively, S2 is an echo of the first season and largely ends up treading water. I believe the term ”Sophomore Slump” to be an apt description.
Conversely, S3 does significantly better in not only upping the stakes, building out the world, and fleshing out the characters.
S4 continues to build upon this, and also successfully binds together a number of plot-points and answering lingering questions, all the while setting the stage for the final series.
100% agree with you on Supernatural though, I struggle to make it much past Season 10 also.
That’s funny I still rewatch all of supernatural while I’m working. I enjoy how cheesy it is.
I came here to post Supernatural.
I honestly don’t even remember how many seasons I got through. Whatever the Leviathan one was, maybe?
The only thing I remember of the leviathans is that one of them is named Dick and Charlie existed. Had to look it up, was season 7.
I don’t remember that at all, heh.
I don’t regret dropping it or starting I guess, and I liked some of the characters. Crowley’s great. Moose, Squirrel
Lost shat the bed season three, but I kept watching anyway hoping we’d return to season 1 and 2 goodness. It just got worse and worse and then petered out into a they-were-dead-all-along-esque cop out ending. Fuck JJ Abrams and his “mystery box” shit.
I remember when everyone assumed they were dead they said no they weren’t and that people would be surprised like they had a real plan. Then they wrote the most convoluted ridiculous nonsense to end it just so they could say, “See! They weren’t dead! We literally say it!”
Yep, that was right around season 3 when it all started to go off the rails. And then the ending might not have literally been that they were dead all along, but amounted to the same thing anyway!
Both seasons of Arrow were fantastic. Both. Seasons.
Just like there’s only three Indiana Jones movies.
This is probably a common answer, but game of thrones was it for me. It was such a good show until they sped through the last two seasons and picked quite possibly the stupidest ending they could have. It is like they simply forgot who the characters were.
Didn’t watch a single episode of house of dragon despite my one time obsession with early GoT, and I won’t out of spite.
GoT is the answer to this question, you kind of need to exclude it to get more interesting answers. The ending flopped so hard it basically redefined disappointment for TV.
It seems weird to think about now but from 2011 to ~2018 it overshadowed everything. The characters and setting and lore were being built into a franchise juggernaut. I can’t remember any other show with constant water cooler conversations or watch parties. Then the last season flopped so hard that the media zeitgeist totally evaporated overnight.
Friends sometimes ask if they should watch it and I’ll always say no. It’s the only show I can think of that peaks multiple episodes at 9.9 on IMDb and craters to 4.0 for the finale.
[Just checked again: an absurd 29/74 episodes are rated 9.0+]
I hope whoever wrote/steered those last two seasons isn’t getting major roles.
I mean, jeez. There’s innocent failure, there’s dropping the ball spectacularly, and then there’s that.
they are doing “the 3 body problem” now iirc
So I am very picky with series and I rarely start stuff that I feel I am on the fence on and I drop stop pretty fast it I am not feeling it.
That being said, there were a few huge disappointments that I regret wasting time on.
Man in the High Castle - I didn’t know this was a fanfic-level script that just used the setting. Up until the end of the second episode, I was still hoping that it would at least loosely adapt the story of the book. I was really disappointed when I realized it would be purely a fanfic story when I watched episode 3. An adaption of the book could have made for such an intense ending.
Alien: Earth - Forced myself through the first three episodes. Did not like it all, Peter Pan stuff, uninspired characters, trying too hard to be edgy (while still being fundamentally PG in its themes). Then I heard that Episode 05 was a cool self-contained episode that offered a nice throwback. Watched 15 minutes of it and turned it off. Absolute trash.
Ring of Power - I am a big fan of The Silmarillion even though IMO it’s rather dense and difficult to follow. Watched a single episode of Ring of Power and I immediately dropped it (not getting fooled again).
Rings of power is shit, but it’s also explicitly not based on the Silmarillion. It’s only using the appendices of the trilogy.
I thought it was supposed to be partially based on the The Silmarillion. Either way, from the first episode alone, it was pretty clear that the show would be shit.
I believe that was the goal, but there was a rights dispute and they didn’t get access to it.
Merlin, the whole show teases the idea that he will reveal his powers to Arthur eventually. Spoiler alert: He never does.
I can only really think of one, because it was so bad that I’ve been very cautious ever since and will bail early or avoid watching altogether until a series is fully complete. The Man In The High Castle was four seasons with Amazon pulling the plug after the third season, giving the writers a single season to wrap everything up. It felt extremely rushed in that fourth season and they really only concluded the basic “good guys vs Nazis, who will win?” storyline. The more interesting stuff involving Tagomi and his multiverse travel that was setup earlier in the series was mostly abandoned without an adequate resolution and many of the characters didn’t have completed arcs and ended up feeling like plot devices.
Heroes. I should have just stopped at the end of season 1. I mean that was the original intention right? it was just a one off “tv event” thing. Season 1 was good, it was great, it wrapped up nicely…and then NBC wanted more.
I heard how bad season 2 was before watching season 1 so just did the one and done and can absolutely confirm it wrapped up nicely and there is no need for more seasons.
My understanding was that it was supposed to be an anthology with different characters each season which is why the first season finale completed all of the character arcs.
If I remember correctly there was a writers strike that disrupted series 2.
I also seem to remember that they got it back a bit in series 3 but then went rubbish again in 4
Adding to that season 2, which was already struggling, happened during a writers strike so the story just sorta cuts off halfway through.
Minor spoilers for season 2 there is a character that time travels with their love interest to a dystopian future. They travel back to the present but leave their love interest trapped in the future. Other than a brief line of dialogue that character or the dystopian future never come up again.
Weeds. The show is ultimately so unsatisfying. I hated the main character by the end. Seemingly immune to any real consequences.
Great answer. Weeds went on for so long and was only interesting for like one season. And it went nowhere
I think you just said the thing I was trying to find in my comments. There’s no real payoff. It goes nowhere.
Weeds was a tough one for me too. She was not likeable, not one bit. No real self awareness, super shallow.
Wasn’t that the point of the show though?
To hate the main character? Flawed characters are one thing, it’s another to show how the character fucks up the lives of everyone around her and she walks away smiling from it all as she basically fucks her way out of trouble. It’s been years since I watched it so I might not remember exactly, but even her family doesn’t really turn on her in the end.
Almost exactly what I think about this show.
Game of Thrones. Also, I agree on The Walking Dead but I gave up pretty early, season 4 or 5 maybe? They had just met Negan. The plot was just so repetitive.
Game of Thrones was unsatisfactory enough that I refuse to try House of the Dragon, do a rewatch of GoT, and instead I’d rather slog through mediocre fanfiction that have anything to do with the televised products again.
House of the Dragon is much better, but I understand how you feel because I also refuse to watch Andor for similar reasons.
Just painful cause it was SO good before they went past the books
The umbrella academy.
What a stupid
Fucking.
Ending
While I didn’t enjoy the ending, I did appreciate that they stuck with an unconventional choice.
Most stories would have introduced some Deus ex Machina that would have saved the main characters. They really went for it with “No, we’re the problem. We’ve always been the problem. There’s really just one solution.”
Yeah that’s unconventional… But unsatisfying… And it makes all the other seasons basically a waste of time because they now have never happened
Oh man, I had just scrubbed this from my mind… What a shit ending for such a fun show
It ended?
Was watching with my wife and we didn’t pick it back up after one of the breaks between, not because of any reason than not making the time. Just remember it ending with something on a farm and they were resetting the timeline and it just wasn’t something we picked up when the next season (3 or 4) dropped and it fell off our radar.
Yep. It had an ending.
Consider yourself lucky that you didn’t waste the time to watch the final season
Here’s the ending
Tap for spoiler
They realize their existence is a paradox that’s causing all these issues so they purposely let themselves get consumed by the big bad thing that can consume things or some shit so after they get consumed they no longer exist and everything seems to be normal in the new universe. Also Lila and Five want to fuck each out which causes obvious drama with Diego and they both spend most of the season in a subway station that goes between universes and they get lost for a long long time. Also… The baby shark joke was slightly funny only the first time. Claus is an idiot to literally and proverbially gets buried in a cemetery. Luther is flanderized. Allison’s powers are retconned and she now had some psychic energy thing and her “rumor” mind control power is MIA without a single damn explanation
That show just spun in circles its entire run. I bailed out after the second episode of the final season.
It did have its moments though.
The Footloose Dance off scene was so great!.
Yeah that was painful…
I got really into Lost. Like really into it. I was on message boards, sharing theories, doing alternate reality puzzles, hacking websites, going to live events, eating apollo bars, reading bad novels, full tilt. It felt like an actual mystery we were actually solving.
Then the quality of the show started to dip. Plot threads were dropped due to external factors, like Eko dying because the actor hated living in Hawaii. Walt aging too fast. The writers strike shortening Libby’s backstory. Nikki and Paulo. The Dharma Initiative being poorly received. And it became clear that there wasn’t actually a satisfying conclusion written. The “mystery” was that the writers weren’t sure what happens next. They weren’t making the show for me. They weren’t counting on somebody studying Egytian mythology to decipher the significance of a four toed foot, or learning finite math to establish a relationship between the Numbers. I was imagining answers that were never there, and posting them on the internet created backlash. The writers admitted to changing some plot threads because they didn’t want to spawn more internet scavenger hunts.
And looking back, the show was fine. It was clever and twisty and well acted. Characters developed and grew. Some of the show still sucked, but it wasn’t the massive disappointment like OG Dexter or Game of Thrones. The end is satisfying, if you’re not really thinking too hard about the unanswered questions.
But yeah, I got too into Lost.
Yeah, I quit watching an episode and a half from the finaly. It just occurred to me that no one in charge had any idea what was going to happen and there was just no point anymore.
I love LOST, top to bottom. The social experience of it’s original airing will also never be repeated.
I was fine until the mythology thing. That sorta ruined it for me.
I mean, they also just dropped all of it in the end. So you probably weren’t the only one who felt that way.
Still hoping Lost gets rebooted at some point and that ending gets retconned. Would be easy to do since you just need new people to wash up on the island.
I’d love a continuation on an unrelated show with an ensemble cast and some wild mysteries, and then the end of the season one of them meets Hurley and he’s just like “Dude… Good to see you.” and you realize it’s Aaron.
It could go in any direction, and you can bring back Linus as Hurley’s Richard, and keep tabs on Walt, Charlie Hume, Ji-Yeon Kwon, Clementine, Megan Pace, Zach and Emma, and a bunch of other kids from the show. Introduce some new mysteries, explore other places of power around the world, fight some Eldritch evil, anything is possible.
Dexter/Walking Dead
What we do in the shadows – I loved that show, but they fucked it up so bad with the last two series. The writing was all over the place and it was relying too much on random celebrity cameos. It really shows in the last series that they ran out of plot and just kept going anyway.
Sex education had a great first series, fine second series, terrible third series and a final series I could only watch one episode of before giving up.
You didn’t miss anything. Final season of sex ed was bad.
Some of the others I would’ve said have already been mentioned so I’ll go with How I Met Your Mother.
I didn’t really have any interest in it to begin with. An ex talked me into watching it while we were dating. It certainly has it’s moments but at the end I was pretty annoyed for the overall waste of time.
