# Tv Shows that Started Out Good and Got Worse As they Progressed



## BAYLOR (Feb 15, 2016)

Which tv shows? started good declines and ended bad?


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## Heather Myst (Feb 16, 2016)

The Curse of Oak Island reminded me of The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults.


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## Denise Tanaka (Feb 16, 2016)

Look no further than ABC's Once Upon A Time.


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## BAYLOR (Feb 16, 2016)

Denise Tanaka said:


> Look no further than ABC's Once Upon A Time.



 Yeah that one is approaching jump the shark territory .


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## Cathbad (Feb 16, 2016)

Heather Myst said:


> The Curse of Oak Island reminded me of The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults.



I actually enjoy watching the process.


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## Heather Myst (Feb 16, 2016)

I think the way they get excited over finding a piece of wood is a little overrated.


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## REBerg (Feb 18, 2016)

_Dark Matter_
The premiere was great, but the episodes that followed never lived up to the opening. The season finale was anticlimactic, and yet a season 2 is coming. Go figure.


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## SilentRoamer (Feb 18, 2016)

I thought that show *Revolution* where all the power went out had a couple of good opening episodes with a great premise and if it got better it would have been a good series, at the qulity of the first few episodesl I would have finished it. But it just got worse and worse and I actually think they were making up the plot (or changing writing teams or something) as they went along with the show.

Another one for me was *Jericho *although this one for a different reason - this one got cancelled so the last season was really short and felt really rushed. It actually really annoyed me because Michael J Straczynski was attached and had a proper arc planned out - he really helped get series started with carrying out the multi season arcs so it sucked.

*Survivors *was a UK post apoc show after a 90% world wide fatal flu. I am fairly certain they had something planned out to complete the series as there was a test lab and some shady people. Never got finished. Again that sucked.


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## Idealect (Feb 21, 2016)

*Lost.* They played around the mystery so well but they just didn't have a good enough mystery to serve as a payoff. Imo in some ways a brilliant show but severely let down by the lack of enough, and good enough things to reveal as things slowly unfolded.

*Heroes.* Again, amazing start, but they couldn't keep up with their own show. Imo in both cases it was as if they ran out of ideas, -they just didn't have someone who was, or an organisational structure which was, capable of stringing things back together for a resolution in the first case, and for devising interesting plots as the variety of powers and scope of things grew in the second. Also, imo heroes had some other dumb flaws that were there in the first season but not particularly noticeable when it was just so cool. Maybe lost did too but I can't recall.


I do think just the appearance of the promise, of something just so so great, was valuable in itself, in both cases. I'll be sure to go into any future shows with the expectation that that is enough for me, (and it really is something by my lights), so I'm not disappointed if they don't explode into awesome cascades of brilliance, and surprised and even more delighted if they do.


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## Droflet (Mar 13, 2016)

*Falling Skies*. What a pity. It had a great start then died a miserable, drawn out death.


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## BAYLOR (Mar 13, 2016)

Droflet said:


> *Falling Skies*. What a pity. It had a great start then died a miserable, drawn out death.



I stopped watching it in season 2 .


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## Rodders (Mar 13, 2016)

From what i gather, the ending to Battlestar Galactica left some fans disappointed. 

(I only watched the first two series buit didn't get around to finishing for some reason)


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## Droflet (Mar 13, 2016)

BSG did have a disappointing ending but it was still superior to anything then or since. Do yourself a favor, Rodders, and see the rest. It's well worth the effort.


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## REBerg (Mar 13, 2016)

Droflet said:


> *Falling Skies*. What a pity. It had a great start then died a miserable, drawn out death.


The last season was a good argument for program euthanasia.


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## Droflet (Mar 13, 2016)

But sadly, right.


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## BAYLOR (Mar 16, 2016)

REBerg said:


> The last season was a good argument for program euthanasia.



The show just  became uninteresting to watch.


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## Khuratokh (Mar 16, 2016)

BAYLOR said:


> The show just  became uninteresting to watch.


For me it went downhill with the second episode where the duplicitous surgeon, who was partly responsible for the death of the wife of the main lead gets killed. Thus removing a potentially interesting character. Instead we were stuck with a bland hero type and his hormonal sons.


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## BAYLOR (Mar 20, 2016)

Sliders, started out great, but by season 5 the show was unwatchable.


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## E.Maree (Mar 21, 2016)

*Supernatural.* I still enjoy it, and S11 has been a lot of fun, but if they'd stopped at the end of Season 5 it would be a cult classic.
*Constantine. *Though this was less about the writing and more due to the studio giving up support and budget plummeting noticeably.
*Aldnoah Zero. *An anime example! Season 1 was a classic of sci-fi/giant robot battle goodness, but Season 2 was an irredeemable wreck that damaged the first season by association.


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## Droflet (Mar 22, 2016)

I'll mention Revolution again. I loved the first season, for the most part, and the cliff hanger ending blew me away. No pun intended. But, sadly, from then on it lost its way, writing its own epitaph.


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## BAYLOR (Mar 27, 2016)

Droflet said:


> I'll mention Revolution again. I loved the first season, for the most part, and the cliff hanger ending blew me away. No pun intended. But, sadly, from then on it lost its way, writing its own epitaph.



Absolutely brilliant concept which got messed up.


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## Frost Giant (Apr 8, 2016)

Sarah Connor Chronicles - great first season, don't know what happened for most of season 2. The only good season 2 elements were Shirley Manson and that episode on the submarine. Too bad, there was some potential there. They had a talented cast and a good story line to start with.
War of The Worlds - An oldie from the 1980's. An oddball notion for a series, I admit, but the first season was entertaining. Excellent depiction of the aliens and good characters like Ironhorse. It's a shame the second season was such a disappointment.


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## BAYLOR (May 28, 2016)

Frost Giant said:


> Sarah Connor Chronicles - great first season, don't know what happened for most of season 2. The only good season 2 elements were Shirley Manson and that episode on the submarine. Too bad, there was some potential there. They had a talented cast and a good story line to start with.
> War of The Worlds - An oldie from the 1980's. An oddball notion for a series, I admit, but the first season was entertaining. Excellent depiction of the aliens and good characters like Ironhorse. It's a shame the second season was such a disappointment.



*War of the Worlds* had an interesting premise and great potential. It could been like the X files.


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## Aetius (May 28, 2016)

Castle.

The plot line about Becketts mother was slightly dull but only popped up occasionally, then Castle disappeared for some reason involving the CIA that the writers can't seem to quite agree upon and the series was terrible.The the loksat mystery in which super assassin's kill US attorney Generals for seeing one word on a document that has every thing else redacted, try to kill Beckett who is saved by Castle's super spy step mother. And as if assassin's who can gun down senior government officials and police captains in the street with no investigation isn't enough it somehow ties into castles disappearance.

It's like they were aiming for cancellation.


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## Droflet (May 28, 2016)

But it was also quite funny, in its day.


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## Aetius (May 28, 2016)

Droflet said:


> But it was also quite funny, in its day.


Oh yes definitely, it was one of those shows we'd actually watch live including the advert breaks.


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## BAYLOR (May 30, 2016)

*Andromeda * It's fist two seasons were brilliant,This is a show which should have been another Babylon 5, but what happened? In season 3 the show took a spiraling nose dive. Season 4 was worse and season 5 was unwatchable.


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## The Bluestocking (Jun 3, 2016)

*Sleepy Hollow.* 'Nuff said.


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## E.Maree (Jun 3, 2016)

Oh hell, Sleepy Hollow. I can't believe how far it's fallen.


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## HanaBi (Dec 2, 2016)

*Lost *- started off well, but really outstayed its welcome after S3.

*The Simpsons *- first 7 or 8 seasons, pure class. But now, meh!

*Last of the Summer Wine* - Is this still doing the rounds? It was fun at the beginning with Foggy, Clegg and Compo. But after Brian Wilde (Foggy) left in 1997 and Bill Owen (Compo) likewise in 2000, it just lost its sparkle.


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## Vladd67 (Dec 2, 2016)

Some of us remember the pre Foggy episodes with Blamire. To think when it started it was about a workshy layabout and two men who had been made redundant. Over the years it evolved into the pensioners playtime it finally became. I think the last episode was made in 2010.


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## BAYLOR (Jul 1, 2019)

The Bluestocking said:


> *Sleepy Hollow.* 'Nuff said.



It went down fast.


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## Anthoney (Jul 1, 2019)

I take umbrage with Terminator: TSCC being on this list.  I put the second season on my list of best TV seasons since 2001.  I'd wrestle a bear over it.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan (Jul 2, 2019)

Not a TV person  since grade school, but to me the _obvious_ answer is the original Star Trek.  There never were enough good writers to turn out scripts that lived up to the series concept fast enough to feed the unforgiving once/week schedule.


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## picklematrix (Jul 2, 2019)

The Simpsons has gone from cultural Cornerstone to a hollow shell over my lifetime.


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## Narkalui (Jul 10, 2019)

The first ten minutes of The OA was amazing, from there it was a steady slow decline to the crapfest that was the last episode.


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## Rodders (Jul 11, 2019)

The Office (An American Workplace) should’ve stopped when Steve Carell left the show.


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## Laura R Hepworth (Jul 11, 2019)

*Once Upon a Time* - Loved it in the beginning and then didn't have the time to watch it anymore part-way through season 3, but still kept up with what was going on via Internet sources. However, it completely lost me at about season 5 and just kept going downhill from there.

*Eureka* - I really enjoyed most seasons of this show, even after they messed up the timeline, but when they added in the storyline with the spaceship gone wrong expedition it just got to bizarre. I finished it, but the later end of the series wasn't as good.

*Warehouse 13* - Loved the premise, but they lost me after they made Artie go kinda insane in season 4. Never did finish the series, but was told the end was rather rushed and unsatisfactory.


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## tegeus-Cromis (Jul 11, 2019)

99.9% of all TV shows ever made? (Except for the ones that started out crappy from the get-go.)


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## MikeAnderson (Jul 11, 2019)

*Dexter-*First four seasons were brilliant. IMO, some of the best television ever produced, and season four saw John Lithgow firing on all cylinders as the Trinity Killer. After that: botched the Doomsday Killer story-arc, ruined characters like Deb, let Michael C. Hall run amok as director/writer/producer/head of catering/supreme overlord of the show. Plus, worst ending ever.

*Game of Thrones-*Season 8 was trash. There. I said it. G'head, get triggered. I relish in people trying to justify that junk. Danny's ridiculous heel turn, Dothraki hordes reappearing after getting annihilated earlier, Starbucks cups showing up on screen. Cerci and Jamie going out in the corniest fashion you can conceive. Punched 7 prior seasons of great televised fantasy in the groin. I will argue this until they shoot my remains into space to harass Martians.

*Sons of Anarchy/Breaking Bad-*Nothing ruins a brilliant show like making your lead characters degrade from compelling and complex anti-heroes, into jackass, bloodthirsty knobs. Walter White and Jax Teller were great characters, until the writing squad transformed them into everything you didn't want to see beloved characters become. Plus, the last seasons of both shows were disjointed, bloated, and riddled with non-compelling stories and progression.


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## Mouse (Jul 11, 2019)

Lost definitely. And I say that as someone who was admin on some of the biggest Lost forums. Those whole 'flash sideways' and 'flash forwards' things. Ugh. Also Jack is the worst character in TV history. I can't even rewatch it as it makes me angry.


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## M. Robert Gibson (Jul 11, 2019)

*sticks head above parapet*
Dr Who?  Both the original run and the revival
*ducks down before the missiles arrive*


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## Narkalui (Jul 11, 2019)

Fightin talk... 

Anyone else reckon Chibnall got the job because they knew he'd get it cancelled?


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## Vince W (Jul 13, 2019)

Star Trek: Voyager. Started out okay, got good for a short bit, then spiralled downward.
Star Trek: Enterprise. Never really got going and then that ending. Yikes.


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## BAYLOR (Jul 13, 2019)

Vince W said:


> Star Trek: Voyager. Started out okay, got good for a short bit, then spiralled downward.
> Star Trek: Enterprise. Never really got going and then that ending. Yikes.



Voyager started out awful  but got slightly  interesting   whir thye brought in 7 of  9. This show did give us *Year In Hell *which ia arguable one the best trek episodes of all time, In fact. The series might have been better served had*  Year of Hell *been the pilot episode and base the series the events consequences of that episode. It would been a far better series. 

sStar Trek Enterprise should nested The Who Xindi  and time temporal war storylines na instead given us the Earth Roman War and the founding of the Federation a the main story.


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## Jeffbert (Sep 23, 2019)

Frost Giant said:


> Sarah Connor Chronicles - great first season, don't know what happened for most of season 2. The only good season 2 elements were Shirley Manson and that episode on the submarine. Too bad, there was some potential there. They had a talented cast and a good story line to start with.


I thought the SF elements were good, & the *Robot Chicken* parody was great! I guess If I like something, for whatever reason, I may be, in some cases, be blind to its weak points. I watch very few TV shows, so most parodies lack the punch they should have. Very few now movies, also. 

I too, watched *Andromeda*, & enjoyed the continuing story, until about s3 or s4, when things began, as I recall, to change drastically. The 1st *Nietzschean*  was replaced by another, which was o.k., but other changes also. I really want to finish the series, but 1 episode every three months seems like too much.  I thought the [what is it called? the relationships and conflicts between the characters] was more than just good.

*Falling Skies* had those aliens that I really wanted to see better; tried pausing, zooming, etc. They were cool! Never even occurred to me to google them. Liked the series' plot, though some sub-plots seemed bad.


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## CupofJoe (Sep 23, 2019)

M. Robert Gibson said:


> *sticks head above parapet*
> Dr Who?  Both the original run and the revival
> *ducks down before the missiles arrive*


Regrettably, I agree.
I liked the Ecclestone series and there are a few other episodes but not enough for me to be a fan any longer. Jodie Whittaker is doing her best but most of the stories have been pretty dire. I like Rosa Parks, but it tried to cram in too much and wasted time all in the same episode.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 23, 2019)

CupofJoe said:


> Regrettably, I agree.
> I liked the Ecclestone series and there are a few other episodes but not enough for me to be a fan any longer. Jodie Whittaker is doing her best but most of the stories have been pretty dire. I like Rosa Parks, but it tried to cram in too much and wasted time all in the same episode.



I would have rather they had Paul McGann then Christoper Ecclestone in the first season of the new show.


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## Vince W (Sep 23, 2019)

BAYLOR said:


> I would have rather they had Paul McGann then Christoper Ecclestone in the first season of the new show.


That would have been my choice as well. Then they could have brought Richard E. Grant in much earlier.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 23, 2019)

Vince W said:


> Star Trek: Voyager. Started out okay, got good for a short bit, then spiralled downward.
> Star Trek: Enterprise. Never really got going and then that ending. Yikes.



Star Trek Voyager began it spiraling from the first episode . It got bit more interesting with the  7 of 9 coming aboard. But what the should've does is make it like A Year in Hell, and have then struggling for survival, that would made a better series.

Stare Trek Enterprise  . They really screwed that one  up.  They should have nixed the whole Xind concept and Temporal  war storylines and gone straight to the Earth Roman War and the founding  off the Federation .


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## BAYLOR (Sep 23, 2019)

Vince W said:


> That would have been my choice as well. Then they could have brought Richard E. Grant in much earlier.



Christopher Ecclestone is a very good actor, but  he just did work as the Doctor.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

Jeffbert said:


> I thought the SF elements were good, & the *Robot Chicken* parody was great! I guess If I like something, for whatever reason, I may be, in some cases, be blind to its weak points. I watch very few TV shows, so most parodies lack the punch they should have. Very few now movies, also.
> 
> I too, watched *Andromeda*, & enjoyed the continuing story, until about s3 or s4, when things began, as I recall, to change drastically. The 1st *Nietzschean*  was replaced by another, which was o.k., but other changes also. I really want to finish the series, but 1 episode every three months seems like too much.  I thought the [what is it called? the relationships and conflicts between the characters] was more than just good.
> 
> *Falling Skies* had those aliens that I really wanted to see better; tried pausing, zooming, etc. They were cool! Never even occurred to me to google them. Liked the series' plot, though some sub-plots seemed bad.



In the case of Andromeda, the biggest mistake they made was deeded to shorten the story arc the re-establishment  of the Commonwealth , they eded it with season 2 and thats when the shod began to go downhill. 

*Falling Skies ,  *Lost it's way after the second season.


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## Bagpuss (May 30, 2020)

SilentRoamer said:


> Another one for me was *Jericho *although this one for a different reason - this one got cancelled so the last season was really short and felt really rushed. It actually really annoyed me because Michael J Straczynski was attached and had a proper arc planned out - he really helped get series started with carrying out the multi season arcs so it sucked.



The JMS series was *Jeremiah*. JMS only lasted 1 season and quit. *Jericho* was a different tv series, with a similar premise but not run by JMS. Both programmes only lasted 2 seasons before cancellation. 



BAYLOR said:


> *Andromeda * It's fist two seasons were brilliant,This is a show which should have been another Babylon 5, but what happened?



Essentially, either Kevin Sorbo happened or the network happened. It's a little difficult to work out which way it went.

Basically, Andromeda was developed by Robert Hewitt Wolfe from notes left by Gene Roddenberry. Wolfe's previous credits were writing for Star Trek. He wrote for both The Next Generation and DS9. Wolfe designed Andromeda as an ensemble show with several main story-arcs. Sort of like a more complicated DS9. The main conflict in the show was supposed to have been the conflict between Trance's people and the Abyss. (Some time after the series finished Wolfe published a "Coda", which was a 1-act play that's a conversation between Trance and Harper. It explains Wolfe's original "Andromeda" plot from Trance's point of view. I think it's still around online, but I've got it as a pdf if you want it.)

Wolfe is listed in the credits as developing the show and as a co-executive producer. Effectively, Wolfe was the head writer. Sorbo was the star and an executive producer. Somehow a conflict developed between Wolfe on one side and the network (Tribune Entertainment) and Sorbo on the other. Wolfe wanted to do his ensemble, multi-arc story. The network (and, to an unclear extent, Sorbo) wanted to do an episodic series with more action. They wanted the series to be less of an ensemble piece and more Dylan Hunt-centric with some changes to the character's wardrobes. The dispute came to a head after the episode "Ouroboros", which was episode 12 in series 2. Neither side would give in and so the network effectively fired Wolfe.

Kevin Sorbo gave an interview at the time, supporting the decision to fire Wolfe, in which he said this:



> “Robert is a genius, but was developing stories that were too complicated and too clever for the rest of us to understand,” Sorbo said. “What we now have is a team of very talented people who write standalone stories that can, on occasion, blend together to form a story arc. That simple ‘turn-up, tune-in’ attitude was what was missing. Now we have that, I really feel we’re on track toward making ‘Andromeda’ an outstanding show.”



So the series abandoned the long-term arc plot-lines, and everything became about Dylan Hunt. The series went downhill from there. Aafter the series finished, Sorbo gave another interview in which he suggested that firing Wolfe had been a mistake.



> To cut to the chase, I thought it was a big mistake to get rid of Robert Hewitt Wolfe as our show runner. He made a five year vision for the show and they fired him after two years. That’s kind of the studio’s way to sort of keep people in their place for ego reasons, I don’t know. I was hoping we could see his vision through. I enjoyed the darkness of it, the unpredictability of it, and I enjoyed the universe. Being as evil as it was, I wanted to see how Dylan was going to work his way through with the Magogs and the Nietzscheans, and all the other bad people.



So, you can make of that what you will. 

Andromeda was a dodgy but interesting series with some good characters that, in my view, failed to live up to the potential of its initial story-line, despite the fact that it ran for 5 years. I think I stopped watching it somewhere after the end of series 3, largely because the plot no longer made any real sense at that point and I no longer cared. Which was a shame because, at the time, the end of season 1 of Andromeda was about the best series end I'd ever seen.


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## Don (May 30, 2020)

BAYLOR said:


> Sliders, started out great, but by season 5 the show was unwatchable.



Yes. The show started to slide downhill when the Kromaggs came on the scene. By the time the Prof slid away it was time for me to slide too.

Does Amazon count? I overdosed on Nazi fetishism, blood, head cutting, and gore by the end of  The Man in the High Castle's third season.


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## Narkalui (May 31, 2020)

Not Sci Fi Fantasy, but Spooks was an interesting one.

Started out average, then became really good when Rupert Penry-Jones arrived, then rapidly slid downhill after RPJ left


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## Night_Eternal (Jun 2, 2020)

I'm adding my voice to choir on Doctor Who, which I was a huge fan of until this most recent era completely shattered that for me. I was excited for Jodies version. Then I saw the first episode and hated it more than anything. I struggled to not fall asleep. Not one of the characters worked, and the overall tone of the show became a mess. Even the worst of the older episodes still didn't fully kill the love I had for the show, but dear gods was the new stuff sadly awful.


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## paranoid marvin (Jun 3, 2020)

New Star Trek series invariably start out average (at best) then kick in to their stride around seasons 2 or 3. The thing is that you usually don't realise how poor the first season is until you see others. For example I loved TNG when it first came on tv, but looking back it's awful compared to say episodes in series 4 or 5. Having said that TOS is probably the other way around, with many of the best episodes in season 1. It's maybe for the best that it ended at season 3, because clearly the writers were struggling with things to screen. I dread to think how the show may have deteriorated into obscurity and ridicule if it had continued up to season 7 like most of the other spin-offs.


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## paranoid marvin (Jun 3, 2020)

Doctor Who suffers for the quality of writers. Back in the great days of Who the show had some of the best directors, producers and writers that have ever worked in television. If Jodie had worked for people with the calibre of Terrance Dicks, Robert Holmes and Douglas Adams she would have been a terrific Doctor.


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## paranoid marvin (Jun 3, 2020)

Mouse said:


> Lost definitely. And I say that as someone who was admin on some of the biggest Lost forums. Those whole 'flash sideways' and 'flash forwards' things. Ugh. Also Jack is the worst character in TV history. I can't even rewatch it as it makes me angry.




I agree. I think originally Lost was to be written as a three series show? But it became a victim of it's own success and was dragged out. And out. And out, until it was a shadow of the original programme. If it had stayed at 3 series - maybe even 4 with a push - it would have been great and memorable. As it was, most people I knew (including myself) ended up watching it just to see it through to it's conclusion seeing as we had persevered for so many years.

I'm surprised someone mentioned Breaking Bad. For me the series ended at the perfect time; there was no degredation in quality, and I ended up rewatching the show on boxsets about 12 months after I'd first box-watched the shows. One of the very few times I've gone back to rewatch an entire tv show. And actually second time around it's even better, because you can see all the foreshadowing of things to come. I'd actually go a far as to say it was better second time around.


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## Narkalui (Jun 3, 2020)

I think the problem with Lost was that the writers didn't know what was going on. They set out to create mysteries without deciding what the mysteries actually were, so basically they were making it all up as they went along. Poor writing!


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## Mouse (Jun 3, 2020)

Yeah and we ended up with eps devoted to the "mystery" of Jack's tattoos, instead of more interesting things like, I dunno, what the hell the smoke monster was.


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## Parson (Jun 3, 2020)

I haven't read this whole thread, but I think *Alias *fits this bill. The first year was absolutely brilliant, and then everything changes! Uggg!


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## Vince W (Jun 3, 2020)

Parson said:


> I haven't read this whole thread, but I think *Alias *fits this bill. The first year was absolutely brilliant, and then everything changes! Uggg!


100% this. I knew as soon as they started giving the leads a romantic entanglement the show was finished. I never finished the series.


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## OHB (Jun 3, 2020)

I completely agree with everyone who mentioned "Lost." I was a huge fan of that show, but it was clear the show went on too long. They only planned for a 5-season story arc and promised the fans that, if the network made them stretch the show out, they would sabotage it with a "zombie season" to force the network to cancel it. But the network did force them to stretch it out, and instead of torpedoing it, they brought in new characters to give the writers more backstories to explore and started making stuff up as they went along, which completely ruined whatever story arc they had originally planned. Those last few seasons were ridiculous. And after the producers told fans way back in season 1 that the show would not end with 



Spoiler



the characters learning they're in purgatory


, that is exactly how they ended it.

It was such a disappointing decline that I altogether stopped watching TV shows while they're on the air. I now wait until they're canceled, see whether people liked the endings, and if they did, _then_ I watch them.


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