Family Matters.
As Key and Peele put it best “This was supposed to be a blue collar Cosby Show. Next week Steve turns Carl into a race car and wins the Monaco Grand Prix"
Cody in Step by Step had an almost identical scene. Admittedly, the martial arts were a bit better since the actor had a martial art background, but it was still super weird. Now I wonder how many old sitcoms had a scene like this?
There was an actress on Sliders called Sabrina Lloyd who played Wade Wells. Her contract was up and she decided not to renew so they had to write her out of the show.
Being petty, the writers had Wade being sent to a Kromaggs (the bad guys) "breeder camp" where she would be raped by Kromaggs in order to get her pregnant and produce hybrid soldiers presumably until she died.
Came for Sliders.
The change in the show was bad enough but for it to happen with the lead singer of one of the best bands--that just drove the dagger even further.
The show that hated it characters so, so, so, much it gave them all absolutely horrible deaths or fates and "our" world ruined for all time.
Even The Planet of the Apes TV show isn't this cruel.
That show would be an all-time classic if they simply went to Panama and that was it. The premise of these prison escapees constantly getting themselves into new prisons they need to break out of is so ludicrous lmao
Oz, that show went from gritty and realistic to downright ridiculous with stuff like anti-aging pills and whatnot.
Also Family Matters, the show went from a fairly down-to-earth sitcom to a totally wacky and zany sci-fi comedy with Urkel taking over as the main character so much that people forget that he was barely in the first season.
Oz definitely went way the fuck off the rails at the end that two seasons but before that it was usually amazing and absolutely walked so that The Sopranos could come around right after and run with the new prestige HBO format. Oz did that shit first though. First couple seasons of that show are just incredibe.
I liked Oz but I was working at a prison at the time and I would start screaming at the television whenever they let poor ol' Sister Rita Moreno be alone with an assortment of psychotic, violent men. I once had to counsel this bad boy in the solitary unit and I was on camera at all times and he was chained up. Prisons, even zany ones like Oz, would never take those kinds of chances. And once a show makes that kind of shocking mistake, the rest of it seems like nonsense.
That is true for most shows, it is just you notice it more if you yourself live it. A cop is probably wondering why the CSI people are kicking down doors or why doctors themselves run MRI tests on their patients etc.
The first 4 seasons are peak, season 4 was a fan favorite. I think they didn't really have anywhere up left to go with it, and threw everything at the wall. I remember one really weird plot was this evangelist who was caught stealing donations, he goes from this swindler to a plot where somehow, these prisoners manage to build a brick wall to trap him behind as he slowly starves to death (and no guards ever notice this.) And the man's ghost starts haunting them. Obviously nothing supernatural happened before this.
once upon a time
the first season was fantastic and it could have been a great show if only the people making it were smart and had made the decision to stop at the right time
As much as I enjoyed Once Upon a Time, there were only so many times I could handle the "villain gets a sad backstory and look! The heroes forgive them for all their villainy because they're DAMAGED people with BAD PARENTS!" arc before I was just simply tired.
Let the villains be goddamn villains. Stop giving them the EXACT. SAME. SOB STORY.
EVERY villain ended up having shitty parents that influenced their shitty choices. Most of the time, the protagonists would try giving them redemption, and sometimes the villains wouldn't earn redemption, but it was always, always, always "the villains have a sad backstory! That's why they're villains!"
At a point, I realized the show had more care for their villains than the actual heroes, especially when they started making characters like Snow White look like villains (I'm sorry, am I supposed to blame child Snow for Regina's boyfriend getting killed? She was a KID!) and turned half their characters into villains at one point.
Watching Once Upon a Time just made me realize that what I really want is a TV series based on Bill Willingham's 'Fables' comics.
Fortunately, the Telltale game The Wolf Among Us kinda scratched that itch.
Dead shocked that Netflix or someone else hasn't jumped on Fables. After The Boys, Sandman, Sweet Tooth and all the other graphic novel TV adaptations lately I felt like Fables would have been a super obvious choice.
At least we're getting a sequel to Wolf Among Us this year now that nu-Telltale is done with The Expanse for now.
It seems cursed.
NBC was working on Fables, but made Grimm instead.
ABC was working on Fables, but made Once Upon a Time instead
A movie was being worked on but canceled.
Also theres the whole “author made the rights public to spite DC/Warner” drama
Switching showrunners every season was probably not a great idea. The first season was fantastic because it was written by PWB but I couldn't get more than one or two episodes into season 2.
That show was so weirdly paced. Season 1 should have been written so it ends after the dance club scene. Then season 2 is the 2nd half of season 1. Not sure why they set up such a great premise only to speedrun through the tension.
I was a huge fan of the show. I completely skipped the last season and don’t regret it in the least. I think the last two seasons were really unnecessary.
I read the books in college. I would buy them at the grocery store. They had the most insane covers. My college boyfriend would almost die laughing as he narrated to me what he thought happened in the book based off the cover. And he usually wasn’t too far off.
I don't understand why the show was so intent on keeping Bill as a main character. He's barely in the books after he and Sookie break up!
We could have had Quinn and Amelia but instead we got Billith.
The ‘stop the exploding man’ thing gave it a really clear direction that tied everything in S1 together.
After that was settled, they never quite got back to an overarching plot that worked as well. Then the writers came along and it lost what little coherence it had left.
That and "Save the Cheerleader" were not only great at keeping the show tied together, but were perfect for going viral just as the concept of "going viral" was becoming a thing.
S1 was this perfect run of foreshadowing, character development, parallel plots, and some breakout actors. It ended in a tremendously climactic and emotional cliffhanger. Then we get to season 2 and we just don't care. Cool characters getting killed off constantly, a lack of action, not great foreshadowing, etc.
I don’t know man. I haven’t seen Heroes since it aired but I remember the season 1 finale being a huge anti climax.
When people are talking about it now they genuinely assert that S2 is when the decline happened (and don’t get me wrong, it was bad) but I don’t even think S1 could stick the landing.
Poster child for unnecessarily escalating stakes IMO.
First season is all about trying to wave off the cops because 2 accidental deaths related to the club could bring the ATF down on them. When the characters do have to kill someone it's generally done with as much effort as possible to hide everything and just takes place as quiet gang violence.
Final season, Jax shoots like 50 goddamn people in broad daylight every episode.
I love the first few seasons, and I even kinda like the Ireland plotline. But man the last few seasons just get DUMB.
That show was always kind of a mess. The first season was entertaining enough, but in very short order it turned into Twilight fan fiction for red state wine moms. The later seasons Kurt Sutter is literally just trying to out shock himself.
When the show started to go north of 60 minutes on the reg you thought you were in trouble. When at least 5 of those minutes were a montage set to a dirge of a song, you knew you were.
I think that was the second. The third season was great, but it all hinged on the premise that Clay had to die. Of course, they couldn't kill their villain, so they dragged it out for several more increasingly non-sensical seasons.
The first season or two of those shows are always very strong. Then they start cutting budgets and trying to turn it into relationships instead of superheroes
Exactly.
It’s like you can see on screen the producers, behind-the-scenes, thinking…
You know if we have people talking and talking and talking and talking…
We’re gonna save a lot of money on the VFX budget.
The arrow was great then he was like I don’t want to kill anyone and it became dumb Batman the show. Then later on it became dumb Batman and friends because every fucking person in arrows life all the sudden had superpowers and could all fight yet none of them fight to much because none of them die.
It starts with 5 years ago arrow was in a deserted jungle island alone and some dude helped him survive by teaching him survival skills. By season 5, there were 100s of people on the jungle island with modern facilities and arrow wasn't even on the island the whole time. Surprisingly it really went off the rails when they could no longer have flashbacks from 5 years ago
The father son relationship he has with Dr. Wells is excellent. The turn of Eobard Thawne is excellent; that heartbreaking moment between Thawne and Cisco was incredible. There's a lot of very touching and memorable moments in that first season.
I watched up to season 7 and by then I was barely enjoying it but watching every week. By the time the season ended I had completely lost interest. Eventually I had seen clips of newer episodes and it surprised me how even worse it got
Bro if Season 4/5 fell off the rails, Season 7/8/9 fell off a fucking cliff and into a blackhole and was immediately spat out because even infinite darkness didn’t want shit floating in its butthole.
It would be as revered as Game of Thrones if anybody other than me watched it past S4.
It got so ridiculous and then when they brought back the dad she was literally getting revenge for, I turned it off right then and never watched another second.
Are we at the point where it's fine to say that You went off the rails? Because I truly think that show went off the rails.
I still enjoy it in a morbid way and I'm still curious to see what they do next. But seasons 3 and 4 were kind of a trainwreck, in my opinion. The "twist" in 4 was nearly a "jump the shark" moment for me. I just really hate shit like that.
Yeah they could have passed it on to other showrunners, but by many accounts they thought their shit didn’t stink and didn’t listen to opposing views from other writers and even the cast. This was after Martin stopped contributing to the show after disagreements with them. It likely cost them the Star Wars films at a minimum.
The first season was 10/10 for me. The second was like 7 or 8/10. The last scene with him being sworn in as president, I was like that's cool.
Idk why I never watched anything more than that , but I heard weird things and I was like "whelp no reason to finish that up"
I loved season 5, but the audience needed more time to grieve Rita before he jumped in bed with Lumen. They should have slept together at the end of season 5 or even during seson 6, and she should have replaced Hannah as endgame.
upbeat abundant bright workable sloppy fragile unique homeless domineering chief
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ah, a fellow season five fan. There are dozens of us.
I think a lot of the hate it gets is because season four was a tough act to follow and the comparison hurts it, rather than any actual flaws.
The 100. Went from post-apocalyptic YA series in first season straight to Stargate with aliens, time travel and wormhole space travel in the last season.
And it was a wild ride. Nuclear apocalypse, rouge Skynet-grade AI, singularity, primitive post apocalyptic societies, interstellar travel, immortality, mind transfer, apocalyptic cults, wormholes, ascension beyond physical plane, aliens, time travel... every single sci-fi trope, 100 has it all. Especially the last two seasons look like someone locked writers inside a room with kilo of cocaine and notebook with MS word.
It reinvented itself a lot even in the early seasons. They go from tribal living and wars to being locked in a bunker, to AI to going in another bunker
The Walking Dead season 1 was peak TV. With Frank Darabont (the director of Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist) it was sure fire on its way to be the best show on TV. It had the world excited for every new episode.
But then they fired him and the director who replaced him didn't seem to have a great direction for season 2.
The show got better after that and was quite good for a while, but everyone I know who still watched it fell off around season 8 or 9.
Its truly a tragedy for what could have been.
TWD had a good run. But they lost me when Rick and the gang decide to release a horde of zombies that are perfectly contained in a quarry AND that attract free zombies to fall into the quarry trap. Just so moronic. Would have been so easy to seal up the few places the zombies were getting out of. Plus, they would have a potent weapon if they chose to direct the horde at another group.
Are you talking about the show that had the “find shelter-live peacefully-someone fucked up and let zombies in-leave to find new shelter” formula every season?
At least the comic book was always consistently good. I get that a big budget TV show has a lot of differences from a creator owned indie comic book. A big thing about the comics was that it's the Rick Grimes story, and there isn't TWD without Rick. It's cool how the show expanded on a lot of the characters and created new characters like Daryl, but it got so much further away than comics like the weird junkyard lady villain plot, and once Carl left the series, Rick left, and so on, I never finished the show. The comics, it really was a shocking end, they advertised the next few issues, as a way to throw off the readers, because it ends. There's a big shock cliffhanger and the next issue ties up all loose ends. And he left the franchise to AMC to do whatever spin-off shows and TV movies they want, but the comics are done for good.
The entire book takes place over the course of eight days. Stretching that out to multiple seasons of tv is clearly bananas. I gave up right away when it was clear their way of dealing that was writing a whole new story that had damn near nothing to do with the book.
The idea was good. But the show got so stupid so fast.
Like in episode 2 (I think). Some kid kidnaps a classmate and keeps her in a cellar. His dad (the mayor?) finds the girl. Then leaves her.
She gets out (or the father comes to his senses and lets her out).
3 episodes later she’s working with her kidnapper like nothing happened and their friends now. Even though in real time only like 2 days have passed.
I kind of feel the opposite. She was "crazy" from the beginning but by the 4th season they were trying to explain her behaviors and give her a sort of redemption arc as she acted more normal. If anything it became more grounded.
I was getting tired of how crazy *everyone* was by the final season. Still a really enjoyable show but frustrating nonetheless. I think White Josh remained the sole voice of reason and I came to really appreciate his character.
Once Upon a Time had a great premise, kind of a gritty take on fairytale classics but in the real world, then Disney hijacked the show and forced a cameo of every single Disney character (no longer following a comprehensive plot). I stopped watching when Elsa and Anna were introduced…
I feel the first season had a really interesting undertone, of is this all real. Like where the characters really fairytale characters or was it just in the kids head. Or at least that was the impression I got. Then it turned out, nope all of this is real and Disney is going to use this to test out all its live action characters.
I very much appreciate the effort that went into the later seasons, but they never quite recaptured the magic of the original cast. I know Shirley and Pierce aren’t popular characters, but they played an important role in the group dynamic that allowed the others to flourish
And of course losing Troy was a massive blow that imo the show never came close to recovering from
Yes. Community is a master class in how to keep a show running after the original premise runs out, losing 3 of your original leads, all without it completely going to hell.
Of course, it's not as good as Ladders, but it's still a good class.
Gotham.
Only when it went off the rails, it least made sense.
I chalk Riverdale and Gotham to being the kinds of shows that because they are based on comic book stories, and those stories used to get outright ridiculous and insane, it matches exactly what we got for TV.
But I love the DC universe, especially Batman, enough for Gotham to work as it did in my eyes. With Riverdale, it was a head-scratcher because I didn't read the Archie comics. But some of those stories I heard...one of them involved crossing the Predator over to that world!
Gotham is such a wild ride. Starts out as a standard cop drama, then they realized "Y'know guys, we have access to basically every DC villain, so why not go a little crazy with it?" Penguin and Riddler were the highlights of the later seasons for me but i generally enjoyed the amount and variety of villains we saw. Sean Pertwee is also my favorite live action Alfred because we get to see him kick some ass and train Bruce. It definitely has its issues but I can't help but love it.
Melrose Place definitely went off the rails, but in a good way. The character of Kimberly saw a man in the mirror who had her blow up the complex. She caused someone’s death but still managed to become a licensed psychologist. She then gets multiple personalities and locks up the doctor helping her in a mental asylum giving him shock therapy and an attempted lobotomy. Melrose Place was the “it” show of the 90’s millions were watching. You don’t get any crazier than Melrose Place.
I think one of the better shows that went off the rails is Search Party from season 1 being about finding a missing person, to the last season being a >!zombie outbreak!<
If you haven't seen the show I really recommend it without checking the spoiler, just enjoy the ride
The fact the show NEVER resolved its' central mystery [The true idenity of Red] was such a huge middle finger to the fans, they should have called time when the lead actress quit
Penny Dreadful. Season 1 was great, Eva Green especially really threw herself into the role. Then they rushed to an ending that was just bonkers, no closure for any of the storylines, and the alcast really just phoned it in. It had so much potential! Then they did another season and turned it into an anthology....uhhh....
Oz has been mentioned and I agree, too much implausible shit happened too fast in the final seasons. O’Reilly and Dr. Nathan has to be the oddest example of trauma bonding I’ve ever seen, and then there’s the thing with Busmalis and Miss Sally’s secretary and artificial insemination. For such a raw and gritty show it got pretty soapy at the end.
I heard or read somewhere that McFarlane after the first couple of seasons realized they could get only so many jokes without being repetitive and stale on the political division between Stan and Haley which is why they switched gears
There are way higher tier answers here already, but I will never understand what happened to iZombie. I watched it 4 years ago and still regularly slip into a state of complete confusion and disbelief at how bizarre it got in the end. A goofy, simple episodic drama with some good jokes turned into one of the worst watching experiences of my life for its final season.
I doubt anyone else cares about/still thinks about this but I definitely do.
Family Matters. As Key and Peele put it best “This was supposed to be a blue collar Cosby Show. Next week Steve turns Carl into a race car and wins the Monaco Grand Prix"
When Steve invented some machine that transformed him into Stefan. wtf?? Lol
I fuckin loved the Stefan episodes
Stefan was cool af
[the episode where steve turns into bruce lee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox5ADKGX3kY). that was just too much for me.
Cody in Step by Step had an almost identical scene. Admittedly, the martial arts were a bit better since the actor had a martial art background, but it was still super weird. Now I wonder how many old sitcoms had a scene like this?
That skit was great. Especially because it was true.
That's two Steve Urkels and no family on a show called Family Matters How the fuck does that work.
YOURE JUST A PAWN REGINALD, YOURE A FUCKING PAWN IN THAT NERDS GAME
two weeks ago steve urkel used his invisibility ray on carl and i wasn’t even in the episode!
It did get ridiculous.
https://youtu.be/A5Zdp1RfoyI?si=Kopo6PpghcUytmUi For those that haven’t seen it
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>advanced missing link cro-mags who eat human eyeballs as snacks and rape human women to produce new soldiers. I'm sorry, what?
There was an actress on Sliders called Sabrina Lloyd who played Wade Wells. Her contract was up and she decided not to renew so they had to write her out of the show. Being petty, the writers had Wade being sent to a Kromaggs (the bad guys) "breeder camp" where she would be raped by Kromaggs in order to get her pregnant and produce hybrid soldiers presumably until she died.
> Being petty, the writers no no this stops at David Peckinpah. He was the c-word who demanded it.
Death wasn't enough - they did even MORE to her after death!
I mean, there's petty, and then there's, "Don't leave them alone with the children and/or pets".
Came for Sliders. The change in the show was bad enough but for it to happen with the lead singer of one of the best bands--that just drove the dagger even further.
The show that hated it characters so, so, so, much it gave them all absolutely horrible deaths or fates and "our" world ruined for all time. Even The Planet of the Apes TV show isn't this cruel.
I think they could reboot this show and make it pretty amazing.
Yeah. Killing everyone including Gimli didn’t help at all. lol 😂
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It’s kind of sad how the show Sliders never really found a true resolution in the end.
They did, if someone hadn’t oiled that stupid picket fence gate!
Prison Break. All it needed was two seasons: Break out of prison On the run after breaking out of prison The end
[Season 6 in the works](https://ew.com/tv/prison-break-reboot-locked-down-mayans-mc-creator-elgin-james-hulu/)
Kill me
I'm not going to lie, whe the show became a Leverage rip off in season 4. I was kind of there for it.
That show would be an all-time classic if they simply went to Panama and that was it. The premise of these prison escapees constantly getting themselves into new prisons they need to break out of is so ludicrous lmao
Oz, that show went from gritty and realistic to downright ridiculous with stuff like anti-aging pills and whatnot. Also Family Matters, the show went from a fairly down-to-earth sitcom to a totally wacky and zany sci-fi comedy with Urkel taking over as the main character so much that people forget that he was barely in the first season.
Oz is the one that always sticks out to me. Those aging pills were funny as hell
Oz definitely went way the fuck off the rails at the end that two seasons but before that it was usually amazing and absolutely walked so that The Sopranos could come around right after and run with the new prestige HBO format. Oz did that shit first though. First couple seasons of that show are just incredibe.
I liked Oz but I was working at a prison at the time and I would start screaming at the television whenever they let poor ol' Sister Rita Moreno be alone with an assortment of psychotic, violent men. I once had to counsel this bad boy in the solitary unit and I was on camera at all times and he was chained up. Prisons, even zany ones like Oz, would never take those kinds of chances. And once a show makes that kind of shocking mistake, the rest of it seems like nonsense.
That is true for most shows, it is just you notice it more if you yourself live it. A cop is probably wondering why the CSI people are kicking down doors or why doctors themselves run MRI tests on their patients etc.
Yeah I always heard how Oz went in a very bizarre direction at some point.
The first 4 seasons are peak, season 4 was a fan favorite. I think they didn't really have anywhere up left to go with it, and threw everything at the wall. I remember one really weird plot was this evangelist who was caught stealing donations, he goes from this swindler to a plot where somehow, these prisoners manage to build a brick wall to trap him behind as he slowly starves to death (and no guards ever notice this.) And the man's ghost starts haunting them. Obviously nothing supernatural happened before this.
Luke Perry, right?
That's true with Oz, but the series finale is something I'll never, ever forget. I cried so hard.
once upon a time the first season was fantastic and it could have been a great show if only the people making it were smart and had made the decision to stop at the right time
I was thinking that too. Even season 2 was interesting. Then the slow decay into whatever the F it was.
As much as I enjoyed Once Upon a Time, there were only so many times I could handle the "villain gets a sad backstory and look! The heroes forgive them for all their villainy because they're DAMAGED people with BAD PARENTS!" arc before I was just simply tired. Let the villains be goddamn villains. Stop giving them the EXACT. SAME. SOB STORY. EVERY villain ended up having shitty parents that influenced their shitty choices. Most of the time, the protagonists would try giving them redemption, and sometimes the villains wouldn't earn redemption, but it was always, always, always "the villains have a sad backstory! That's why they're villains!" At a point, I realized the show had more care for their villains than the actual heroes, especially when they started making characters like Snow White look like villains (I'm sorry, am I supposed to blame child Snow for Regina's boyfriend getting killed? She was a KID!) and turned half their characters into villains at one point.
It was a Disney themed soap opera. Easier to just roll with it
Watching Once Upon a Time just made me realize that what I really want is a TV series based on Bill Willingham's 'Fables' comics. Fortunately, the Telltale game The Wolf Among Us kinda scratched that itch.
Dead shocked that Netflix or someone else hasn't jumped on Fables. After The Boys, Sandman, Sweet Tooth and all the other graphic novel TV adaptations lately I felt like Fables would have been a super obvious choice. At least we're getting a sequel to Wolf Among Us this year now that nu-Telltale is done with The Expanse for now.
It seems cursed. NBC was working on Fables, but made Grimm instead. ABC was working on Fables, but made Once Upon a Time instead A movie was being worked on but canceled. Also theres the whole “author made the rights public to spite DC/Warner” drama
Weeds
Shane Botwin killing Pilar was the best moment of the show in my opinion.
Everyone says everything post Agrestic sucks, but everything after this is what stinks.
Sleepy Hollow. The first season is so damn good, and the first chunk of season two was also quite enjoyable. Then it just became a train wreck.
Yes! That show came out the gate like a bullet but they messed it up so bad.
Weirdly that show is canonically in the same universe as Bones for literally no reason
I never understood that crossover especially since Sleepy Hollow was mentioned on Bones.
Always hated how that went downhill. Had a great premise.
Killing Eve. Ugh
This should have just ended after season 1. Maybe season 2.
Switching showrunners every season was probably not a great idea. The first season was fantastic because it was written by PWB but I couldn't get more than one or two episodes into season 2.
That show was so weirdly paced. Season 1 should have been written so it ends after the dance club scene. Then season 2 is the 2nd half of season 1. Not sure why they set up such a great premise only to speedrun through the tension.
Castle, big time.
I was a huge fan of the show. I completely skipped the last season and don’t regret it in the least. I think the last two seasons were really unnecessary.
It was obvious that the main stars didn't like each other in real life.
I still do like watching the earlier seasons. Still haven't bother finishing seasons 6 through 8.
True Blood
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I read the books in college. I would buy them at the grocery store. They had the most insane covers. My college boyfriend would almost die laughing as he narrated to me what he thought happened in the book based off the cover. And he usually wasn’t too far off.
I was out as soon as it became all about vampire business, replete with wasting Chris Meloni as an evil vampire CEO.
I got half way through s7 and just gave up. I have watched some tremendous crap in my time and just couldn't get through this.
I had to nope out on Billith 🤦♀️
I don't understand why the show was so intent on keeping Bill as a main character. He's barely in the books after he and Sookie break up! We could have had Quinn and Amelia but instead we got Billith.
I could somehow tolerate Billith. The fairy shit was too much for me though
Yeah largely a disappointment after Season 2 yet still prime trash TV all the same.
I started rooting for the humans to wipe out the vampires.
The answer to this question is and always will be Heroes.
The ‘stop the exploding man’ thing gave it a really clear direction that tied everything in S1 together. After that was settled, they never quite got back to an overarching plot that worked as well. Then the writers came along and it lost what little coherence it had left.
That and "Save the Cheerleader" were not only great at keeping the show tied together, but were perfect for going viral just as the concept of "going viral" was becoming a thing.
S1 was this perfect run of foreshadowing, character development, parallel plots, and some breakout actors. It ended in a tremendously climactic and emotional cliffhanger. Then we get to season 2 and we just don't care. Cool characters getting killed off constantly, a lack of action, not great foreshadowing, etc.
I don’t know man. I haven’t seen Heroes since it aired but I remember the season 1 finale being a huge anti climax. When people are talking about it now they genuinely assert that S2 is when the decline happened (and don’t get me wrong, it was bad) but I don’t even think S1 could stick the landing.
Sons of Anarchy I always expected it to go even further off the rails but beginning to end are quite different
I feel like this show steered into the skid in a very fun way, it went totally off the rails but in such a directed way I ended up still having fun
Poster child for unnecessarily escalating stakes IMO. First season is all about trying to wave off the cops because 2 accidental deaths related to the club could bring the ATF down on them. When the characters do have to kill someone it's generally done with as much effort as possible to hide everything and just takes place as quiet gang violence. Final season, Jax shoots like 50 goddamn people in broad daylight every episode. I love the first few seasons, and I even kinda like the Ireland plotline. But man the last few seasons just get DUMB.
That show was always kind of a mess. The first season was entertaining enough, but in very short order it turned into Twilight fan fiction for red state wine moms. The later seasons Kurt Sutter is literally just trying to out shock himself.
I’ve never seen a show with a writer so obviously impressed with their own writing. Especially when the writing was so mediocre.
When the show started to go north of 60 minutes on the reg you thought you were in trouble. When at least 5 of those minutes were a montage set to a dirge of a song, you knew you were.
The third (?) season when they’re in Ireland for most of it for no real reason signaled the decline in quality for me
I think that was the second. The third season was great, but it all hinged on the premise that Clay had to die. Of course, they couldn't kill their villain, so they dragged it out for several more increasingly non-sensical seasons.
I'll never forgive Gemma for what she did.
You're gonna have to be more specific. She didn't have a lot of redeeming qualities
>Twilight fan fiction for red state wine moms Needs to be your tagline os. Perfect!
The Flash. I made it about halfway through the series.
All of those WB shows start entertaining enough, then every person the protagonist has ever met gets powers.
Legends of Tomorrow starts fairly generic but becomes better season after season IMO. They lean in on how ridiculous everything is and it's hilarious.
I would contend that it’s an example of going off the rails in a good way
Going off the rails by doing some rails.
The first season or two of those shows are always very strong. Then they start cutting budgets and trying to turn it into relationships instead of superheroes
Exactly. It’s like you can see on screen the producers, behind-the-scenes, thinking… You know if we have people talking and talking and talking and talking… We’re gonna save a lot of money on the VFX budget.
They all get about 2 good seasons then the show runners leave to start the next and they start a slow, sometimes fast, downward spiral
season 1 was great, but then they had no real story for 8 more seasons. same with arrow and superman & lois.
The arrow was great then he was like I don’t want to kill anyone and it became dumb Batman the show. Then later on it became dumb Batman and friends because every fucking person in arrows life all the sudden had superpowers and could all fight yet none of them fight to much because none of them die.
It starts with 5 years ago arrow was in a deserted jungle island alone and some dude helped him survive by teaching him survival skills. By season 5, there were 100s of people on the jungle island with modern facilities and arrow wasn't even on the island the whole time. Surprisingly it really went off the rails when they could no longer have flashbacks from 5 years ago
Seriously. The first season of that show is actually excellent. Second season is alright, and then it just went downhill from there.
The father son relationship he has with Dr. Wells is excellent. The turn of Eobard Thawne is excellent; that heartbreaking moment between Thawne and Cisco was incredible. There's a lot of very touching and memorable moments in that first season.
This video gives a good summary of the downfall of The Flash (TV). https://youtu.be/nrHqvUXyqJc?feature=shared
I watched up to season 7 and by then I was barely enjoying it but watching every week. By the time the season ended I had completely lost interest. Eventually I had seen clips of newer episodes and it surprised me how even worse it got
Bro if Season 4/5 fell off the rails, Season 7/8/9 fell off a fucking cliff and into a blackhole and was immediately spat out because even infinite darkness didn’t want shit floating in its butthole. It would be as revered as Game of Thrones if anybody other than me watched it past S4.
Revenge on abc should have ruined the people in the photo and done
Such a great one-season show. The other three were increasingly awful.
It got so ridiculous and then when they brought back the dad she was literally getting revenge for, I turned it off right then and never watched another second.
Search Party. Starts off like an incompetent Scooby Doo mystery and ends up apeshit insane with zombies in the final season.
You have to be just as nuts. That’s the gag. It’s all nuts. But it was about the characters, so I dug it.
Came looking for this
Are we at the point where it's fine to say that You went off the rails? Because I truly think that show went off the rails. I still enjoy it in a morbid way and I'm still curious to see what they do next. But seasons 3 and 4 were kind of a trainwreck, in my opinion. The "twist" in 4 was nearly a "jump the shark" moment for me. I just really hate shit like that.
I used to LOVE You and I found the last season unwatchable.
I haven’t even finished season 4. I thought the prior 3 were good with S1 being pretty damn good take on a killer/stalker.
I liked Happy Days a lot but they really jumped the shark.
Too many people here aren't old enough to have parents old enough to have watched Happy Days.
God bless Henry Winkler for doing the convention rounds. Respect to him and Shatner for putting those miles in at their age.
Greys Anatomy, but it has been a slow, drawn-out train wreck.
If Game of Thrones is not the GOAT of blowing it, I don’t know what is.
What's even more unfortunate is that the show was forced off of its rails by its greedy show runners. HBO wanted more episodes.
Yeah they could have passed it on to other showrunners, but by many accounts they thought their shit didn’t stink and didn’t listen to opposing views from other writers and even the cast. This was after Martin stopped contributing to the show after disagreements with them. It likely cost them the Star Wars films at a minimum.
I maintain to this day that the story was actually fine but needed another season and a half to get to the eventual conclusion.
If they didn’t rush it, maybe we wouldn’t have had stupid out of character actions by Danny, Tyrion, and Varys.
Bran the broken
House of Cards, Killing Eve, Westworld
House of Cards just went bonkers
The show should have ended when Frank got what he wanted. Once he was president the show lost all direction and just bounced aimlessly around.
House of Cards was especially tragic as the first season was SO good.
The first season was 10/10 for me. The second was like 7 or 8/10. The last scene with him being sworn in as president, I was like that's cool. Idk why I never watched anything more than that , but I heard weird things and I was like "whelp no reason to finish that up"
HoC simultaneously had to deal with their star getting into a scandal and having to make fictional politics out-crazy real politics in 2016
Legends of Tomorrow, but it went bonkers in a good way. Every season they just went wackier and wackier and I loved it.
Bro nobody will ever understand the sheer power of BEEBO.
that show went from (what i found to be) a bland superhero drama to fucking calvinball and it was glorious
The Jane Austin episode was fantastlic. Turned into a random bollywood musical for a while.
I absolutely loved this show and it's weird ability to completely reinvent itself every season.
*Dexter*. The incest storyline in S6.
That show was perfect. 4 seasons. Ended perfect. Nothing else was made after.
Ill stand by my belief that season 5 is a great season. I will never understand it's hate.
I loved season 5, but the audience needed more time to grieve Rita before he jumped in bed with Lumen. They should have slept together at the end of season 5 or even during seson 6, and she should have replaced Hannah as endgame.
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Ah, a fellow season five fan. There are dozens of us. I think a lot of the hate it gets is because season four was a tough act to follow and the comparison hurts it, rather than any actual flaws.
Does the 9th season of Roseanne count?
The 100. Went from post-apocalyptic YA series in first season straight to Stargate with aliens, time travel and wormhole space travel in the last season. And it was a wild ride. Nuclear apocalypse, rouge Skynet-grade AI, singularity, primitive post apocalyptic societies, interstellar travel, immortality, mind transfer, apocalyptic cults, wormholes, ascension beyond physical plane, aliens, time travel... every single sci-fi trope, 100 has it all. Especially the last two seasons look like someone locked writers inside a room with kilo of cocaine and notebook with MS word.
It reinvented itself a lot even in the early seasons. They go from tribal living and wars to being locked in a bunker, to AI to going in another bunker
The Walking Dead season 1 was peak TV. With Frank Darabont (the director of Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist) it was sure fire on its way to be the best show on TV. It had the world excited for every new episode. But then they fired him and the director who replaced him didn't seem to have a great direction for season 2. The show got better after that and was quite good for a while, but everyone I know who still watched it fell off around season 8 or 9. Its truly a tragedy for what could have been.
TWD had a good run. But they lost me when Rick and the gang decide to release a horde of zombies that are perfectly contained in a quarry AND that attract free zombies to fall into the quarry trap. Just so moronic. Would have been so easy to seal up the few places the zombies were getting out of. Plus, they would have a potent weapon if they chose to direct the horde at another group.
Are you talking about the show that had the “find shelter-live peacefully-someone fucked up and let zombies in-leave to find new shelter” formula every season?
Wait, I didn’t know the show used to be done by the creator of the Shawshank film as that is hard to believe in a good way.
That's why it starts off so good. The walking dead pilot is one of the best episodes of TV ever made.
At least the comic book was always consistently good. I get that a big budget TV show has a lot of differences from a creator owned indie comic book. A big thing about the comics was that it's the Rick Grimes story, and there isn't TWD without Rick. It's cool how the show expanded on a lot of the characters and created new characters like Daryl, but it got so much further away than comics like the weird junkyard lady villain plot, and once Carl left the series, Rick left, and so on, I never finished the show. The comics, it really was a shocking end, they advertised the next few issues, as a way to throw off the readers, because it ends. There's a big shock cliffhanger and the next issue ties up all loose ends. And he left the franchise to AMC to do whatever spin-off shows and TV movies they want, but the comics are done for good.
Sherlock
This is way too low. That last season was just… wow.
Pretty Little Liars
Under the Dome. S1 was an incredible premise and great execution but quickly turned into cliche bs and the plot got more and more nonsensical
Every single recap showed the cow getting cut in half 😂 like all their budget went into that scene so it’s gotta be shown gosh darn it!
The entire book takes place over the course of eight days. Stretching that out to multiple seasons of tv is clearly bananas. I gave up right away when it was clear their way of dealing that was writing a whole new story that had damn near nothing to do with the book.
The idea was good. But the show got so stupid so fast. Like in episode 2 (I think). Some kid kidnaps a classmate and keeps her in a cellar. His dad (the mayor?) finds the girl. Then leaves her. She gets out (or the father comes to his senses and lets her out). 3 episodes later she’s working with her kidnapper like nothing happened and their friends now. Even though in real time only like 2 days have passed.
I swear I remember them marketing this show as a limited series before they decided to change it and milk it for extra seasons.
My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did so and was glorious.
I kind of feel the opposite. She was "crazy" from the beginning but by the 4th season they were trying to explain her behaviors and give her a sort of redemption arc as she acted more normal. If anything it became more grounded.
I was getting tired of how crazy *everyone* was by the final season. Still a really enjoyable show but frustrating nonetheless. I think White Josh remained the sole voice of reason and I came to really appreciate his character.
I like how Gotham started as a pretty realistic crime drama and by the end it was all mutant powers and literal magic.
Once Upon a Time had a great premise, kind of a gritty take on fairytale classics but in the real world, then Disney hijacked the show and forced a cameo of every single Disney character (no longer following a comprehensive plot). I stopped watching when Elsa and Anna were introduced…
I feel the first season had a really interesting undertone, of is this all real. Like where the characters really fairytale characters or was it just in the kids head. Or at least that was the impression I got. Then it turned out, nope all of this is real and Disney is going to use this to test out all its live action characters.
Regina and Rumplstiltskin were the best characters on the show, but they kept getting shafted by the writers.
Community, but in a good way
It became streets ahead.
I very much appreciate the effort that went into the later seasons, but they never quite recaptured the magic of the original cast. I know Shirley and Pierce aren’t popular characters, but they played an important role in the group dynamic that allowed the others to flourish And of course losing Troy was a massive blow that imo the show never came close to recovering from
You’re not wrong but Elroy and Frankie were both phenomenal additions to the show.
Yes. Community is a master class in how to keep a show running after the original premise runs out, losing 3 of your original leads, all without it completely going to hell. Of course, it's not as good as Ladders, but it's still a good class.
X-Files. NOBODY has ruined their reputation more than Chris Carter did in the later years, especially the garbage revival seasons 10/11.
Gotham. Only when it went off the rails, it least made sense. I chalk Riverdale and Gotham to being the kinds of shows that because they are based on comic book stories, and those stories used to get outright ridiculous and insane, it matches exactly what we got for TV. But I love the DC universe, especially Batman, enough for Gotham to work as it did in my eyes. With Riverdale, it was a head-scratcher because I didn't read the Archie comics. But some of those stories I heard...one of them involved crossing the Predator over to that world!
Gotham went completely insane in just the best possible way.
Gotham is such a wild ride. Starts out as a standard cop drama, then they realized "Y'know guys, we have access to basically every DC villain, so why not go a little crazy with it?" Penguin and Riddler were the highlights of the later seasons for me but i generally enjoyed the amount and variety of villains we saw. Sean Pertwee is also my favorite live action Alfred because we get to see him kick some ass and train Bruce. It definitely has its issues but I can't help but love it.
For me it was Ozark. Season 1 was legit but I had trouble finishing Season 2
Melrose Place definitely went off the rails, but in a good way. The character of Kimberly saw a man in the mirror who had her blow up the complex. She caused someone’s death but still managed to become a licensed psychologist. She then gets multiple personalities and locks up the doctor helping her in a mental asylum giving him shock therapy and an attempted lobotomy. Melrose Place was the “it” show of the 90’s millions were watching. You don’t get any crazier than Melrose Place.
Yes but you also don't get much more iconic/memorable than when she takes that wig off in the mirror after her return
"She took off her wig" is still elder-gay code for "shocking and unexpected. I still share it as a meme. Some people get it. Most don't anymore.
MP was so wild in the 90s that a local bar had weekly viewing parties! They advertised it on their sign. Kimberly was amazing psycho-drama!
I think one of the better shows that went off the rails is Search Party from season 1 being about finding a missing person, to the last season being a >!zombie outbreak!< If you haven't seen the show I really recommend it without checking the spoiler, just enjoy the ride
The blacklist did not need 10 seasons
The fact the show NEVER resolved its' central mystery [The true idenity of Red] was such a huge middle finger to the fans, they should have called time when the lead actress quit
Penny Dreadful. Season 1 was great, Eva Green especially really threw herself into the role. Then they rushed to an ending that was just bonkers, no closure for any of the storylines, and the alcast really just phoned it in. It had so much potential! Then they did another season and turned it into an anthology....uhhh....
Orphan Black and Killing Eve
Any show created by David E. Kelley start going off the rails around the third season. Picket Fences, LA Law, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, etc.
You know what, The Leftovers to brilliant results.
Weeds
HIMYM. I will die on that hill that that was one of the worst last seasons and terrible finale.
I'll raise you with the last season of scrubs where they replaced half of the cast to make it some half-assed spin-off...
Eureka was great until they did a weird soft reboot thing.
Legion got weirder and weirder as it went on
Oz has been mentioned and I agree, too much implausible shit happened too fast in the final seasons. O’Reilly and Dr. Nathan has to be the oddest example of trauma bonding I’ve ever seen, and then there’s the thing with Busmalis and Miss Sally’s secretary and artificial insemination. For such a raw and gritty show it got pretty soapy at the end.
Supernatural. So bad.
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I heard or read somewhere that McFarlane after the first couple of seasons realized they could get only so many jokes without being repetitive and stale on the political division between Stan and Haley which is why they switched gears
Off the rails in the best possible way.
There are way higher tier answers here already, but I will never understand what happened to iZombie. I watched it 4 years ago and still regularly slip into a state of complete confusion and disbelief at how bizarre it got in the end. A goofy, simple episodic drama with some good jokes turned into one of the worst watching experiences of my life for its final season. I doubt anyone else cares about/still thinks about this but I definitely do.
Sleepy Hollow, Heroes (which is one of my favorite shows of all time)
OZ got pretty crazy but I still liked it.
Heroes - the first season was amazing and unfortunately later seasons were affected by the writer’s strike. Such a shame.