Worst television show you watched to the bitter end

i don't even own a vampire

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

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

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

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

Vikings seemed like Svens of Anarchy to me

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

Alf

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

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

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

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

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

isn't Vikings still going?

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

xp

Odin knows!

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

Vikings seemed like Svens of Anarchy to me

IRLLOL!

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

fucking glee

yeah i avoided that one :D

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NONSENSE I SAY

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

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

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

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

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

I loved the last season of The Americans

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

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

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

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

― calzino

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game of Thrones tbh

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

He should have left earlier.

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

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

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

The true trump card would be the Simpsons.

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

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

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

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

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

aldo do you watch anything you *do* like?

Yes, on dvd and blu.

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

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

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

tbh this clarification was already taken as read :)

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

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

True Blood.

These have been mentioned, but:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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