Worst television show you watched to the bitter end

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

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

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

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

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

aldo do you watch anything you *do* like?

Yes, on dvd and blu.

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

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

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

tbh this clarification was already taken as read :)

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

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

True Blood.

These have been mentioned, but:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or Always Sunny, the gang still bangs fuiud

maybe that idea should have its own thread

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

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

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

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

Its a good viewing format, handy for tv guides

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

Dawson's Creek

I have no regrets

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

Instagram Sam

Blart Simpson (voiced by Kevin James)

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

i havea friend who insists new Simpsons is better than old

his MRI is scheduled for next Thurs

Most recent episode:

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

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

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

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

his wife Kumiko

yiiiiiikes

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

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

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

Walker, Texas Ranger

"plane crashed here"

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

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

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

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

i havea friend who insists new Simpsons is better than old

his MRI is scheduled for next Thurs

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

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

Walker, Texas Ranger

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

Finally we will learn how Walker got his powers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a knock knock joke

The actress was so shocked she divorced him IRL

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

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

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

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

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