Worst television show you watched to the bitter end

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.

probably the prisoner

Alcatraz was only a one season wonder I stuck with to the end. But I used to watch anything back then on my sadly dusty and rusted exercise bike. I can barely remember anything about it other than it was just as daft as Lost.

didn't The Prisoner have only like, 16 episodes

yeah but nine of them were filler episodes added to make it long enough to sell to America

(trufax! but I'm guessing KM was joeking)

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.

Didn't she find out they weren't blood relatives and try to seduce him? Or was that before?
It was sooo bad. They pissed away so much audience goodwill for nothing.

Ha! I don't remember that either. Most of what I remember about Deb is people saying what terrible actress Jennifer Carpenter was (I thought she was fine).

her character's gratuitous swearing seemed a bit lazy and overdone, but that wasn't the actor's fault.

I suppose we'd best mention Arrested Development S5 here too, which apart from Alia Shawkat was absolute misery.

This would have been my answer but I actually don't think we made it through S5.

So: Degrassi. Jr High/High are classic, but the later seasons in the 00s 'next generation' reboot were pretty dud. I should've given up but I found it hard to abandon a series that I pretty much grew up with.

No mention of The West Wing yet, (in either thread) I'm surprised.

didn't The Prisoner have only like, 16 episodes

Long enough for a TV series, imo.

I think I watched The Prisoner on VHS with my Dad when I was 13, even then I could tell that it was a really intriguing 6-episode series that was bound to fall apart once they actually had to explain things a bit

for me this has to be friends. many people will query that friends was ever "good" but whatever it was i enjoyed it. i was a child when it started so my faculties were not yet as hardened i suppose. viewing it nowadays engenders feelings of nostalgia in me.

taking as a given that friends was ever "good", and that there are "classic friends episodes" - they occur almost exclusively in the first 3 or 4 seasons. later season are hugely forgettable with lots of painful plots. the absolute nadir: the brief joey and rachel romance.

First two seasons, id have said

The ensemble had gifted performers and those first few seasons were a decent mix of zany and tight

Yes you're probably right

Two and a Half Men is like that too, I've never thought the show was particularly good but some of the episodes in the first two seasons are kinda funny

I don't think I ever made it much further than halfway through Friends. Probably a good stopping point? Inasmuch as I'm still able to say that I enjoy Friends, probably so.

Friends was amazing and I’ve watched many episodes twice. I loved it to the end.

for me the peak of Dexter was the NA meeting in season 2 where he comes forth in front of the group about his dark passenger

Friends is why I asked if you have to have seen every episode - no way that I did, but saw the first and probably the last and the vast majority along the way, just from scheduling and being paired with other good or half-dece American sitcoms of the time.

The only time I really cared about what was going on was the chunk where Monica and Chanandler were secretly boning after someone else's wedding. Rewatched that in '00s repeats too, and still enjoyed it.

Friends cameo poll imo

I have loved every episode of Will and Grace too, even the reboot

Fun fact that I didn't realize until I read Littlefield's book: James Burrows (the director of almost every episode of Cheers) directed every episode of Will & Grace. Which is literally the only thing that has piqued my interest wrt watching Will & Grace (which I still have never done).

Yeah I don’t know for sure that I’ve seen every Friends episode and don’t care to find out, but it feels like I have? Def watched it a lot when it was first airing (for all the criticisms against it, it did feel genuinely groundbreaking then - like, I’m Malaysian and Friends was prob the first time I heard the word lesbian on TV) and then over the years, it became one of those shows that’s always on somewhere - go to a foreign country, and it’s somehow the only show being aired in English, go to a friend’s house and they have it on in the background, and now my stepkid and her friends are watching it on Netflix etc. So yeah... unclear if I’ve in fact seen every episode but it’s entirely possible.

I've seen every episode of Friends. it peaked in seasons 2-4, then had a bunch of uneven seasons but always gems here and there. even the last season has a couple episodes I love