Has a TV Show Ever Gone where you Did'nt Want to Go ? (1 Viewer)

[Rob P S]

Third Watch - most of the original actors have moved on, the original teams (Faith/Bosco, Doc/Carlos, Sully/Davis, etc.) have been split up, the firefighters and paramedics have been phased out of the show, every week is just some new ludicrously violent catastrophe.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Since Nick and Bill have posted in this thread, then at least they will know of what I am referring to.


WWE Raw: Katie Vick, enough said
well, hell Raw and WCW Nitro both went places I didn't want them to go, several times in fact. But, hey if they didn't I wouldn't have wrestlecrap.com to look forward to every week.

Ok, nonWrestling shows.
I completely agree with the comments on the Simpsons, as the great Yogi Bear is quoted as saying: "Enough is too much!" and that's how I feel about the Simpsons at times.

 

[Chris]

Six Feet Under.. when the funeral business stopped being the point, which I found offputting.

Sliders, when it seemed to get away from the alternate universse bit and into this strange story lines.

Voyager.. probably somewhere right around episode 6 or so.

X-Files. Somewhere around season 5. It just seemed to lose it's will.

Doogie Howser, MD.. right after it became all about Doogie getting the women.. it went downhill and stopped being about dealing with being unique. Bleh.

LA Law: after they hacked up the cast and it stopped being about cases and about inside politics of who was leaving the firm and who was taking over the firm.. BORING.

 

[David_Blackwell]

JAG- It got to be too much about the characters while the show was it's best about working the JAG cases.

WITHOUT A TRACE- Became too much about the personal lives of the characters sometimes.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Possibly becayse they didn't know what to do for quite a while.

First problem: Lynch was away making Wild At Heart. Second problem: The studio started interfering, making them have shorter sub-stories that resolved themselves in an episode or two. Plus they had to reveal Laura's killer. Problem was they hadn't had time to really plant many clues - after all, the mystery was supposed to last the entire run of the show - so now the killer's identity seemed to be pulled out of nowhere.

Then, the show floundered around for a while after the mystery was solved, as the producers tried to decide how to sustain a show once it's core story has been taken away.

I disagree about Windom Earle - when he arrived, they finally had some direction. They were able to move away from the specific murder mystery and start to explore the supernatural elemtns that were already part of the show. It was an exciting direction, and I would love to see where it would ultimately have gone.

Sadly, the show was then cancelled, and we never got to see it.

 

[Andy Sheets]

Heh. I don't watch NYPD Blue, but that actually sounds funny to me, not tragic. That is, his life is so tragic that it's become absurd and therefore inadvertently funny

Regarding the Buffy thing, I don't think the writers wanted good publicity so much as they became scared of bad publicity. The Willow/Tara relationship was originally planned to be about experimenting with sexuality in college with the door open for going in whatever direction they wanted, including back to Oz if Seth Green came back as a regular (not to mention that the whole idea was based on a throwaway joke in one episode), but when they did it, activist groups suddenly became keenly aware of the show and the writers understood that if they "sent her back to Boys' Town" they would get slagged by these activist groups. Willow wasn't just another character anymore, she was a Role Model Making an Important Statement for Our Times and that's never good for proper, consistent characterization.

Of course, the worst problem with Willow wasn't so much the gay thing as turning her into a super, all-purpose plot device of a witch. Made for incredibly dull viewing

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Why is everyone upset about the Willow as lesbian thing when the worst Buffy plot turn by far is Buffy doing the cold corpse copulation routine with Spike, the most evil recurring character on the series. Now I know she once was Angel's girl and you can bring up the topic of necrophilia with Angel (geez, lesbian = bad, necrophilia = not so bad???), but at least Angel had a soul. Spike was a great evil character and suddenly they turned him into an emasculated pile of mush that follows SMG around like a lost puppy and as if that wasn't bad anough, she proceeds to shag him (for a total season, yuck)! Totally ruined a great character just for the sake of keeping him in the show. They should have staked him early and staked him often. Willow and Tara, no problems there. Buffy and Spike? AAAaaaarggghhh!

 

[Kevin M]

Ditto, read my second post Mikel, you'll see that I have actual reasons for being cynical towards the decision, reasons not based in homophobia.
Maybe I am a bit too cynical towards the creators & hollywood in general but the climate and timeline of events at the time was just a bit too convenient and coincidental for me to not to criticize.

Also you'll notice that after Ellen's major drop in ratings they backed off, waaay off the portrayal of Willows sexuality, which before with Seth was rather high profile. Again maybe I am just a cynic but this is just more proof (IMO at least) that the initial idea wasn't based in honesty but following a trend...a trend that killed one of the shows that inspired the move to begin with.

 

[TheLongshot]

Well, the makers of the show didn't have much of a choice in that. The makeup was literally killing Virginia Hey. No one wanted her to leave the show.

A specific thing I didn't like about Sliders was the fate of Wade. To have her just shipped off Earth by the Cro-mags for breeding material was really a horrible way for her character to go out.

Jason

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Homophobia or not, I dont think Joss was trying to up the ratings by doing this. Even him keeping Spike on, I belive, was do to his like for the character not for ratings. Buffy was never a Big Ratings grabber and I think Joss was happy with it just having a cult following.



As far as other examples go, most series that overstay their welcome because the networks want to keep them on. Some are mentioned above, including X-files. Another was Melrose Place which had so many original cast members leave the show that I simply didn't care anymore.

 

[Linda Thompson]

Not to make excuses, and I freely admit to loving most of the Hercules comedy eps (and HATING most of the Xena comedy eps), but, most of Sorbo's absence was due to a medical situation (an aneurysm in his shoulder, with complications which actually came very close to life-threatening at one point). The writers had to make do with what they could, on the spot. Sorta like the Xena/Callisto body-switch after Lucy Lawless's horseback accident (and resulting broken pelvis) during the Tonight Show stunt.

For me, Hercules didn't totally go downhill until Iolaus's death (his third or fourth on the series, of course...but this one "took", I guess...), and then the whole Iolaus II period, until the end.

I heartily second the comments on The X-Files. IMO, it should have ended after 6 seasons.

I also second the comment in praise of Millenium's second season. I was reading a list of the eps for that season in an item about the upcoming DVD release a couple of days ago, and it struck me just how much I had really liked most of those episodes. I can't say that about either the first or the third seasons. (Three seasons -- three different shows...or at least it seemed that way. It "re-invented" itself every season.) I'll be buying Season 2, and hopefully it'll re-spark my enthusiasm enough to pick up the other two and check them out again in retrospect, and hope that I like them more now than I did when they first aired.

Other mis-fires in direction, off the top of my head (non-hidden spoilers abound):

La-Femme Nikita - the whole Gelman process arc. Puh-leeze.

Starsky and Hutch - about 95% of the fourth (and, mercifully, the final) season.

Silk Stalkings - Chris and Rita fall in love, she's pregnant (and Mitzi Kapture had been obviously showing for quite a few eps even before all this, with no onscreen explanation...as if they hoped that viewers just wouldn't notice. Yeah, right.), he gets killed, and the show continues anyway with two new sets of partners trying to fill the shoes. This storyline HAD to be the writers' revenge against the two principals who had both decided to depart the show. There is simply NO other explanation or excuse for it.

21 Jump Street - post-Depp

MacGyver - when every other ep seemed to be centered around the Challengers Club.

The Beverly Hillbillies - when it went from intelligent, pointed, hilarious satire and social commentary to silly, embarrassing schlock.

 

[David Williams]

That wasn't really reported to the fans at the time the character was killed off... that news only came out later IIRC.

What can I say? I really liked Zhaan and then after she died, the characters seem to be more at each others throats and I only saw a handful of episodes after that (somwhere along the way, John became twins?!?) I was thinking of maybe tuning in to the miniseries to see if its any better than S3 & S4.

 

[Adam_ME]

As someone alluded to in their post, it was hinted at very briefly in Season 3 with Vampire Willow from "The Wish" and "Doppelgangland".

"I'm so evil and skanky....and I think I'm kinda gay."

My only real complaint with Willow's "gay arc" was that I always assumed she was bisexual until Season 7 rolled around and she seemed to have zero interest in dudes. I figured Joss and Co. were playing it safe after pissing off gay and lesbian viewers with the Tara/Evil Willow storyline that closed out Season 6, but it still didn't feel true to the character that had been established in the previous 6 years. Plus it resulted in the Kennedy/Willow subplot.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Season 3 of Farscape really got kicked into high gear when they split up the two "twin Johns" and the remaining crew of Moya and placed half of them on Moya's child. They then started alternating story lines between the two ships and the two crews (both of which had a John, natch!) It was a pretty neat concept and they did some great stuff with it.

In any event, there's practically NO WAY you're going to be able to enjoy the upcoming mini-series if you haven't viewed S3 and S4 yet!

As to the topic: The series: "Star Trek: The Original Series." The episode: "Spock's Brain" (The first episode aired to kick-off its third season after the fans "saved" the show.) 'Nuff said!!

 

[Timothy Alexander]

Joey and Rachel during the last season of Friends. Sure it didn't last very long, but those few episodes with them trying to get a relationship going were very painful.

 

[Scott L]

Dark Angel - All the mutants in season 2. What a waste. The first season had a pretty good backstory and the atmosphere was different from anything else out there. After I saw all the zombies in costumes I knew it was the beginning of the end and just stopped watching.

 

[Holadem]

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H

 

[GeorgePaul]

Here are some more overt departures that, nevertheless, still make me uncomfortable:

Law and Order: I actually appreciate the later seasons with Bratt and Jesse Martin more than the high-handed, rather dated, earlier seasons with Noth because I think the quality of the dialogue--particularly the wit and irony behind McCoy's and Briscoe's comments--actually has improved steadily.

But to introduce a major character's daughter into the series for just a few minutes in a couple episodes only to kill her off was a bad move, considering that major character is still in the series and doesn't seem to have been significantly affected.

Also, it gets tiring of seeing several episodes that initially go outside the white-collar world only to pull the viewer right back into it again by the end of the episode (like the trial of the Russian mafia/corporate money launderers). Even for a series as good as the original L&O, White corporate/family crime gets pretty old after 14 seasons.

Cheers: Is anyone else going to get all the other seasons in the set BUT seasons 4 and 5? These seasons had no Coach and no Rebecca, and played up mercilessly the whole "Sam and Diane: Will they or won't they?" angle on too damn many episodes for my taste.

I remember seeing the promos for some of the episodes in these seasons (1985-87) and, even as a ten-year-old kid, being turned off by them. That plot was just one more manipulative, drawn-out sapping of American housewives' unexplainable "Luke and Laura" couples obsession, and it got in the way of the ensemble cast in those seasons sometimes.

 

[teapot2001]

With one episode left of Last Comic Standing 3--the live season finale in which the winner would be revealed--NBC just canceled the series and won't be airing the finale at all!

~T

 

[JamesED]

The most painful part of Rachel and Joey was their trying to make Rachel's character match Joey's.