There are no two ways about it—we absolutely love TV shows and movies. There’s nothing quite like immersing yourself in a fantasy world or someone else’s drama and hardships. A well-crafted storyline and believable characters are worth far more than their weight in gold. Alas! A good pilot episode or even a great first season don’t guarantee quality entertainment in the future…
Redditor u/DadIsMadAtMe started up a really interesting thread on r/AskReddit after asking cinephiles around the globe about the shows that they started watching but hated so much they couldn’t muster the patience to finish them. And, wow, do we relate to a lot of these opinions. Scroll down to see what popular shows went downhill and why.
Bored Panda reached out to entertainment, pop culture, and lifestyle expert Mike Sington to get his opinion on TV shows jumping the shark, why the quality of writing falls off the cliff so often, and what a long-running series can mean for an actor’s career. Read on for our full interview with Hollywood’s Ultimate Insider!
#1
Walking Dead.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the first three seasons. Then, they brought new show runners in and they destroyed the show. The storytelling was insulting, there was no creativity, they immediately made our favorite characters so unlikable, events just happened for no real reason, and it just felt like these new writers had no prior knowledge of the show before working on it. I can only think about what this show could have been if these changes didn’t happen.
The end of the line for me was how they were painfully dragging out the whole Negan saga. I don’t remember what season it was but I just quit in the middle of it
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#2
Don’t hate me but Friends. Seen the first 5 episodes and absolutely hated it.
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#3
Orange is the New Black. the first few seasons were good. They lost me after a while!
Piper annoyed the f*****g s**t out of me
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#4
Handmaid’s Tale. The first season starts so strong but as the seasons go on the story refuses to move forward. It was just an endless cycle of failed escapes. Or when characters finally have the chance to escape they either change their mind or go back inside. It’s like the writers were too afraid to shake up the status quo. After a few seasons I just gave up.
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#5
Greys anatomy. I checked out FOREVER ago.
I expect you don’t mind spoilers so I’m going with it lol, but season 18 (I think) had her finally leaving grey Sloan and she was about to leave for Boston and then her house suddenly burned down from a lightning strike and I couldn’t stop laughing, it was so absurdly overdramatic and unnecessary
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#6
Glee. The funny thing about this show is it originally started as a satire of the very thing it became.
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#7
Everybody loves Raymond.
God what a manchild Raymond was. And the unnecessary hate on debra on all the subreddits. It just made me so furious.
If I ever wound up with a husband like Raymond I would just pack my bags and run for my life.
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#8
Heroes.
Well, the main villain of the show was the writer’s strike. When they fired it up for season 3 it’s as if no one knew what had happened in the first 2 seasons. It had potential.
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#9
Vikings
after Ragnar died it was unwatchably boring
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#10
Big Bang Theory. Hey, Big Bang was a great show! All 3 seasons! OMFG, there’s 12 seasons? OMFG, somehow Young Sheldon has been renewed for a 7th season?
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#11
The Simpsons. It was my favorite show for years and it just keeps going and it’s not funny anymore. I do like to watch the first episode when they get Santa’s little helper around Christmas and I have a DVD with some early treehouse of horror episodes I watch around Halloween.
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#12
Star Trek: Picard
I found it to be an absolute betrayal and slap in the face to the spirit of Star Trek and the character of Jean-Luc Picard.
I’ve been a Trekkie since I was a toddler. Seeing such a positive and enlightened group that was the United Federation of Planets be twisted into a racist and xenophobic organization for the sake of hammering home its themes was awful. Yes, Star Trek was always political and was always “woke” as they say now, but I think taking a society that’s progressed beyond all the awful s**t we have today and making them just as awful is saddening. It also doesn’t help that the writers engage in pushing stereotypes for this same purpose. Whether intentional on the writers’ part or not, I found that taking the black lead of the show, and making her addicted to drugs and living in poverty in a society that’s supposed to have no addiction or money – offensive and racist.
They took Picard, a strong willed, respectful, and good man who held true to his ethics and desire to do the right thing and made him completely unrecognizable.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, Star Trek: Picard genuinely upset me. All I saw while watching it was a series that I’ve held dear to my heart for most of my life being mangled and twisted into a corporate product designed to hit check boxes of what modern day audiences like in sci-fi shows. Which is dark, gritty, depressing, grimdark nonsense apparently.
Old Star Trek looked at our society and said “We can be better than this.” Modern Trek seems to blatantly say “No, we can’t.”
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#13
Once Upon A Time
So effing glad I stopped at season two.
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#14
how i met your mother.
After that final season, this is mine as well. A whole season spent on a wedding that was undone in ten minutes.
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#15
Arrow.
For five years i was stranded on an island…
No wait, i was stranded on an island, and in hong kong, and then back to the island before i actually was in new york, but then i was rescued on the island again! It became an absolute mess lol
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#16
How to get away with murder. Very repetitive
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#17
Riverdale. I think I lost it when it became fantasy/paranormal/cult horror? And I’ve heard that it ventures into time travel or something. Even typing this out confuses me so much lo
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#18
Westworld. Loved the first season. Then it started going downhill. Haven’t seen the latest season and I don’t plan on it.
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#19
Supernatural.
Season 1-5: Sam and Dean search for their missing father, unravel the mystery of their mother’s death, and close the gates of hell.
Season 15: Sam and Dean need to kill god.
It feels like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that’s gone on for far too long lol
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#20
Game of Thrones.
It’s a tough show to watch, even if you like it. Besides killing everyone you love, it’s also really ra**y.
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#21
Lost. Made it about 9 episodes and it seems JJ’s career has done nothing since to show me he’s capable of ending anything.
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#22
The Blacklist
Season 1 established a cool story and a great anti-hero. The remainder of the series is about the insufferable protagonist ruining his plans, and how an entire FBI agency bends over backwards to support her, no matter how often or how hard she betrays them.
There’s a season without her that I thought was actually good again but she returns and starts immediately making incredibly stupid mistakes again so I couldn’t continue.
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#23
I’m just glad they ended scrubs at season 8 and didn’t try to make a spin-off
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#24
13 reasons why. I’m not gonna lie when this show dropped I binged all of the first season in secrecy because I was so embarrassed that I was hooked lmao. But getting to the end of that season I was satisfied. Was not into whatever school shooter plot they were setting up for the rest so just called it quits after S1. Feel zero need to ever return.
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#25
Dexter. Trinity killer season was peak tv…but then Debs finding out about things and somehow allowing it to continue just felt weird. I stopped watching not long after that. Tried rewatching it all more recently and got to the exact same point before giving up for a second time! ha
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#26
Suits. How they managed to put together 9 seasons of the same s**t over and over I’ll never understand becuase I quit in the middle of season 3.
elizabethjacques added:
exactly. it dawned on me that all it really was was people strutting in and out of each others’ offices having brief heated exchanges.
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#27
The Umbrella Academy, sort of… first season was fire, second season 2 I started hating Allison, stopped paying attention, gave season 3 a chance, realized how abysmally terrible Allison’s character is, half assed my way through the rest of the season, really only paying attention to “important parts”.
The only saving Grace for season 2&3 are Aiden, who does an overly incredible job at portraying number 5.
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#28
Gilmore Girls
Forced myself to get through most of the show because I didn’t realize how insufferable the main characters where going to be until I was already too far in…and even then I couldn’t finish it. Rory and Lorelei single-handedly ruined the show for me.
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#29
That 90s Show.
I liked That 70s Show. It was funny and it had its moments. But I watched the first couple episodes of That 90s Show and it just isn’t cutting it for me. It seems like the old characters show up just for cheap nostalgia points for the fans and Kitty/Red/the basement are only there to keep reminding the fans its a That 70s Show sequel. Even though Kitty and Red are blatantly the best part of the show. The kids in this show are just…not people I’m interested in at all. First, they look way more like kids than the original cast which I suppose is technically more accurate and should be a good thing, but instead it just feels weird being an adult watching them deal with sex and drugs. Second, the humor feels way more modern with kids who are just unbelievably caricatures. Third, Eric’s daughter is supposed to be a socially awkward nerd like he was but when you look at her you know instantly there is no way she would have had problems making friends and getting attention in school. Eric looked like a nerd. The characters in the original all looked their part and were written at least moderately believable. This feels like a lazy cash grab. Not interested.
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#30
Oh man, I’m gonna get roasted for this, but Breaking bad.
Just couldn’t hold my interest for some reason.
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#31
Netflix’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I really liked the first season, barely made it through the second season, and refuse to watch the third
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#32
The Flash.
I gave up on the entire Arrowverse about five years ago. It wasn’t even like a conscious decision. I was kind of getting behind in all my shows, and I eventually realized I was about a month or so behind on Arrow and Flash and Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow, and I just didn’t care. So I just never bothered to watch any of them anymore.
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#33
Emily in Paris. I’ve heard that show described as “French Twilight minus the vampires.”
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#34
The office, I’m sorry but it was too boring
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#35
Shameless. Just an over the top soap opera towards the later seasons. Still haven’t finished the last 6 episodes and probably never will.
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#36
The Witcher.
Yes the series isn’t over (yet) but as a fan of the world just not interested after season 2
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#37
Stranger Things.
Good monster mystery show.
Awful preteen romance show.
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#38
every single season of AHS since Freak Show. always starts out strong and interesting. and then usually halfway through, Ryan Murphy consistently shows that he can’t finish a story and I realize what’s going to happen and just decide to quit. around Roanoke, I stopped even giving him a chance.
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#39
True Blood. I can’t exactly remember what happened, but sometime around when other faeries start showing up regularly (maybe end of Season 4?) I just suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore.
I think some of the central human characters were also gone by then, which might have made it harder to stick with as well.
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#40
Sons of Anarchy.
Man, I was so into this show! Then Clay starts beating up on Gemma and someone kidnaps Jax’s kid so now we have to go to Ireland?? It felt like when an 80’s sitcom would introduce a cute kid when the ratings were slipping and the show should just end.
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#41
The last two seasons of Killing Eve.
Season 1 is one of the most perfect seasons of any show I have ever seen. I am still convinced that there’s no way the rest of it was the same show.
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#42
Late, but Once Apon a Time. God the show was a masterpiece up until it wasn’t.
Everything Has A Price
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#43
Designated Survivor
First season was incredible, second season was fine, after that it was awful. It became something so different than when it began that the show was unrecognizable so I stopped watching within a few episodes of when it became a generic Washington DC based show.
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#44
You
I know it’s supposed the be scandalous [criminal] porn for modern basic women but the first season wasn’t that bad. Then it all derailed and now it’s just the same thing: dude obsesses over woman, he somehow gets the girl, girl turns out to be not what he wanted, he finds a different one to obsess over, repeat. I gave up on season 3 when everyone was so [unalive] happy.
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#45
Girls, I just hated all the characters. No redeeming qualities.
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#46
This is us.
This show was like a never-ending drama sledge hammer to my head. It never ended. I only made it though the first two seasons.
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#47
Prison break. Watched a few episodes into season 2 but it got boring.
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#48
Arrested Development after Netflix took over
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#49
Bojack, actually. The show was really good… so much so that I found that I was commiserating too much. I have depression and the show would negatively affect my mood so much that I ended up hating it. Can’t stand how it makes me feel, so I never finished it.
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#50
Wednesday. I don’t think im the target demographic though. Seemed like a corny CW show.
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#51
Peaky blinders.
I got quite annoyed with the fact that every season Tommy needed to have a new girl to f**k.
Especially him the communist suffragette, why did they need to get together? Seemed really forced and annoying. I wish they had just had mutual respect eventually and not gone to romance.
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#52
Money Heist. The main character, Tokyo was an insufferable b***h. Had to stop because of her. Literally the worst main character in history.
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