Disco has its problems, but episode count isn't one of them. It begins and ends with the writing.

And with TNG etc. there were entirely too many bad filler episodes to count (and I watched them all lol). Oh look, another borefest Holodeck adventure and hey there's yet another return of Troi's mother, etc. They had some great character episodes, I'll admit, but there wasn't a single Star Trek series that wouldn't have been benefitted from having their episode counts slashed.

So for some reason while I was doing my usual light sleeping with one eye open to keep an eye on the clock right before I need to wake up for work extra sleep routine I started thinking about Lethal Weapon, which has to be one of the most frustrating shows to have come out in the past 10 years. I just went to IMDB and there was more star power on this show than I even remembered, and some great cameos or brief recurring spots.

A great cast, and this show was just getting better and better as the episodes went by but then we started getting reports from blogs/entertainment sites and the like that Clayne Crawford was a nightmare to work with and blew up at some crew members, and even yelled at some kids who were in an apartment swimming pool near a location where a scene was being filmed. Then the studio acknowledged the gossip regarding turmoil on the set of Lethal Weapon was accurate and they were investigating. We all know how things turned out, Clayne's character gets recast and the show was never the same again (I like his replacement just fine, but the show never recovered from its dirty laundry being so publicly aired).

I forgot that the show ended on its third season (but I think Season 1/2 were short seasons) which would usually be an okay run before a show was cancelled but knowing how much of a hothead Clayne was, and even learning that Damon was quite the diva on the show, it just has me shaking my head over what could have been. Maybe this show would have never seen a 4th season even under the best of circumstances (due to low ratings despite how much some folks like myself loved the show), but of course we will never know what could have been.

I have a feeling that if Clayne was not such a hothead that LW would have made him a household name. He struck me as someone who was very talented, but talk about a self-own as he really wrecked an opportunity to become the actor that gets invited onto a show because they look good, have actual talent, and also have a bit of charismatic charm when in front of the camera.

Smallville is a good one. As interested as I was in the subject matter, there were so many useless/pointless episodes I abandoned it long before the series ended.

I just watched Invasion on AppleTV and dang it's a s-l-o-w moving and frustrating show. So slow I think there's no chance I'd watch another season.

Can you say "sorority vampires." But IMO, Smallville is a show that got so bad it jumped the shark (the sorority vampires) and then changed to become a better show, when it added more Green Arrow and other superheroes. So, for me, it was good, got frustratingly bad, and then got good again.

Yeah once they retconned Clark into being a Freshman and keeping the high school thing going for four seasons they just ran out of gas. So it took a dive and rose from the ashes. Adding Lois added a ton to the show as well.

Smallville was bad from the beginning and got worse. It started to be good in Season 5. I can't imagine giving a show so time to develop today. I would have stopped watching after 3 episodes.

Titans frustrates the hell out of me. All the pieces are there. You see glimpses of what it could be, but horrible writing has made that show unbearably dumb. And it's with my favorite DC characters, so I keep watching... hoping it'll come together at some point to be the awesome show it could be.

Finally thought of one and there is no qualifier or discussion needed... One word title... Tops all others listed this far. Who can guess it?

Smallville's showrunners made a couple of decisions early in the series that severely hampered its potential. One, the ridiculous unwillingness to let Clark fly or wear a costume of any kind even after several seasons. They refused to let the Clark-Lana relationship evolve and were stuck repeating that romance's off and on again status every season. It's not a coincidence the show's writing got a little better when they finally moved past Lana and added Lois.

this

I agree, though I'm not sure it's at the top, just because there was only one decent season and that was only because they nailed the season 1 ending (there was sooo much meandering before that, though not nearly as much as the subsequent seasons).

Also, even that season 1 probably doesn't hold up that well... it was mainly the novelty of seeing those kinds of characters on TV, and now that has long since passed.

When Heroes first premiered, I was super excited for it. I made it through literally ONE show and dropped it. After hearing how bad it went downhill afterward, I’m glad I never picked it up again.

Tom Welling was on a recent Inside of You podcast with Rosenbaum and this actually came up. He said it was in his contract that he would never have to wear the suit. He also went on to say early on its run, the writers tried to slip in the suit in one script and Welling had to call them on it. So it sounds like it wasn't just the showrunners that didn't want the suit.

I've heard Welling's ridiculously superstitious beliefs about the so-called Superman curse. He seriously believes anyone that wears the Superman costume on screen will have a terrible fate. A shame because he probably was the best Superman casting ever after Christopher Reeve.

Superstitious or not, Dean Cain turned out to be... well Dean Cain, and Routh also almost disappeared from the face of Hollywood after Returns. I had to go look up who played Superboy in that TV series because I completely forgot (the only cast member I really remember is Haiduk).

But yeah, I'm certain later on in Smallville especially when others began putting on costumes that they really wanted him to put on at least the cape, I can't see them refusing to do so for series reasons at that point, so I completely believe that Welling just refused.

It did get better, then it got much, much worse. Like I said, there was so much meandering early in the first season but when things started coming together for the season finale, the series was (IMHO) pretty good. Then they had no idea where to go from there, especially since they had basically three characters who were way too overpowered and had come into their own.

Wow no one has mentioned The Walking Dead yet?

One of the most frustrating shows. The first few seasons were pinnacle TV. Just an absolutely trail blazing TV show. Then it started stalling out leveled off until if fell off a cliff when they killed off . I've never seen a TV show jump off of such a huge cliff. They had a rabid fan based but they lost so many people after that moment. It was so over the top in terms of violence and it was the real breaking point where all the flaws started to quickly show. The only time the show did anything interesting is when they killed off a character. But it didn't totally jump the shark quality wise. There were still some good episodes sprinkled here and there that showed they could still pull off a decent story. They should have ended it several seasons ago. This is like the show that brought about hate watching.



STD is incredibly frustrating as a life long Trek fan. Should have been a triumphant return to TV for trek that would bring in new audiences but then they used it as a sacrificial lamb for their stupid CBS all access service thereby guaranteeing only hardcore trekkers watch it. Then they force a serial plot that has zero payoff and zero character development.

Ah yes the Arrowverse. Another example of shows that have such a great start and just continue for way too long then they should because it's the CW and they have to beat a dead horse because they don't have much else in terms of programming. I think the worse part is the episode count. There are just so many shows and so many episodes per season that it's just a chore to get through.

I really need to stop hate watching so much TV.

But I would argue that with TNG era episodes, even the really bad ones all added to the enrichment and the development of the characters or the federation as a whole. There was always some B plot that was going on that at least contributed in some way. Some character going through something or some event that was going on in the federation. I absolutely love those little moments and it really made you connect with the characters in a way that's sorely missing from New Trek. All the characters from New Trek aren't fully fleshed out characters. They are just there to move the (hollow IMHO) plot along. You rarely get to know them in any way. Every line of dialogue is only in service of the plot and not the characters. I think Trek is at it's best when it's character focused. For an example look at DS9. Even though it's well known to be very plot driven and one of the first shows to adopt a continuous story arc spanning several seasons. But if you look at how they deal with the dominion war a lot of the episodes were still character driven. A good example is the DS9 episode "It's Only a Paper Moon". Even though it takes place at the height of the Dominion war anything related to the overall arc of war is moot. Nothing is accomplished or advanced when it comes to the plot but oh boy did it do an incredible amount of character development for Nog, Jake and even Vic Fontaine.

For me it was Rescue Me. The first 3 seasons are some of my most favorite TV of all time. After that it just turned into this ridiculous soap opera, and I ended up bailing on the series midway through season 5 and have no idea how it ended.

Back before The Walking Dead tv show premiered--like a few months before--I saw the trailer for it and heard that it was based on a comic book so I immediately began reading the comic starting at the beginning. Like the show, there are a lot of ups and downs in the comics and some beloved characters are killed off. But when you-know-who from your spoiler met their end in the comic is when I quit reading it. I just kind of lost interest in what happened to the rest of them anymore. I was a big fan of the tv series too, though I did start to get weary of just the bleakness of that world. Then when the show depicted that character's death in pretty much the same way, I was done. Even though I knew it was coming and was prepared for it, it still took away whatever interest I had left in the show. Haven't watched it since, though I did later watch the first few seasons of Fear the Walking Dead.

Leary and producers didn't seem to have a real vision for the show after a certain point but kept on plugging away because Rescue Me kept getting renewed. That show had one of the biggest falls in quality from its opening seasons.

I almost checked out on The Walking Dead after the 5th season, but I gave it one or two more before I was done.

They may have kept with the source material to a point, but it got old seeing people behave so stupidly. The survivors NEED each other. The walkers are too great in number to not have as many people as possible working together to secure their own safety. The idea that people would keep following these narcissistic, murderous lunatics and fight among themselves is stupid. They would be more afraid of losing people to defend their boundaries against the walkers, and the nutjob would-be petty dictators would be thrown out to fend for themselves (or killed). It just got so repetitive (every year or two they'd kill off a long time character, and every year or two they'd find a new psychotic human enemy to face).

I checked out and never looked back. The show just got too frustrating to enjoy anymore.

I haven't watched the later seasons but people working against their self interest and propping up nutjobs because those nutjobs give them a (false) sense of security seems pretty realistic to me...

lol

Yeah watching it again it might hit a bit differently.

There was some meme that I can't find right now. Something like I used to wonder how everyone got infected on TWD now I know it's because thousands of people ran up to zombies saying I'm not going to live in fear.