So with Dexter: New Blood wrapping up I was thinking about this. I loved Dexter for much of its original run. I defended it for a long time and was a fanboy for it until the abysmal eighth season.

Looking back on it the show really went downhill after the fourth season. I think the fifth had some moments still, but it was definitely rocky from season five onwards.

Dexter: New Blood I would say was also a very mixed bag. It’s like the creators wanted to apologize and do better, but it still wasn’t very great.

It’s frustrating because I like the show and it’s characters. I think Michael C. Hall is amazing as Dexter and at it’s high points it may have been one of my favorite shows. Those low points though just drag it down so much.

I feel like The Simpsons should have ended 3 or 4 seasons ago.

There are more than a few Showtime shows that fall into this category simply because they carried for several seasons after they should have wrapped up. You still mostly watch because you liked the characters, but you wish it wouldn't have stuck around so long.

Mostly in order to frustrate you, you probably had to have liked a show. Game of Thrones would qualify. Lost would qualify. It closed strong, but the West Wing had some frustrating seasons. I liked the final episode, but the Office should have ended with Michael leaving. And maybe a year or two before that too.

Homeland FTW!

All Showtime shows.

What did I win?

It’s funny actually but I have noticed a lot of Showtime originals don’t end on the highest of notes. Wonder why that is in comparison to a lot of other cable networks.

I think the main problem is that they drag their shows on for too long which makes the writing get worse and when they finally decide to end it - they kind of paint themselves into a corner and can't do anything good with the finale.

Blacklist - the show that won’t die

Lost

Shows which were canceled with a cliffhanger, such as Dark Matter.

Does it have to be a show which was great but the quality dipped, or can it be a show where the premise/source material is beloved but the translation to show is anything but?

If it's the latter, I'll put something like DC/HBO's Titans up there. Love the original Wolfman/Perez comics, even love the costumes (except Starfire season 1) but man the plotting really really brings it down.

Same with something like Foundation, which does an interesting thing: everything adapted from the novels is basically trash, everything they made up original to the show is great. Which is why this show would probably be much better if it had nothing to do with the Foundation premise because they certainly have something there.

We started watching some of the most recent seasons after years of not bothering and it's been some very funny stuff.


For me: Star Trek Discovery and Picard. Both cool concepts with occasional neat moments, but really suffer from a lack of creative vision (the writers for Picard admitted they didn't know where they were going when they started filming the first season).

Manifest is a recent offender.

I was going to say this one as well, but I didn't want someone to accuse me of racism.

Sons of Anarchy

re: Discovery

Yeah, it's hard to point out the actual flaws of Discovery (and The Last Jedi) without getting lumped in with the racists who don't like Sonequa Martin-Green or Kelly Marie-Tran. I have nothing against those two, I have plenty of issues with their characters.

Discovery has become an abomination. It has become background noise while I fold laundry. It's terrible, directionless, rudderless, and pointless.

I am more hopeful for Picard given who the season's supposed Big Bad is going to be.

A couple of fairly recent (past 2-3 years) Netflix shows were frustrating to watch and it was not the fault of the shows, rather in how they were handled by Netflix. Teenage Bounty Hunters seemed ripe for another season and yet it becomes a one and done, and Daybreak was also cut off at the knees and canceled. Two interesting shows that were not simply retreads of similar shows that had come before them, and should have had a chance to thrive on streaming with a second season.

Billions is probably heading into this phase as we speak.

I really liked Homeland and after they left Brody behind them, the show delivered each year. So the only bad season is season 3, at least in my opinion.

If we're talking about the same character, then I hope

While it never got better than Season 2, I think it held up pretty well. Except for the roughly 8,000 episodes spent in Northern Ireland.

Once the streaming/cable channels realized that 10-13 episodes was the perfect amount for a season, and that they didn't have to fill another 10-13 episodes with filler to reach that magical 100-episode-yay-syndication watermark, TV got so much better.

Case in point? Smallville. So much noise, the signal got entirely degraded. Every season.

I used to feel the same until we got Discovery and it’s all plot in every episode with barely room for anything else. We still barely know the rest of the crew and they keep introducing new people like Book.
There’s something to be said about the TNG/DS9/VOY era where you had the occasional episode to just explore some weird idea. Like when Michael McKean was a demented clown.

Discovery is just a not good, but not because of the serialization of the story. ENT wasn't very good either but when they made the show into "24 in space" it worked.

+1 on ST: Discovery. I liked the first two seasons, but in season 3 it went downhill fast and S4 is even worse so far.

Most* of the DC shows on The CW had a few good seasons and then declined precipitously.
Arrow - was great at first, but after they got Oliver and Felicity together and then split them up and turned her into a joyless character the show never really recovered.
Supergirl - some fun villains and plotlines in the beginning and Benoist was very charming as Kara, but the writing became godawful in later seasons.
The Flash - some fun villains and plotlines in the beginning and Gustin was very charming as Barry, but the writing became godawful in later seasons.
DC's Legends of Tomorrow - this show has always been kind of a mess, but it was often entertaining. The later seasons though just feel like someone threw some scripts into a shredder and then randomly taped the pieces back together.
*I never watched Black Lightning, and I quit Batwoman in season 1. Superman and Lois is good so far.