Day #14 of the 30 Days of Television Challenge

[shadowkat]

This is Day #14 of The 30 Days of Television Challenge.

The prompt is A series that disappointed you - started out well, went down-hill or had a great pilot, but not so great afterwards, etc.

There's sooo many. It's tragic really. Most series just go on too long. The writers and actors tend to get burned out around the fourth-fifth season, and after that...things go downhill. But there are a few that showed great promise to start and after five or six episodes, you think, oh dear, there's not much here is there? They put it all in the first five or six episodes.

The challenge here - is to pick a series the petered out or didn't hold up to it's promise after about five to ten episodes. Not one that had a bad ending or went off the rails in the fifth or sixth season.

Mine?

Joan or Arcadia - I loved the first two or three episodes then quickly lost interest and gave up on it.

Comments

[mtbc]

We see it somewhat with series where the original writer/creator penned initial episodes but decreasingly many of later. Or of course when after the first season they change showrunner.

[shadowkat]

That happens as well. There's actually a higher turn-over in show-runners/writers than actors on series. And in television the writer matters more than anyone else.

West Wing had that problem - Aaron Sorkin went off the rails somewhere in the third or fourth season, so someone else took over.

Or the show-runner will get bored around the fifth season, take off and hand it over to someone else - which is what happened with Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Buffy, and various others.

I think Lost and Battlestar Galatica are among the few that kept the same show-runner throughout.

[yourlibrarian]

Agreed, this could be a very long list. And in addition to shows which just headed downhill after the first season are those which, as the question notes, had an intriguing pilot and premise which they did nothing with and yet dragged on uncancelled even while other shows never got a chance to develop.

[shadowkat]

And in addition to shows which just headed downhill after the first season are those which, as the question notes, had an intriguing pilot and premise which they did nothing with and yet dragged on uncancelled even while other shows never got a chance to develop.

Exactly. Firefly, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Now & Again, American Gothic - all fall under the list of cancelled series that never got a chance to develop, while their slots were taken up by...sigh.

[cjlasky7]

I stayed with JOA a lot longer than you did, and I noticed a clear demarcation point in quality: after the first 13 episodes, it fell off the cliff.

It's as if CBS gave it a full season order after the first thirteen, and (series creator) Barbara Hall said, "That's great!"

Then:

"Uhhh....now what?"

[shadowkat]

Oh I think I stayed with it up until that point as well. And yep it went off the proverbial cliff. The premise unfortunately was hard for the writers to maintain, I think?

[cactuswatcher]

The one I'd pick is Crime Story (1986-1988). The first couple episodes were excellent, but I think I quit watching after five episodes, because I didn't like where it was heading. It did make it two season but without me.

[shadowkat]

I vaguely remember Crime Story, and yeah, same thing - I gave up.

[cjlasky7]

Heroes (created by Tim Kring)

Heroes had one of the best first seasons of any TV superhero show, and the future seemed unlimited; it was an Avengers or X-men without decades of comic book continuity to hold it back.

But the s1 finale should have been a warning. It's a bad sign when an even dozen heroes can't bring down one supervillain (even one like Sylar) when you have a supposed master strategist like Bennett (Jack Coleman) on your side.

Seasons two through four meandered fruitlessly, despite the addition of Kristen Bell and some gonzo plot twists. (Nathan is dead... but Sylar becomes Nathan!)

A great cast and some great characters, but near the end, it was close to unwatchable.

[cactuswatcher]

The first episode of season 2 killed it for me. I guess I didn't take the warning from the S1 finale.

[shadowkat]

I came very close to picking that one. (It was between Heroes, Twin Peaks and JOA, I picked the one that I stuck with the shortest period of time.)

Heroes is a good choice - and I agree. The first season up to the finale, was excellent. The writers decided to go dark and have the heroes lose. Which is a tempting choice - nice and subversive - goes against expectations, right? Also arrogant and a bad idea. It only works if you have a really interesting villain, or villains, who are ambiguous and can be redeemed. It does not work with psychopathic serial killers who cannot be redeemed, and aren't that interesting and fall into cliche.

The problem with Heroes is Sylar was never as interesting as the writers thought. I was bored of him by the end of S1, I didn't need more. They should have killed him off at the end of S1 and found a different villain, there were several to choose from. Agree with cactuswatcher - the first episode of S2 kind of killed it for me as well. I gave up on it somewhere around the sixth episode of the second season.

[cjlasky7]

Sylar was never as interesting as the writers tbought.

THIS. Zachary Quinto did a great job here, but Kring and his writers never should have returned to the metaphorical well. Sometimes, listening to your fandom cripples your imagination--and it makes the fans wonder if you had that much imagination in the first place.

[jesuswasbatman]

The creators should have stuck to their original plan and had a different cast of characters each season. Instead their inexplicable fascination with Sylar and the Petrelli and Bennett families sent the show down the toilet, and created a very nasty subtext where the affluent white characters were important and everyone else was disposable.

[wendelah1]

Nashville. I loved the show when it was focused on the music industry. Callie Khouri's husband T-Bone Burnett was the show's executive music producer and composer for the first season. He's the real deal and when he left, I thought the series suffered. It became much more about the character's sex lives, marriage problems and alcohol and drug abuse and less and less about the music itself. It had a very talented cast, as I recall. After season one, I was mainly watching to keep my husband company. He also lost interest by season three, I think.

[shadowkat]

Oh, I agree on Nashville. Although it did have some excellent musical numbers in the later seasons. But Khouri and the producers fought over it. And after the first season, it seemed to move more and more away from being a female centric series to a male one. By the third season - we were completely in the pov of the male characters, and the two strong female leads disappeared almost completely from the show, leaving the weakest to hold it. They killed off one, and sent the other into a cult.

The new writers had written and show-runned Thirty-something, and tried to turn Nashville into Thirty-Something in the third and final season, and it didn't work. It lost its center.

Oh there are so many musical television series that...had potential but just didn't work..

Shame. They were planning on turning it into a musical...but I think those plans may have been dropped now.

[atpo_onm]

Any thoughts on Whedon's Dollhouse? I stayed with it throughout, but was disappointed in that Whedon kind of crammed in a quick wrap-up ending after its cancellation was announced after the second season. But I know many viewers really thought it went on too long, that perhaps it should have been a single season. Or maybe the material was just too disturbing? It was indeed at times.

[cactuswatcher]

Both in Dollhouse and Nikita, IIRC, it was decided to change the fundamental behavior of some of the secondary characters after the first season. These changes were shown in the first episodes of the second season without bothering to make them earned in the story. Once that happened, I only lingered briefly each case. It just was a sign of more careless and lazy writing to come.