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

[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.