Season one is breaking out of prison. So far so good.
Season two is a manhunt. That's fair, it's the aftermath.
Season three is breaking out of prison.. again! But this time in Panama. Technically that is the show, so alright.
Season four is a secret shadow organization who can cure all diseases but don't.
Also there is a post-show film that adds another prison break for some reason. Also I'm learning the show was revived for a fifth season, I can't say what that's about.
It was conceptualized as a miniseries and not really intended to go beyond the first season. They didn't write it to have a plot post season one so it goes off the rails quickly as they tried to capture the original essence that made it popular while winging it on the story. Hell they didn't even originally write it to have as many episodes in the first season as they ended up having and iirc they even considered just making a movie instead
Look, honestly I was into it up until the last episode. I knew the story was twisting and turning a bit too much but I kept watching and very much enjoyed the last season.
I say that it lost sight of its original premise because yes, technically it did. But that doesn’t mean the content wasn’t still great — this is a perfect example of losing your audience by not following the original narrative. I sometimes think the show would’ve been more financially successful had they dragged out the first season into several but I wouldn’t have wanted them to actually do that.
I wanted to come here to say Westworld. I never managed to finish the last season, I just lost complete interest in it. Great first season though and the second was also still enjoyable.
I think S3 of Westworld was enjoyable and had a lot of good ideas, even if it was a tad disconnected from the original island they were from.
But, S4 just went too far. I was still kind of okay with the sudden shift at the second half, because the progression did sort of make sense. But, that whole arc after that was just overreach and too many god-like characters in the mix.
I can't believe they planned on having another season after that. How do you change the world to that degree and figure out some other season to solve all of the plot threads?
The whole writing process stunk of season-to-season short-term bullshit, without an overarching start-to-finish plan for the whole series. This is why Mr. Robot excels and Westworld didn't.
I've seen (and loved) the first season fairly recently, but after hearing so many people saying that the show went off the rails I decided early on that I was only gonna watch the one.
Can't disagree more. I do think the clear conflicts between HBO and the executive producers (there's entire scenes in S4 dedicated to a meta-FU to the corporate demand for telling the violence story and not the maze in field story) led to a more disjointed later seasons than planned.
But rewatching S1 it's clear that the twist at the end of S4 was planned from the very start, which is just wild, and probably the biggest temporal misdirection in the history of film and TV — fitting from Jonathan Nolan, but still unexpected.
And then if you go and see the original Westworld film, the degree to which they were already starting off with such a different take can be even more appreciated. It goes from a film about a robot rebellion where the robots can talk but literally no one ever asks why it's happening or even talks to the robot at all to a series of "if you can't tell the difference does it matter?"
::: spoiler The whole point
The original narrative IS the narrative about it already being a simulation with the 'guests' also already simulated. It's just that it doesn't appear that way at first because it's a gradual reveal across multiple planned seasons that's got its own smaller first season set of reveals along the way. So when you realize the twist in the first season you think "oh, now I'm caught up with the events" and when you see Bernard is a machine of an earlier human you think "oh, this is the exception and not the rule." But there are details in the first season that can only be explained by the events revealed in the later seasons.
:::
S2 has terrible pacing and I do think there are various issues with how S3-S4 progresses in certain arcs, but the broad plot was very clearly planned from the start in hindsight, but HBO had it out for them (look at how quickly after the cancellation the series wasn't even available on HBO's streaming properties), and unfortunately they didn't get the S5 to reveal just how much had been layered in earlier on.
::: spoiler TLDR
TL;DR: You were always supposed to have been watching the civilization level fidelity test, not original events playing out.
:::
Sherlock unfortunately. S1-2 are some of the best TV I've ever watched. 3 was okay, and then 4 was completely off the rails, with each episode being about some zany conspiracy. Granted it can't take all the credit, Doyle did the same.
The worst was the little closed-eye twitching Cumberbatch was doing when "going" through all this knowledge. It was always kinda there, but season 4 was peak "let's show him doing that for 10min straight." It looked so ridiculous...
I actually think that seasons 3&4 ruined the previous seasons.
The issues presented in the later seasons were all present before then, but weren’t as obvious.
NCUTI AND whittaker, although its more to blame on the showrunner. Whittaker especially had problems with how the show was being run. ncuti was a weaker show than even whittakers runs. Rani, missy, masters all had such better storylines.
The group that find old episodes have kind of announced that there’s going to be an announcement soon. People connected to the group but not actually in the group have essentially said that a private collector has died, that they have at least one lost episode and that it’ll be returned to the BBC soon, plus that they’re in negotiation with other collectors who have yet more episodes to acquire them before they die, too.
The group’s called Film Is Fabulous, and here’s the statement they made:
As mentioned by Sue Malden at our RECOVERED event in May, we are aware of several missing episodes of Doctor Who (Sue stated one [or] two, but there are more than this) in private film collections in the UK. We are liaising with the individuals about cataloguing and preserving their entire collection, including the missing Doctor Who episodes, and ensuring that copies are returned to the BBC. We expect to make a detailed announcement shortly.
The Daily Star doesn’t give a source for this information, and has a somewhat spotty reputation with this kind of thing, but their suggestions for what’s in private hands are: Episode 4 of The Tenth Planet, Episode 3 of The Web Of Fear, and all of Marco Polo.
I’m suspicious because, apart from Power Of The Daleks, those are all the most-wanted finds. And if someone’s telling you everything you want to hear, then you should always pause to go “hmmm”.
Marco Polo, though. It’s a great story, even just presented as a series of telesnaps with bad audio. Imagine if we actually get to see Ping Cho’s dance! And it’s Warris Hussain, so you know that it’s going to be a story which makes the absolute most of its limited resources. People moan about episodes 2-4 of An Unearthly Child, but I think they’re gorgeous. And look at how dynamic the filmed inserts are.
Again, not getting my hopes up, but just imagine if we actually got to see Marco Polo in all its glory.
When it was still new I watched the first season then quickly got bored of the second. Around episode 3. I said to myself "I'm going to start the last episode of this season and if they're still on this fucking farm then I am never fucking watching it again"
And it was so.
NO idea why everyone else seemed to feel differently about it.
The Expanse (books, never finished the show) went really hard on this. It was difficult for me to finish because it was all just people being dumb for more than 100k pages with aliens thrown in for no reason.
Rosanne, the 90's sitcom starring Rosanne Barr and John Goodman. One of the many "living room set with a couch in the middle" family sitcoms, this one about an Illinois blue collar family, the Connors, and their life and times trying to make ends meet. Eight seasons of this premise making acclaimed TV, and then in the ninth season, they win the lottery, go on all these outlandish adventures, Dan cheats on Rosanne, etc. The series finale reveals the whole show is a story being told by Rosanne Barr, and that the last season was mostly bullshit, they hadn't won the lottery, Dan had died of his heart attack in the previous season, and the show ended on a "wtf was all that?" kind of note.
I think I'll also mention Lassie, which is just kinda weird. Non-Americans might not even know what I'm talking about. It's a show about an unusually intelligent rough collie named Lassie. Most folks who are familiar with it know it by its first incarnation, where Lassie is a farm dog who spends her days with the farm boy named Little Timmy. Little Timmy goes on precocious little adventures and often gets into trouble, and Lassie has to help, sometimes by fetching objects but often by fetching the adults to help. And everyone pretends that they can understand Lassie's barking. Here is a stereotypical exchange from the show:
MOM is in kitchen. LASSIE enters
Lassie: Bark. Bark. Woof.
Mom: What is it girl?
Lassie: Bark. Bark.
Mom: Timmy fell down a well?! Where?"
Lassie: Woof. Bark bark.
Mom: On Old Mister Knickerficker's ranch? Well let's go!
Note: You know how Darth Vader didn't say "Luke, I am your father" or Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty?" Yeah, Timmy never fell down a well. He fell off cliffs, into rivers and lakes, down mine shafts and into quicksand, but never into a well.
The thing is, after several seasons, Lassie just...became a forest ranger's dog. And other than "show about a smart, fluffy dog" it had basically nothing in common with it's original run. And then for it's last few seasons, it became an anthology series where Lassie roamed around on her own having random adventures of the week.
Most folks who are familiar with it know it by its first incarnation, where Lassie is a farm dog who spends her days with the farm boy named Little Timmy.
That's the second incarnation. Before Timmy, lassie belonged to a slightly older kid named Jeff. Then one day Jeff's parents randomly decided to drop everything and move to England. They couldn't bring lassie with them for some reason so they gave her to Timmys family. I assume Jeff died about 10 minutes after he got off the plane with no lassie to save him from his own misadventures.
Watching Futurama from the beginning as prep showed me how much more plots rely on pop culture as the show goes on. Used to be interesting ideas like "unmatched luck for the unluckiest guy" or "brains make people dumb" but turned into "what if Susan Boyle was an actual boil?"
These very specific references freeze the humor in place and will not be funny after time. And using the formula of "Comedy = Tragedy + Time", removing time leaves no comedy and only tragedy so....
I didn't bother watching it all. I don't remember exactly when I gave up on it, but I think it was maybe season 4 or so. I completed whatever season I was on and never really laid off back.
My favorite abandoned plot was Michael's son. Weird kid that has weird things happen around him, like multiple birds killing themselves by flying into the windows of whatever building he's in.
Then puberty hit that poor child actor like a sack of bricks, and the show runners just decided to write him out and never bring up that plot again.
Not a big fan of them getting rid of Jerry O'Connell and replacing him with an alternate universe version of himself, but his other self was pretty interesting enough, I guess.
I will die on the hill that this is the single show from the 90s that is most deserving of a reboot/reimagining or even a continuation would be satisfying. Though if they made it back home these days they'd still think it was a parallel Earth.
It's not really about sustained creativity, the anime just dragged because they wanted to milk the franchise as much as possible. Having like 4 seasons named the final season. They adapted a 139 chapter manga into nearly a 100 episodes.
It doesn't help that Isayama himself wasn't sure how to reaolve Eren's character, he originally planned a tragic ending where everyone diea but changed his mind due to the popularity of the series. The timeskip and Eren's 180 degree personality change was the biggest issues, it was implied that due the abilities of the Attack Titan he saw something and had some motivation to change. Unfortunately trying to write a reasonable motivation for the MC to commit genocide is pretty much impossible so the ending ended up being a cheaper and worse executed version of the Code Geass ending.
Yup. DragonBall Z and Super both kept adding higher and higher echelons of deities and otherworldly beings, starting with the Kais, right up to a being that sits over multiple universes. Of course, Goku tries to pick a fight with every single last one of them, with very little regard for the existence of multiple of said universes.
Seven deadly sins
I'm gonna be real here: I have no idea if that tracks or not, and I did my level best to pay attention. The story makes so little sense, with all the "rules" getting thrown out and replaced with more nonsense, every five episodes. They easily could have wound up at a lower power scale at the end than when they started, and you'd have no way to know for certain. That said, they do drag top-dog spiritual entities into the mix near the end.
S1 and 2 Sort of a normal seasons - agents dealing with powered people, the fall of Shield
S3 Space travel for a bit, more Inhumans
S4 Ghost Rider, ghosts and stuck in a computer dystopian nightmare
S5 Time travel
S6 Space travel
S7 More time travel
The reason it fell apart was because the movie and tv rights are not controlled by the same people. The TV asshats shot themselves in the foot and the whole thing became worse and worse.
Show went from a wholesome sitcom about a family in Chicago to whacky borderline scifi. It was a spin-off of Perfect Strangers and just started going off the rails like around the 4th season when they retconned the existance of the one daughter Judy. Then by the end it just became the Steve Urkel show.
No. It is real. Of course. What's ridiculous is that the machine only turns East Asian women over the age of 70 into Stephan. It was absurd to think it could ever work on an urkle, no matter how old.
Futurama has the only good grandfather paradox plotline/episode, and I'll die on that hill. In every other case its a sign of poor writing, as it steals agency from characters while stealing some or all suspense from the audience. It makes for tidy explanations and not-quite-deus-ex-machina plot points, but otherwise kills the story. Enterprise fell into this trap, when it didn't need to - it had everything going for it without that.
ive watched 1-3 probably two dozen times. ive won pub quizes about AD. season 4, yes we all know.. i actually prefer the remix as i never liked staying with one character for an entire episode.
This assumes they had a plot or purpose to stray from to begin with.
Between the non-nonsensical plot twists, and occasionally running with ideas that coincidentally cropped up in fan forums only the year before, it was pretty clear the writers barely knew more than the audience. Then it came time to end the series, but since they didn't have a long-range plan, it was clumsy, didn't resolve all the loose ends, and was generally kind of bad. So they soft-rebooted it for one more season, whose ending was even worse.
supernatural, After krikpke left season 5, it just went in a totally wierd parasocial/sexual direction with the fans. and basically it was filler ever 2-3 seasons, til they finally ended it. and then Jensen tried to sneakingly with his wife start a new series behind jared's back which cause a whole drama situation going on. being both producers, you and your wife was pretty deliberate in not acknowledging jared or misha(he dint make a big stink about it, because he saw the fallout of jared and jensen and dint want the same problem to arise).
ISAIP, this series was on life support after 11-12, they also got too old physically, plus the plastic surgery is pretty obvious at that point. the actors are clinging on this for dear life, because they arnt hollywood material outside the show, hence why MAC is so wierd now(the actor) outside the show.
nutrek shows, not even based on continuity or the original intent, and that was verified by Kurtzman who had no interest in the lore, he was much like Les moonves with ENTERPRISE.
SGU, YEA they shouldnt have started with the drama at all, shouldve done like sg1, in between seasons or mid-season to help break up large plots.
i DINT FINd mythic quest any good, tried too hard to be funny in a genre with the horrid ubisoft company, and industry hes not well versed in. isaip was the best up to 12, 13+ it just got really strange.
the boyz showrunner is kripke, thats why theres similarities between supernatural 1-5, and boyz. seasons 6-15 was all the new showrunners doing.
after season 5 kripke said the story is done, but he allowed it to continue out without his contribution, they bought in new showrunners that continued it, but it got kinda wierd because it got wierdly into fanfiction, i do admit some of the later seasons were so-so, 8,and 11 mostly. the mark of cain arc dint really mesh, eventhough they had some potentially good plots.
if you know jensen ackles made another series called the winchesters, only lasted 1 season , it was a pretty bad shows even for long time fans it dint last past 1 season. the problem is that jared found out they made show without informing him, him so he kinda had an outburst on social media. Somehow Daneel got her hands on the series a producer as well as jensen, and hired some of the old actors from spn series back to the winchesters: ruth conell, richard spelgter, etc. but no jared padalacki and misha though. which is why he felt hurt about. fans rushed to both actors side jensen and jared, on jensen side, they said he had the right and shouldnt been called out on it. and jared defender said they cant make a series with jared, or dint informed him.
Allegedly jensen and jared made UP with apologies; on michael rosembaums (lex luthor smallvile actor) podcast they both explained in seperate interviews how it was a misunderstanding and made up, if you see how uncomfortable they were in the podcast you can tell they were hurt. but they did not look like they were happy about it, from thier body language they definitely did look like they resolved the issue, its just to save face. Some people said Daneel should get her own job, she definitely was mooching off of her husbands fame to get into business, and she probably played a part in this schism.
people were pointing out how jensen said jared shouldve informed him before making that outburts, but the people said jared shouldve been informed the shows creation first. its all behind the scenes drama.
jensen wanted his own IP so he can remain in the hollywood spotlight, getting more roles,,,etc so he had a motive for doing it without jared, who was doing Walker at the time.
quite a few Sg1 actors ended on spn show as cameo. i believe amanda tapping had the longest airtime, she was overaching "villian" in season 8 as an angel.
I get what you mean, but tbf, it just continued the theme of "science beyond your comprehension is magic". And that theme is present throughout pretty much the whole show. But yes, the final season was much more heavy handed with that stuff. And Bellamy's character? Oof.
I haven't read the books, but even in season 1 with the Space Walker arc which is way out of pocket for the show in season 1. Then it felt like they had to outdo this event.
And at the end of the books, it becomes a different series altogether culminating with the god awful ending.
im not even sure if I watched all the seasons of that show and im not sure I have to will to find it and figure out if I have ones to still watch. I have that with elementary as well and it was overall a better show.
Seriously, when the show starts out with the world having ended and potentially the human race still, you kind of have to keep topping or building on that every season so The 100 had no choice but to keep getting more and more crazy or just more insular. To be honest I thought they did fine with it being a CW show and the more limited-ish budget and actor pool they have available compared to HBO or other networks for example.
Possibly cheating, because anime, but Shokugeki no Soma (Food Wars). Initially a series following the protagonist as he entered a school where every dispute was settled with a cook off between two students (and sometimes a teacher). This seems over the top, but the food was always solid (they had a consultant just for it) and felt like something you could make with the right skill and ingredients.
In the final arc, they toss this all out to introduce a villain who can steal a chef’s signature dish/technique (something that is supposed to be unique to that chef) he gets a hold of their knife after winning a food battle. And he can wield those knives in any combination to form new dishes no one else can do. Just because. Also the dishes get less interesting in general, because it’s about powers related to cooking and not the food.
Yeah, it kinda fell prey to Shonen-itis. Power-scaling in this genre requires a steady and firm hand to keep the show on a slow burn, without having to jump to "Super-Sayian 4 God Kaio-Ken x10" shenanigans.
I will say that the show still has some golden moments. The "stinky food battle" had some of the best reactions and visuals.
Reboot definitely ended up that way. Went from a simple defeat the enemy every week and beat the user in the game cube storyline to a much more serious storyline. Ended up with part of a final season where a man with a gun tries to get back home as an angelic looking super virus tries infecting every system by spreading the word ( mass sprite control ). Only to end on a cliffhanger after the super virus was taken care of.
For whatever reason, whenever I saw commercials for that, my brain thought it was a live action Code Lyoko like ripoff. Then again, that was long before I watched Reboot.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
By like season 4 there was a story line where they would give certain prisoners this drug that would age them super fast to like commute their sentences or something along those lines. Not to mention the nurse falling in love with dean winters character after he has her husband murdered. Then there’s Beecher killing the guard with his fingernails.
:::
Original premise: Liv is a doctor is accidentally turned into a zombie. She becomes a medical examiner in order to have access to brains. After discovering eating the brains of murder victims gives her flashbacks and moments leading up to the victim's death, she helps a detective to solve crimes by pretending to be psychic. A side effect of the brain eating is that she may temporarily acquire skills or idiosyncrasies of the victim. Meanwhile, Blaine, another zombie, is turning rich people into zombies to extort them in return for brains of people he's killing.
How it went: Pretty much everyone in the main cast is a zombie (or were-zombie), there's an evil corporation, an entire city full of zombies, a good guy private military contractor that turns into a bad guy private military contractor, and etc. that I won't spoil any further. And eating a brain pretty much makes you take on that person's entire personality wholesale.
The thing is, it was great! It ended pretty strong without wearing out its welcome or getting too absurd plot-wise. Meanwhile everyone in the cast is clearly having fun with the over-the-top, flanderised personality mechanics, and it's just fun to watch.
Because it started off as a crime-a-week police procedural, and by the end, that element of the show was basically the B-plot (if that), thereby fulfilling the criteria of going off the rails and/or losing sight of the original premise?
My all time favorite guilty pleasure, as it's very easy and light fun to watch.
It became even more a favorite because I watched it while I just arrived in Vancouver. One night I'm watching an episode where someone looks up at a building balcony through binoculars and I had to rewind Immediately and pause, pull down the blinds to my right, and I see that same damned balcony right across the street in front of me.
That was quite awesome and made the show a favorite with me, I'm constantly looking for known places
Parks and Rec got a little wacky in the last season or two.
edit: also this season of Reluctant Traveler has been terrible. Much less focus on geography and food, more focus on weird social practices. Dedicated an entire episode to letting Prince William ramble. And the entire South Korea episode was about completely superficial bullshit like social media, modeling, and plastic surgery.
All of season 7 feels like they didn't know they had to write another season until the night before the script had to be turned in. The S6 finale felt like such a tidy button on the series I was surprised when the next episode started playing. It reminds me of S4 of Arrested Development, when all the actors had other stuff going on and weren't around for the big ensemble scenes. Just felt like the story had already been told, and the "Where are they now" flashcards you see at the end of 80s movies got stretched into an entire season of television.
I actually didn't watch the seventh season of parks and rec for a while because I thought season 6 ended so well I didn't want to ruin it. But frankly I was worried for nothing cuz season 7 is just kind of a really heartfelt bon voyage tour for the series. It's basically one long epilogue chapter. Sure it wasn't necessary technically but it's awesome in its own right so I really liked it.
Agreed, kinda felt like Act 2 of Into the Woods where everyone has completed their hero's journey and now we see the aftermath. Still interesting, just tonally and structurally very different.
I think the associated "mythos" and all the online communities they create is a big part of the appeal of these shows. Scouring every scene and interview for clues, predicting what will happen well in advance, etc. Because they take forever to answer the big questions, tons of different theories can exist at the same time and everyone can feel like they're right (until they're eventually not, another reason why people often hate the endings of these shows).
whoever came up with it had no idea where to go from there
Maybe the show was more succesful than they hoped and instead of letting it end there they were suddenly told to please produce another season.
Or the actors are good actors, but don't click in that certain way that is necessary for shows to remain entertaining across multiple seasons.
Or season 1 is based on a book, and subsequent seasons are just based on its characters.
Often small pointers during the episodes will tell you if a season 2 was ever envisioned.
Anyhow, the decline after the first season is very common. I wish they'd just leave it at that. I mean, try season 2 by all means, but if it doesn't take off, leave it for the sake of good entertainment. Don't go churning out more.
Maybe the show was more succesful than they hoped and instead of letting it end there they were suddenly told to please produce another season.
Kind of a dilemma, especially for american TV shows. They need to be able to go for 10+ seasons, but also need to be prepared to get cancelled after the first season and not end it on a cliffhanger. Usually they're prepared for neither.
it wasnt even suppose to last past 5 seasons anyways. although they had somewhat decent seasons like 8 and 11, the others were just fillers, and kind played into the fanfiction, they gave what fans want. the leads being in love with each other,sorta.
they are so obssesed it spilled over being a parasocial relationship, when the actors started doings cons for the fans, it just got awkward and wierd, if you heard about the death threats agains the actors(the mother and child that was with dean in first few episode of season 6, they couldnt return because of that) the fans got it in thier head they were ruining the relationships, that the characthers were gay. the more cons they did the more bizarre the questions were, plus i think thats why mark sheppard(crowley) stopped doing them.
I stopped watching american gods with season 2. season 1 was amazing and season two was like. is anything related to the story even going on half the time.
Well, they fired the showrunner because he wanted to make the second season more expensive, two prominent actors left in solidarity and their scrambling to get a second season made regardless left the studio with higher costs then they would have had with the original plan.
Observe that people want beef subs, that beef subs are good, and what needs to improve is the restaurant management and staff stability. You can still innovate with sandwiches and pastries, you don't need to convert to a fancy restaurant and charge stupid prices for a different daily menu.
What they did in The Bear by converting to a fancy restaurant and alienating their customers was the most boneheaded business move one could possibly conceive of and I despise Lip for squandering mikeys money like that.
Fringe. Started as a clone of the X-Files, then devolved into the most random, convoluted alternate universe and time travel madness. One should have seen that coming:
Created by
J. J. Abrams
Alex Kurtzman
Roberto Orci
Hard disagree - started as a clone of the X-Files and then evolved into having an actual plot and interesting character development. Totally whacky though but I loved it.
gross, dint know abrams and kurtzman was involved, i can see what they did with NUTREK , so it made sense. STD, SNW, PICARD at covoluted plots til the end of the season, which turns out to be a letdown. actual star trek wasnt written that way.
The OA was absolutely brilliant and I would've loved to see how the story finished. You can find the outline of how the story was meant to go for the last 3 seasons, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. What I read was that Netflix cancelled it because it would have become progressively more expensive to shoot. And then you have guys like Bezos pumping a billion per season in the Rings of Power. They could've shot the OA 5 times over with that money.
Z Nation was filmed around where I was living and going to school!. It was a lot of fun "omg I know that building that's where I stole a cool looking book, that's the field I'd hang out in for lunch" but with zombies and whatever other insanity they had going on. One of my neighbors was a hairdresser for them too and wanted to buy my hair off me if I ever cut it but sadly the show ended before I did. One of my life regrets I didn't just offer up my hair on the spot it could have been famous
I agree and this one made me really sad, that show was so good. The turn that Battlestar Galactica took was caused by the writers strike back in the day. That strike unfortunately impacted a lot of good shows (Heroes was another one) and pushed reality TV onto us because no writers were required for a script. IMO, it had a pretty severe negative impact on what and how we watch things today. It was a crappy time for tv.
I still stand by the writers though and supported them striking at the time.
sandman, it was pretty obvious how cheap the props and costumes are, so you can feel the cheapness, some people had problem with the characters not being what they are suppose to be for the comics. Lucifer, REMIEL. its probably NETFLIX squeezing whats left of the series before cancelling it, i heard neil gaimans sex perversions dint overall affect the cancellation of the show, it was netflix being the usaul, season 2 cancellation theme.
It's not like they could have made a 3rd season anyways. While there were a few stories from the comics left untold, there isn't nearly enough to fill an entire other season. Maybe a couple of specials for things like The Worlds End Inn and Sandman 0, but that's essentially all that was left.
smallvilled. once lois lane was introduced. which made no sense to happen in smallville before he was a reporter and then that was about when lex went from being a sorta walking the edge antihero to villian which sorta ruined the schtick. Honestly lex luther was the main character to me in the show.
Lois was the best part of that show. Lex should never have been a part of it, despite how great Rosenbaum was in the role.
Doesn't fit the question, show started, continued, and ended all on the same premise.
yes it does. the show initially was about lex's struggle to do good but being thwarted by various situations causing him to appear the bad guy or having unintended bad outcomes. then it became cookie cutter superman except he met lois before he ever went to metropolis for some reason against normal canon.
Having recently researched the series I can say with confidence that no, that is not what the show was ever about. Lex is constantly trying to do what he perceives to be the right thing, but winds up pushing people away because he was raised by a psychopath, and every time he has a choice to put that aside or double down, he chooses to double down on it.
then it became cookie cutter superman
Always was lol, since season 1. In fact it gets less and less this every season.
against normal canon.
Hence my comment that Lex shouldn't have been there at all. If we're going orthodox, let's do it! No lex, no Lois, Smallville is nowhere near Metropolis, and teenage Clark Kent can fly! Sounds like a great show.
Maybe this is unfair, because it's partially based on my own lack of expectations and understanding going in, but Gannibal's first season was a pretty serious small town supernatural thriller whilst the second season is completely unhinged and immediately loses any suspension of disbelief.
It is based on a manga, which is probably why it increasingly feels like it was wrriten for edgelord teenagers and young men by an incel, but the way the tone shifts so quickly between the two seasons makes it feel like two entirely different shows. The new characters introduced in season two are such stereotypical shonen/seinen manga/anime cardboard cutout characters with absolutely no depth or realism to their scenes or performances.
Had such an interesting premise of a rogue genius inventor sneaking in sentience of consciousness in his pet android project. Gemma Chan being in it made it a easier watch too.
But then they kill off major characters in later seasons for stupid reasons and then bring up the concept of a hybrid fetus....and the whole synth messiah god like arc was asinine. As much as it pains me, I'm glad that it was cancelled and we never saw that.... Plus
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
the show could not go on without Gemma. RIP Mia.
:::
The first couple of seasons were about a spy agency. Then they got defunded and became cocaine dealers?
Then Archer got into a coma and just hallucinated wild stuff during said coma. I admit I do not remember the last few seasons.
Prison Break.
Season one is breaking out of prison. So far so good.
Season two is a manhunt. That's fair, it's the aftermath.
Season three is breaking out of prison.. again! But this time in Panama. Technically that is the show, so alright.
Season four is a secret shadow organization who can cure all diseases but don't.
Also there is a post-show film that adds another prison break for some reason. Also I'm learning the show was revived for a fifth season, I can't say what that's about.
It was conceptualized as a miniseries and not really intended to go beyond the first season. They didn't write it to have a plot post season one so it goes off the rails quickly as they tried to capture the original essence that made it popular while winging it on the story. Hell they didn't even originally write it to have as many episodes in the first season as they ended up having and iirc they even considered just making a movie instead
Season 5 is, you guessed it, another prison. This time in the middle east.
Talks of a reboot/relaunch are being thrown around rn
I feel like an anthology series based around different prison breaks in different eras and countries could be very fun.
Before the original run got cancelled I heard that season 5 was going to be the girlfriend doctor in a female prison.
I say this regretfully: Westworld.
Look, honestly I was into it up until the last episode. I knew the story was twisting and turning a bit too much but I kept watching and very much enjoyed the last season.
I say that it lost sight of its original premise because yes, technically it did. But that doesn’t mean the content wasn’t still great — this is a perfect example of losing your audience by not following the original narrative. I sometimes think the show would’ve been more financially successful had they dragged out the first season into several but I wouldn’t have wanted them to actually do that.
I wanted to come here to say Westworld. I never managed to finish the last season, I just lost complete interest in it. Great first season though and the second was also still enjoyable.
I think S3 of Westworld was enjoyable and had a lot of good ideas, even if it was a tad disconnected from the original island they were from.
But, S4 just went too far. I was still kind of okay with the sudden shift at the second half, because the progression did sort of make sense. But, that whole arc after that was just overreach and too many god-like characters in the mix.
I can't believe they planned on having another season after that. How do you change the world to that degree and figure out some other season to solve all of the plot threads?
The whole writing process stunk of season-to-season short-term bullshit, without an overarching start-to-finish plan for the whole series. This is why Mr. Robot excels and Westworld didn't.
I've seen (and loved) the first season fairly recently, but after hearing so many people saying that the show went off the rails I decided early on that I was only gonna watch the one.
Would you say I'm missing out?
I think season two was also really good and mostly still in the park. I'd say it's worth it, but stop after.
It also has a really stand-out episode, Kiksuya, that is really something special. Definitely worth getting to
If you like Westworld for the setting then stop after the first season.
Are you referring to the western setting of the playground, or the corporate sci-fi setting surrounding it?
The mix of both. From the second season on it's much more focused on the corpo sci-fi stuff.
Had to scroll way too long to see this answer. It's the first one that came to my mind.
Can't disagree more. I do think the clear conflicts between HBO and the executive producers (there's entire scenes in S4 dedicated to a meta-FU to the corporate demand for telling the violence story and not the maze in field story) led to a more disjointed later seasons than planned.
But rewatching S1 it's clear that the twist at the end of S4 was planned from the very start, which is just wild, and probably the biggest temporal misdirection in the history of film and TV — fitting from Jonathan Nolan, but still unexpected.
And then if you go and see the original Westworld film, the degree to which they were already starting off with such a different take can be even more appreciated. It goes from a film about a robot rebellion where the robots can talk but literally no one ever asks why it's happening or even talks to the robot at all to a series of "if you can't tell the difference does it matter?"
::: spoiler The whole point The original narrative IS the narrative about it already being a simulation with the 'guests' also already simulated. It's just that it doesn't appear that way at first because it's a gradual reveal across multiple planned seasons that's got its own smaller first season set of reveals along the way. So when you realize the twist in the first season you think "oh, now I'm caught up with the events" and when you see Bernard is a machine of an earlier human you think "oh, this is the exception and not the rule." But there are details in the first season that can only be explained by the events revealed in the later seasons. :::
S2 has terrible pacing and I do think there are various issues with how S3-S4 progresses in certain arcs, but the broad plot was very clearly planned from the start in hindsight, but HBO had it out for them (look at how quickly after the cancellation the series wasn't even available on HBO's streaming properties), and unfortunately they didn't get the S5 to reveal just how much had been layered in earlier on.
::: spoiler TLDR TL;DR: You were always supposed to have been watching the civilization level fidelity test, not original events playing out. :::
Sherlock unfortunately. S1-2 are some of the best TV I've ever watched. 3 was okay, and then 4 was completely off the rails, with each episode being about some zany conspiracy. Granted it can't take all the credit, Doyle did the same.
Yes it was far less a whodunnit and more of a psychic detective show
The worst was the little closed-eye twitching Cumberbatch was doing when "going" through all this knowledge. It was always kinda there, but season 4 was peak "let's show him doing that for 10min straight." It looked so ridiculous...
It's so sad! So much potential and then. That.
I actually think that seasons 3&4 ruined the previous seasons. The issues presented in the later seasons were all present before then, but weren’t as obvious.
Happy Days when the Fonz jumped a shark on waterskis.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Sokath, his eyes opened.
Dr. Who.
When started, it was a show to teach kids about history.
NCUTI AND whittaker, although its more to blame on the showrunner. Whittaker especially had problems with how the show was being run. ncuti was a weaker show than even whittakers runs. Rani, missy, masters all had such better storylines.
I was talking more about William Hartnell ;-)
First story arc has been about travelling back to the stone age, if I remember correctly.
Gist of the show changed rapidly from historic arcs with some thrown in fantasy entertainment to complete SF/Fantasy already during the 60's.
It's so sad that many of the early episodes have been destroyed.
If only we had some sort of time machine, we could save those lost episodes
The group that find old episodes have kind of announced that there’s going to be an announcement soon. People connected to the group but not actually in the group have essentially said that a private collector has died, that they have at least one lost episode and that it’ll be returned to the BBC soon, plus that they’re in negotiation with other collectors who have yet more episodes to acquire them before they die, too.
That would be great news!
The group’s called Film Is Fabulous, and here’s the statement they made:
The Daily Star doesn’t give a source for this information, and has a somewhat spotty reputation with this kind of thing, but their suggestions for what’s in private hands are: Episode 4 of The Tenth Planet, Episode 3 of The Web Of Fear, and all of Marco Polo.
I’m suspicious because, apart from Power Of The Daleks, those are all the most-wanted finds. And if someone’s telling you everything you want to hear, then you should always pause to go “hmmm”.
Marco Polo, though. It’s a great story, even just presented as a series of telesnaps with bad audio. Imagine if we actually get to see Ping Cho’s dance! And it’s Warris Hussain, so you know that it’s going to be a story which makes the absolute most of its limited resources. People moan about episodes 2-4 of An Unearthly Child, but I think they’re gorgeous. And look at how dynamic the filmed inserts are.
Again, not getting my hopes up, but just imagine if we actually got to see Marco Polo in all its glory.
ah a rare fellow Hartnell enjoyer :]
The Walking Dead. It just became a generic human vs human thing after a while. Then Negan, and then back to boring TV
When it was still new I watched the first season then quickly got bored of the second. Around episode 3. I said to myself "I'm going to start the last episode of this season and if they're still on this fucking farm then I am never fucking watching it again"
And it was so.
NO idea why everyone else seemed to feel differently about it.
The Expanse (books, never finished the show) went really hard on this. It was difficult for me to finish because it was all just people being dumb for more than 100k pages with aliens thrown in for no reason.
Rosanne, the 90's sitcom starring Rosanne Barr and John Goodman. One of the many "living room set with a couch in the middle" family sitcoms, this one about an Illinois blue collar family, the Connors, and their life and times trying to make ends meet. Eight seasons of this premise making acclaimed TV, and then in the ninth season, they win the lottery, go on all these outlandish adventures, Dan cheats on Rosanne, etc. The series finale reveals the whole show is a story being told by Rosanne Barr, and that the last season was mostly bullshit, they hadn't won the lottery, Dan had died of his heart attack in the previous season, and the show ended on a "wtf was all that?" kind of note.
I think I'll also mention Lassie, which is just kinda weird. Non-Americans might not even know what I'm talking about. It's a show about an unusually intelligent rough collie named Lassie. Most folks who are familiar with it know it by its first incarnation, where Lassie is a farm dog who spends her days with the farm boy named Little Timmy. Little Timmy goes on precocious little adventures and often gets into trouble, and Lassie has to help, sometimes by fetching objects but often by fetching the adults to help. And everyone pretends that they can understand Lassie's barking. Here is a stereotypical exchange from the show:
MOM is in kitchen. LASSIE enters
Lassie: Bark. Bark. Woof.
Mom: What is it girl?
Lassie: Bark. Bark.
Mom: Timmy fell down a well?! Where?"
Lassie: Woof. Bark bark.
Mom: On Old Mister Knickerficker's ranch? Well let's go!
Note: You know how Darth Vader didn't say "Luke, I am your father" or Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty?" Yeah, Timmy never fell down a well. He fell off cliffs, into rivers and lakes, down mine shafts and into quicksand, but never into a well.
The thing is, after several seasons, Lassie just...became a forest ranger's dog. And other than "show about a smart, fluffy dog" it had basically nothing in common with it's original run. And then for it's last few seasons, it became an anthology series where Lassie roamed around on her own having random adventures of the week.
That's the second incarnation. Before Timmy, lassie belonged to a slightly older kid named Jeff. Then one day Jeff's parents randomly decided to drop everything and move to England. They couldn't bring lassie with them for some reason so they gave her to Timmys family. I assume Jeff died about 10 minutes after he got off the plane with no lassie to save him from his own misadventures.
He fell down the airplane toilet 39 minutes into the flight and with no dog to alert anyone he drowned in the blue water.
Roseanne really went off the rails more than her show did.
that is one show that is past its prime like 20 years ago, its like how spn turned out.
Watching Futurama from the beginning as prep showed me how much more plots rely on pop culture as the show goes on. Used to be interesting ideas like "unmatched luck for the unluckiest guy" or "brains make people dumb" but turned into "what if Susan Boyle was an actual boil?"
These very specific references freeze the humor in place and will not be funny after time. And using the formula of "Comedy = Tragedy + Time", removing time leaves no comedy and only tragedy so....
But seriously, Futurama also doesn't age well.
it got cancelled too many times to have consistent arc going.
Lost
I still hate that show for making me sit through 7 seasons or whatever of cliffhangers and then answer none of them
J J Abrams doesn't do plots
he ruined trek, by setting precedents of his show(lens flare, flashy scenes, ,,etc) for nutrek which was captured by the horrid showrunner kurtzman.
Also, his favorite writer, Damon Lindelof. Most of this guy's career is finding ways to ruin film and television plots.
I didn't bother watching it all. I don't remember exactly when I gave up on it, but I think it was maybe season 4 or so. I completed whatever season I was on and never really laid off back.
My favorite abandoned plot was Michael's son. Weird kid that has weird things happen around him, like multiple birds killing themselves by flying into the windows of whatever building he's in.
Then puberty hit that poor child actor like a sack of bricks, and the show runners just decided to write him out and never bring up that plot again.
Sliders lost mostly their original cast, and plot of new wacky alternative realities and got obsessed with running from and fighting the Kromaggs.
Not a big fan of them getting rid of Jerry O'Connell and replacing him with an alternate universe version of himself, but his other self was pretty interesting enough, I guess.
I will die on the hill that this is the single show from the 90s that is most deserving of a reboot/reimagining or even a continuation would be satisfying. Though if they made it back home these days they'd still think it was a parallel Earth.
Weeds
The Attack on Titan finale left me scratching my head
I mean, it played out like a lot of action focused anime:
more like taking almost 10years to finish 4 seasons lol.
Sustained Creativity is very hard
It's not really about sustained creativity, the anime just dragged because they wanted to milk the franchise as much as possible. Having like 4 seasons named the final season. They adapted a 139 chapter manga into nearly a 100 episodes.
It doesn't help that Isayama himself wasn't sure how to reaolve Eren's character, he originally planned a tragic ending where everyone diea but changed his mind due to the popularity of the series. The timeskip and Eren's 180 degree personality change was the biggest issues, it was implied that due the abilities of the Attack Titan he saw something and had some motivation to change. Unfortunately trying to write a reasonable motivation for the MC to commit genocide is pretty much impossible so the ending ended up being a cheaper and worse executed version of the Code Geass ending.
Hey, at least it had an ending.
I laughed, but I also hate how on-the-nose this is.
Yeah off the top of my head:
Yup. DragonBall Z and Super both kept adding higher and higher echelons of deities and otherworldly beings, starting with the Kais, right up to a being that sits over multiple universes. Of course, Goku tries to pick a fight with every single last one of them, with very little regard for the existence of multiple of said universes.
I'm gonna be real here: I have no idea if that tracks or not, and I did my level best to pay attention. The story makes so little sense, with all the "rules" getting thrown out and replaced with more nonsense, every five episodes. They easily could have wound up at a lower power scale at the end than when they started, and you'd have no way to know for certain. That said, they do drag top-dog spiritual entities into the mix near the end.
If I wanted that, I could play Final Fantasy.
Agents of Shield.
S1 and 2 Sort of a normal seasons - agents dealing with powered people, the fall of Shield S3 Space travel for a bit, more Inhumans S4 Ghost Rider, ghosts and stuck in a computer dystopian nightmare S5 Time travel S6 Space travel S7 More time travel
they were doing too much in that series lol, it was all over the place.
I bailed out at the S5 time travel plot. I get that it's set in a comic-book universe, but even that was too big a leap for me.
Good grief. Really?!
The entire season was time travel, not just going forward and staying for a bit.
The reason it fell apart was because the movie and tv rights are not controlled by the same people. The TV asshats shot themselves in the foot and the whole thing became worse and worse.
Family Matters
Show went from a wholesome sitcom about a family in Chicago to whacky borderline scifi. It was a spin-off of Perfect Strangers and just started going off the rails like around the 4th season when they retconned the existance of the one daughter Judy. Then by the end it just became the Steve Urkel show.
You mean to tell me that the machine that turned him into Stephan wasn't real?
No. It is real. Of course. What's ridiculous is that the machine only turns East Asian women over the age of 70 into Stephan. It was absurd to think it could ever work on an urkle, no matter how old.
There is a phrase for that, it's called "Jumping the Shark".
Watched that! People really were sweating the Fonz's fate. :)
“24” Just got more and more absurd and soap operatic. Also how much can one man go through?
Ask Chief O'Brien...
And, speaking of Star Trek:
3rd season of Enterprise: WTF?
Futurama has the only good grandfather paradox plotline/episode, and I'll die on that hill. In every other case its a sign of poor writing, as it steals agency from characters while stealing some or all suspense from the audience. It makes for tidy explanations and not-quite-deus-ex-machina plot points, but otherwise kills the story. Enterprise fell into this trap, when it didn't need to - it had everything going for it without that.
I'll be there in 15 minutes.
I love how they had so many moles every season. Worst vetting ever
Arrested Development
ive watched 1-3 probably two dozen times. ive won pub quizes about AD. season 4, yes we all know.. i actually prefer the remix as i never liked staying with one character for an entire episode.
i do not really remember season 5
How dare you! Season 5 is the one where... Uh... Something about building the border wall?
yeah or some shit
will arnett's line:
family of the mon- of the FUCKING YEAR?!!? was pretty damned well delivered
Lost.
This assumes they had a plot or purpose to stray from to begin with.
Between the non-nonsensical plot twists, and occasionally running with ideas that coincidentally cropped up in fan forums only the year before, it was pretty clear the writers barely knew more than the audience. Then it came time to end the series, but since they didn't have a long-range plan, it was clumsy, didn't resolve all the loose ends, and was generally kind of bad. So they soft-rebooted it for one more season, whose ending was even worse.
supernatural, After krikpke left season 5, it just went in a totally wierd parasocial/sexual direction with the fans. and basically it was filler ever 2-3 seasons, til they finally ended it. and then Jensen tried to sneakingly with his wife start a new series behind jared's back which cause a whole drama situation going on. being both producers, you and your wife was pretty deliberate in not acknowledging jared or misha(he dint make a big stink about it, because he saw the fallout of jared and jensen and dint want the same problem to arise).
ISAIP, this series was on life support after 11-12, they also got too old physically, plus the plastic surgery is pretty obvious at that point. the actors are clinging on this for dear life, because they arnt hollywood material outside the show, hence why MAC is so wierd now(the actor) outside the show.
nutrek shows, not even based on continuity or the original intent, and that was verified by Kurtzman who had no interest in the lore, he was much like Les moonves with ENTERPRISE.
SGU, YEA they shouldnt have started with the drama at all, shouldve done like sg1, in between seasons or mid-season to help break up large plots.
I feel like IASIP actor were successful in their own ways outside of it.
Rob made 4 seasons of Mythic Quest, which isn't that easy nowadays with series getting cancelled left and right at season 2.
Glenn played in a few movies and series.
And Charlie is the "most successful" with movies and voice acting.
Caitlin has a lot of acting gigs outside of IASIP, though it feels like they are less mainstream.
I don't watch IASIP, but the few newer episodes I watched were pretty much in line with the schtick of the whole series.
AP Bio is pretty good
i DINT FINd mythic quest any good, tried too hard to be funny in a genre with the horrid ubisoft company, and industry hes not well versed in. isaip was the best up to 12, 13+ it just got really strange.
Still had 4 seasons on Apple, so it was successful regardless of how we individually feel about it.
As someone who loves Supernatural but only superficially I want to know more lol
the boyz showrunner is kripke, thats why theres similarities between supernatural 1-5, and boyz. seasons 6-15 was all the new showrunners doing.
after season 5 kripke said the story is done, but he allowed it to continue out without his contribution, they bought in new showrunners that continued it, but it got kinda wierd because it got wierdly into fanfiction, i do admit some of the later seasons were so-so, 8,and 11 mostly. the mark of cain arc dint really mesh, eventhough they had some potentially good plots.
if you know jensen ackles made another series called the winchesters, only lasted 1 season , it was a pretty bad shows even for long time fans it dint last past 1 season. the problem is that jared found out they made show without informing him, him so he kinda had an outburst on social media. Somehow Daneel got her hands on the series a producer as well as jensen, and hired some of the old actors from spn series back to the winchesters: ruth conell, richard spelgter, etc. but no jared padalacki and misha though. which is why he felt hurt about. fans rushed to both actors side jensen and jared, on jensen side, they said he had the right and shouldnt been called out on it. and jared defender said they cant make a series with jared, or dint informed him.
Allegedly jensen and jared made UP with apologies; on michael rosembaums (lex luthor smallvile actor) podcast they both explained in seperate interviews how it was a misunderstanding and made up, if you see how uncomfortable they were in the podcast you can tell they were hurt. but they did not look like they were happy about it, from thier body language they definitely did look like they resolved the issue, its just to save face. Some people said Daneel should get her own job, she definitely was mooching off of her husbands fame to get into business, and she probably played a part in this schism.
people were pointing out how jensen said jared shouldve informed him before making that outburts, but the people said jared shouldve been informed the shows creation first. its all behind the scenes drama.
jensen wanted his own IP so he can remain in the hollywood spotlight, getting more roles,,,etc so he had a motive for doing it without jared, who was doing Walker at the time.
quite a few Sg1 actors ended on spn show as cameo. i believe amanda tapping had the longest airtime, she was overaching "villian" in season 8 as an angel.
Another person brought up izombie and I feel supernatural was like it. Went off the rails but it was decent enough fair that I watched it to the end.
The 100
Totally agree and I love it for that, the shit that happens in that show is wild.
I loved it and was totally on board until the last season. As soon as it stopped being “science” it lost the appeal
I get what you mean, but tbf, it just continued the theme of "science beyond your comprehension is magic". And that theme is present throughout pretty much the whole show. But yes, the final season was much more heavy handed with that stuff. And Bellamy's character? Oof.
I haven't read the books, but even in season 1 with the Space Walker arc which is way out of pocket for the show in season 1. Then it felt like they had to outdo this event.
And at the end of the books, it becomes a different series altogether culminating with the god awful ending.
im not even sure if I watched all the seasons of that show and im not sure I have to will to find it and figure out if I have ones to still watch. I have that with elementary as well and it was overall a better show.
Seriously, when the show starts out with the world having ended and potentially the human race still, you kind of have to keep topping or building on that every season so The 100 had no choice but to keep getting more and more crazy or just more insular. To be honest I thought they did fine with it being a CW show and the more limited-ish budget and actor pool they have available compared to HBO or other networks for example.
Community is the only one which comes to mind.
I'd argue that Community simply took a couple of episodes before it found its rails.
You know, that's true, I read it in reverse.
Possibly cheating, because anime, but Shokugeki no Soma (Food Wars). Initially a series following the protagonist as he entered a school where every dispute was settled with a cook off between two students (and sometimes a teacher). This seems over the top, but the food was always solid (they had a consultant just for it) and felt like something you could make with the right skill and ingredients.
In the final arc, they toss this all out to introduce a villain who can steal a chef’s signature dish/technique (something that is supposed to be unique to that chef) he gets a hold of their knife after winning a food battle. And he can wield those knives in any combination to form new dishes no one else can do. Just because. Also the dishes get less interesting in general, because it’s about powers related to cooking and not the food.
Yeah, it kinda fell prey to Shonen-itis. Power-scaling in this genre requires a steady and firm hand to keep the show on a slow burn, without having to jump to "Super-Sayian 4 God Kaio-Ken x10" shenanigans.
I will say that the show still has some golden moments. The "stinky food battle" had some of the best reactions and visuals.
Reboot definitely ended up that way. Went from a simple defeat the enemy every week and beat the user in the game cube storyline to a much more serious storyline. Ended up with part of a final season where a man with a gun tries to get back home as an angelic looking super virus tries infecting every system by spreading the word ( mass sprite control ). Only to end on a cliffhanger after the super virus was taken care of.
Did you know they rebooted reboot?
It was live action for some reason, and the live action people became computer animated for some reason.
And for reasons I can't understand that show exists! Isn't life interesting and whimsical?
For whatever reason, whenever I saw commercials for that, my brain thought it was a live action Code Lyoko like ripoff. Then again, that was long before I watched Reboot.
Might have to check that out, even if it's bad.
It's so bad. I couldn't even finish the first episode.
Oz the prison show.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler By like season 4 there was a story line where they would give certain prisoners this drug that would age them super fast to like commute their sentences or something along those lines. Not to mention the nurse falling in love with dean winters character after he has her husband murdered. Then there’s Beecher killing the guard with his fingernails. :::
Came here to post this. It was still pretty good though
iZombie
Original premise: Liv is a doctor is accidentally turned into a zombie. She becomes a medical examiner in order to have access to brains. After discovering eating the brains of murder victims gives her flashbacks and moments leading up to the victim's death, she helps a detective to solve crimes by pretending to be psychic. A side effect of the brain eating is that she may temporarily acquire skills or idiosyncrasies of the victim. Meanwhile, Blaine, another zombie, is turning rich people into zombies to extort them in return for brains of people he's killing.
How it went: Pretty much everyone in the main cast is a zombie (or were-zombie), there's an evil corporation, an entire city full of zombies, a good guy private military contractor that turns into a bad guy private military contractor, and etc. that I won't spoil any further. And eating a brain pretty much makes you take on that person's entire personality wholesale.
The thing is, it was great! It ended pretty strong without wearing out its welcome or getting too absurd plot-wise. Meanwhile everyone in the cast is clearly having fun with the over-the-top, flanderised personality mechanics, and it's just fun to watch.
How does izombie fit the question the OP is asking?
Because it started off as a crime-a-week police procedural, and by the end, that element of the show was basically the B-plot (if that), thereby fulfilling the criteria of going off the rails and/or losing sight of the original premise?
My all time favorite guilty pleasure, as it's very easy and light fun to watch.
It became even more a favorite because I watched it while I just arrived in Vancouver. One night I'm watching an episode where someone looks up at a building balcony through binoculars and I had to rewind Immediately and pause, pull down the blinds to my right, and I see that same damned balcony right across the street in front of me.
That was quite awesome and made the show a favorite with me, I'm constantly looking for known places
Parks and Rec got a little wacky in the last season or two.
edit: also this season of Reluctant Traveler has been terrible. Much less focus on geography and food, more focus on weird social practices. Dedicated an entire episode to letting Prince William ramble. And the entire South Korea episode was about completely superficial bullshit like social media, modeling, and plastic surgery.
All of season 7 feels like they didn't know they had to write another season until the night before the script had to be turned in. The S6 finale felt like such a tidy button on the series I was surprised when the next episode started playing. It reminds me of S4 of Arrested Development, when all the actors had other stuff going on and weren't around for the big ensemble scenes. Just felt like the story had already been told, and the "Where are they now" flashcards you see at the end of 80s movies got stretched into an entire season of television.
I actually didn't watch the seventh season of parks and rec for a while because I thought season 6 ended so well I didn't want to ruin it. But frankly I was worried for nothing cuz season 7 is just kind of a really heartfelt bon voyage tour for the series. It's basically one long epilogue chapter. Sure it wasn't necessary technically but it's awesome in its own right so I really liked it.
Agreed, kinda felt like Act 2 of Into the Woods where everyone has completed their hero's journey and now we see the aftermath. Still interesting, just tonally and structurally very different.
So most mystery box shows, basically.
It's funny how such a complicated genre can also be so predictable lol
I think the associated "mythos" and all the online communities they create is a big part of the appeal of these shows. Scouring every scene and interview for clues, predicting what will happen well in advance, etc. Because they take forever to answer the big questions, tons of different theories can exist at the same time and everyone can feel like they're right (until they're eventually not, another reason why people often hate the endings of these shows).
Maybe the show was more succesful than they hoped and instead of letting it end there they were suddenly told to please produce another season.
Or the actors are good actors, but don't click in that certain way that is necessary for shows to remain entertaining across multiple seasons.
Or season 1 is based on a book, and subsequent seasons are just based on its characters.
Often small pointers during the episodes will tell you if a season 2 was ever envisioned.
Anyhow, the decline after the first season is very common. I wish they'd just leave it at that. I mean, try season 2 by all means, but if it doesn't take off, leave it for the sake of good entertainment. Don't go churning out more.
Kind of a dilemma, especially for american TV shows. They need to be able to go for 10+ seasons, but also need to be prepared to get cancelled after the first season and not end it on a cliffhanger. Usually they're prepared for neither.
that was the way with kripke and supernatural 1-5 was mystery/horror,,etc. new showrunners from 6-15 was just all wtf it was.
it wasnt even suppose to last past 5 seasons anyways. although they had somewhat decent seasons like 8 and 11, the others were just fillers, and kind played into the fanfiction, they gave what fans want. the leads being in love with each other,sorta.
they are so obssesed it spilled over being a parasocial relationship, when the actors started doings cons for the fans, it just got awkward and wierd, if you heard about the death threats agains the actors(the mother and child that was with dean in first few episode of season 6, they couldnt return because of that) the fans got it in thier head they were ruining the relationships, that the characthers were gay. the more cons they did the more bizarre the questions were, plus i think thats why mark sheppard(crowley) stopped doing them.
I stopped watching american gods with season 2. season 1 was amazing and season two was like. is anything related to the story even going on half the time.
Well, they fired the showrunner because he wanted to make the second season more expensive, two prominent actors left in solidarity and their scrambling to get a second season made regardless left the studio with higher costs then they would have had with the original plan.
I had already read the book before the series. I didn't like season 2 being the end but I still have the book.
oh was it not renewed. just kinda stopped watching and may not have even made it to the end of season 2.
I'll cop shit for this, but The Bear.
Observe that people want beef subs, that beef subs are good, and what needs to improve is the restaurant management and staff stability. You can still innovate with sandwiches and pastries, you don't need to convert to a fancy restaurant and charge stupid prices for a different daily menu.
What they did in The Bear by converting to a fancy restaurant and alienating their customers was the most boneheaded business move one could possibly conceive of and I despise Lip for squandering mikeys money like that.
I take issue with that in real life too.
Search Party - Murder mistery in the beginning but something completly different in the end (don‘t want to spoil), it‘s a ride…
Fringe. Started as a clone of the X-Files, then devolved into the most random, convoluted alternate universe and time travel madness. One should have seen that coming:
Hard disagree - started as a clone of the X-Files and then evolved into having an actual plot and interesting character development. Totally whacky though but I loved it.
I will agree that I like fringe. never thought of it as a clone of the x-files though.
gross, dint know abrams and kurtzman was involved, i can see what they did with NUTREK , so it made sense. STD, SNW, PICARD at covoluted plots til the end of the season, which turns out to be a letdown. actual star trek wasnt written that way.
...but in a good way. That's what I'd like to hear about.
(edit: Dr Who would appear to be one such example)
The OA
You can't go off the rails if you were never on them.
Loved every bit of it and still super bitter about it's cancellation.
I watched it and don't think I understood much of any of it.
I didn't like it but I appreciate that something so weird was created
The OA was absolutely brilliant and I would've loved to see how the story finished. You can find the outline of how the story was meant to go for the last 3 seasons, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. What I read was that Netflix cancelled it because it would have become progressively more expensive to shoot. And then you have guys like Bezos pumping a billion per season in the Rings of Power. They could've shot the OA 5 times over with that money.
Znation. And it was glorious
Z Nation was filmed around where I was living and going to school!. It was a lot of fun "omg I know that building that's where I stole a cool looking book, that's the field I'd hang out in for lunch" but with zombies and whatever other insanity they had going on. One of my neighbors was a hairdresser for them too and wanted to buy my hair off me if I ever cut it but sadly the show ended before I did. One of my life regrets I didn't just offer up my hair on the spot it could have been famous
That's awesome!
Only when it wasn't trying to be The Walking Dead
Exactly. It started off as a walking dead clone and then...zweed
the office (us)
Happy Days when the Fonz jumped the shark
Battlestar Galactica, the potential cancellation made some whacky shit happen
I agree and this one made me really sad, that show was so good. The turn that Battlestar Galactica took was caused by the writers strike back in the day. That strike unfortunately impacted a lot of good shows (Heroes was another one) and pushed reality TV onto us because no writers were required for a script. IMO, it had a pretty severe negative impact on what and how we watch things today. It was a crappy time for tv.
I still stand by the writers though and supported them striking at the time.
sandman, it was pretty obvious how cheap the props and costumes are, so you can feel the cheapness, some people had problem with the characters not being what they are suppose to be for the comics. Lucifer, REMIEL. its probably NETFLIX squeezing whats left of the series before cancelling it, i heard neil gaimans sex perversions dint overall affect the cancellation of the show, it was netflix being the usaul, season 2 cancellation theme.
It's not like they could have made a 3rd season anyways. While there were a few stories from the comics left untold, there isn't nearly enough to fill an entire other season. Maybe a couple of specials for things like The Worlds End Inn and Sandman 0, but that's essentially all that was left.
Yeah, not to reveal any spoilers but his story was pretty much wrapped up at the end of the series.
Once Upon A Time
Neither those watching the show, not those writing the show, had any idea how to keep that show on the rails.
This heavily implies it was ever on the rails from the start.
smallvilled. once lois lane was introduced. which made no sense to happen in smallville before he was a reporter and then that was about when lex went from being a sorta walking the edge antihero to villian which sorta ruined the schtick. Honestly lex luther was the main character to me in the show.
Lois was the best part of that show. Lex should never have been a part of it, despite how great Rosenbaum was in the role. Doesn't fit the question, show started, continued, and ended all on the same premise.
yes it does. the show initially was about lex's struggle to do good but being thwarted by various situations causing him to appear the bad guy or having unintended bad outcomes. then it became cookie cutter superman except he met lois before he ever went to metropolis for some reason against normal canon.
Having recently researched the series I can say with confidence that no, that is not what the show was ever about. Lex is constantly trying to do what he perceives to be the right thing, but winds up pushing people away because he was raised by a psychopath, and every time he has a choice to put that aside or double down, he chooses to double down on it.
Always was lol, since season 1. In fact it gets less and less this every season.
Hence my comment that Lex shouldn't have been there at all. If we're going orthodox, let's do it! No lex, no Lois, Smallville is nowhere near Metropolis, and teenage Clark Kent can fly! Sounds like a great show.
if you want more smallville content look into that wierd sex cult the cast was involved with
One person. Long after the show had ended. 🙄
i thought there were at least 3 involved
Nah, just Allison Mack.
I thought she recruited more people from the show, tbf, I read that so long ago that I might have forgotten
Riverdale
Maybe this is unfair, because it's partially based on my own lack of expectations and understanding going in, but Gannibal's first season was a pretty serious small town supernatural thriller whilst the second season is completely unhinged and immediately loses any suspension of disbelief.
It is based on a manga, which is probably why it increasingly feels like it was wrriten for edgelord teenagers and young men by an incel, but the way the tone shifts so quickly between the two seasons makes it feel like two entirely different shows. The new characters introduced in season two are such stereotypical shonen/seinen manga/anime cardboard cutout characters with absolutely no depth or realism to their scenes or performances.
BBCs Humans.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/
Had such an interesting premise of a rogue genius inventor sneaking in sentience of consciousness in his pet android project. Gemma Chan being in it made it a easier watch too.
But then they kill off major characters in later seasons for stupid reasons and then bring up the concept of a hybrid fetus....and the whole synth messiah god like arc was asinine. As much as it pains me, I'm glad that it was cancelled and we never saw that.... Plus
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler the show could not go on without Gemma. RIP Mia. :::
It's been practically forgotten about
Archer
The first couple of seasons were about a spy agency. Then they got defunded and became cocaine dealers? Then Archer got into a coma and just hallucinated wild stuff during said coma. I admit I do not remember the last few seasons.