Shows you LIKED that lasted too long.

[Goliath]

I've got one that no one else has mentioned:

HBO's Oz.

Sad, but true.

In addition to the problems already mentioned, the violence escalated to unbelieveable levels in the final two seasons--to the point where the show started to resemble a game of Clue.

"Nurse Grace, in the Hospital, with a lethal injection."

 

[bigdaddy]

Home Improvement

I loved this show, but I think it could have ended a season before it did. The last season seemed a bit stale.

Oh, ugh...that reminds me of the last season of "Roseanne" which was all an unfunny, uninteresting, non-John-Goodman dream.

That was the "lottery" season was it not? What a terrible, terrible idea. It's like she knew she wouldn't make a penny for the rest of her career and wanted to milk the syndication market for everything she could.

You think it was her fault?

They were thinking the show would end at the 8th season, Dan would have a heart attack, and the finale would be him coming home and everyone would deal with it. Maybe he was meant to die, I don't remember. Anyways the network wanted another season so everything got changed around a little. Then the dreadful season 9 happened so Rosanne had "fun' with it because there was no where else to go. I'm just happy it wasn't "We won and lost the ticket!" like they always used to do. However Dan having an affair and the 130 million was insane.

 

[Barbados Slim]

Third Watch. Once they turned Doc, who was the heart of the series, into a hostage taker, the show stoppe caring about the firehouse and became an over-the-top cop show. Started out great, though.

Rescue Me. I enjoy the show but as Tommy's wounds from 9/11 and alcoholism fade, the show has no real purpose or focus.

nip/tuck

The Practice. That show got crazy out of hand in the last couple of seasons. I stopped watching long before the end.

Seinfeld. Once Larry David left the show became too absurdist. I love absurdist humor (30 Rock is my favorite sitcom on air) but Seinfeld was more observational than absurdist.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

There was a time when I was a big ER fan. But that show has gone on WAY too long. Should have ended years ago. As in, some time in the last millennium.

I also remember a time when I actually liked Friends. But that show went on for so long that it gave even the most loyal viewer a very healthy opportunity to work up a deep and abiding hatred for any actor who was ever even peripherally associated with Friends. Now, whenever I see any of those actors, my immediate reaction is to cringe.

Stargate SG-1. Hate to say it because I really love the Stargate universe. But they ran out of ideas years ago, which is incredible because they never really developed even their longest-running characters on a personal level. We saw their professional lives...but very little of their personal lives....a situation I always thought rather odd given that toward the end, the show was becoming painfully predictable and could have done with a well-placed personal tangent or two.

Law & Order (and the replicators it spawned ) - EGADS! Are we EVER gonna be done with these damn L&O shows? I mean, for how many years can you watch pretty much the same exact plot, 3 times a week?

And then, last but not least, we have Smallville. I am ambivalent about this one, to be honest. I think the problem is that it just goes too slow. I mean, we are on what? Season 8? I've lost track and have to consult my DVD sets to remember, this show has gone on for so long. The bottom line here is that Clark really needs to become Superman before either a) Tom Welling reaches middle age; or b) no one still watching even gives a shit anymore about whether Clark becomes Superman or not because we will all have forgotten what this show started out being about.

 

[ScottDS]

-The Simpsons (yeah, join the club)

-Seinfeld - Larry David left after season 7 but season 8 was still pretty good as I recall. Season 9, on the other hand, was awful. Despite a couple of decent episodes (the one with the Frogger machine for example), the show went downhill fast and don't even get me started on the series finale. There are episodes in this season that I simply have no interest in seeing ever again.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

BTW, after watching tonight's episode, I'm going to take back my mention of Law and Order. No, it's not as great as old, but they still come up with episodes worthy of my time (at least some of the time).

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Roseanne should have ended with six seasons. It would have been a perfect series. The last episode would have been Jackie and Fred getting married with her nursing right up there in front of the priest and having to switch sides before she kissed Fred. Perfectly full circle. Jackie ends up married with a kid after starting out as the single girl, but she was still Jackie instead of that caricature she became at the end. Her pregnancy would have been the last season. It would have been a classic series.

 

[mostly_nameless]

I agree with just about all of the choices so far (especially The A-Team!), but not TNG.

I think TNG could've done 2 or 3 more years if they hadn't been holding back planning their movie. Plus, if they had merged into the Dominion War story line from DS9, it could've been great.

I didn't see anyone mention Charmed. It went a season longer than the producers wanted and two seasons longer than it should have.

The last season of Man From UNCLE was pretty bad too. It went "serious" sort of like the A-Team.

 

[Jim Steele]

Red Dwarf.

Seriously, they should have just left it at 6 series. That would been preferable to the dreadful 7&8 we ended up getting.

 

[Deckerd]

ER

 

[FordSVT]

Oh, ugh...that reminds me of the last season of "Roseanne" which was all an unfunny, uninteresting, non-John-Goodman dream.

That was the "lottery" season was it not? What a terrible, terrible idea. It's like she knew she wouldn't make a penny for the rest of her career and wanted to milk the syndication market for everything she could.

You think it was her fault?

They were thinking the show would end at the 8th season, Dan would have a heart attack, and the finale would be him coming home and everyone would deal with it. Maybe he was meant to die, I don't remember. Anyways the network wanted another season so everything got changed around a little. Then the dreadful season 9 happened so Rosanne had "fun' with it because there was no where else to go. I'm just happy it wasn't "We won and lost the ticket!" like they always used to do. However Dan having an affair and the 130 million was insane.

If they were thinking it was going to end at 8, and then the network wanted another and she went along with it anyway, after already making tens of millions of dollars for herself, yeah, it's her fault. I see no sign that she had a contractual obligation to do one last season, they didn't sign her on from 6-9 in advance or anything like that. They wanted another, she said "Sure", and then went on to make one of the worst seasons of television ever and probably tarnished the show.

 

[FPAlpha]

Greys Anatomy

A show that it is dramatic, funny and romantic in a perfect mix but lately i feel they are becoming stale with the addition of characters out of nowhere that have this big connection with main characters yet were never mentioned before (and are always very hot looking people ).

Additionally what really got me pissed recently was a huge. f... up by the interns which should have landed them in jail, got their medical license revoked for all time and least of all kicked out of the hospital. Yet what happens? They apparently only get a slap on the wrist and it probably won't get reported to the authorities (maybe it will.. it only happened in the newest episode and who knows what happens next). I know Greys is not a realistic show by far and i already suspended my disbelief many times but this was just too stupid. The writers definitely did a wrong turn on this episode.

 

[Barbados Slim]

^^
Plus there's the part where Izzie fucks a ghost.

 

[Gojirob]

Happy Days? I'm not exactly sure WHEN it was, but there was a point where it just wasn't worth the trouble to watch anymore.

That was the one that immediately popped in my head. Of course that show was the origin of "jumping the shark" after all. Every now and then I'll be flipping through the channels and see a rerun, and I can't even watch it for 5 minutes. I'm like, how in the hell did I watch this when it was on?

Let's remember that Happy Days JTS moment was not Fonzie JTS - it was Richie's departure. Also, JTS is not the end - it is the moment that, in retrospect, that the decline started.

The Simpsons is definitely one, but I'll lay odds that if that final kill order is ever given, the ep quality will increase dramatically for the last set.

MASH I'm torn on. I would have persuaded Gary Burghoff to remain through the end of the 8th Season, and concluded the series with that. Then, maybe, a series of 'AfterMASH' TV-movies with individual cast members back home, concluding with a 1963 reunion ruined by the news from Dallas.

On a side note, I watched a rerun shown on Fox's NYC affiliate in HD - a later rerun. If you think Alda's hair grayed during the later run, you ain't seen nothing yet.

My Three Sons, even in reruns, seemed to continue forever and nine days. Wow. I was expecting Ernie and Dodie to be married off before all was done.

I think Wings would be improved by eliminating the middle seasons, the ones where Joe went from merely long-suffering to complete doormat.

I liked Charmed, but the final storylines all seemed like a loop : Neo-Master #Nth, Determined San Fran Police Investigator #Umpteen, and Leo/Piper Interruptus # Kerzillionty. And then there's Billy...

Back to Happy Days : I liked its finale, except for how tacked-on Ron Howard's appearance felt. His old pal was adopting a kid, and there was no interaction with him, even to say, 'You've got a great new Dad'. When Fonzie reminisces with Richie about how they met to fight, and now are attending 'his sister's wedding' without mentioning the fact that she's marrying his cousin! The pair would never have met but for them.

On Buffy, I liked S6 better in reruns/DVD than I did in its broadcast run, where a long (early-November to February) hiatus made the storyline seem to drag. I did hate the muddle that S7 became, with shifting premises and exhausted characters. I also think that 'Chosen' should have been two hours all by itself. JW said he wanted to avoid the overdone MASH-like finale, but the comparison was invalid. Even with SMG and others pushing, Whedon still had fundamental control over the storyline. MASH had long since fallen to the actors' whims. What he wanted to avoid, he had already avoided. He short-changed his flagship show's ending for a lesson improperly drawn from what was otherwise a milestone ending.

I do wonder how much S7 was short-changed overall by the three-way split between BTVS, Angel and Firefly.

 

[Goji]

The X-Files, definitely. Season 6 was the beginning of rapid slide into painful mediocrity.

I personally lost interest in the Simpsons about halfway through the 8th season, which was more than a decade ago now. The episodes I've seen since then, and the movie too, have made me glad I quit when I did.

I kind of wish Third Rock From the Sun had ended the year before it did. Most of the 6th season is just odd, with jokes that don't seem to quite work, Tommy missing from about half the episodes, and Harry even more over the top than usual. The hilarious John Cleese two-parter at the end of the season does much to redeem it, though.

I would pay good money to erase the final season of Earth Final Conflict from existence.

 

[bigdaddy]

That was the "lottery" season was it not? What a terrible, terrible idea. It's like she knew she wouldn't make a penny for the rest of her career and wanted to milk the syndication market for everything she could.

You think it was her fault?

They were thinking the show would end at the 8th season, Dan would have a heart attack, and the finale would be him coming home and everyone would deal with it. Maybe he was meant to die, I don't remember. Anyways the network wanted another season so everything got changed around a little. Then the dreadful season 9 happened so Rosanne had "fun' with it because there was no where else to go. I'm just happy it wasn't "We won and lost the ticket!" like they always used to do. However Dan having an affair and the 130 million was insane.

If they were thinking it was going to end at 8, and then the network wanted another and she went along with it anyway, after already making tens of millions of dollars for herself, yeah, it's her fault. I see no sign that she had a contractual obligation to do one last season, they didn't sign her on from 6-9 in advance or anything like that. They wanted another, she said "Sure", and then went on to make one of the worst seasons of television ever and probably tarnished the show.

The network most likely owned the show, and when they ordered another season she stayed with it instead of them screwing it up. Even after Seinfeld ended there was word NBC wanted to keep the show coming and replace Seinfeld! Networks do even worse things when the creator leaves.

However I don't care because I just don't watch the last few seasons anyways.

 

[Neroon]

The later seasons have a low rewatchability factor for me. I guess having everyone yell at each other and all the serious episodes (which are only slightly less subtle than when classic Trek tried to do an overt "message" episode) wears thin. If I'm channel surfing and catch a rerun, I'll be more likely to stick around if it's an episode with Trapper, Frank, and Henry.

QFT. While it's last couple of seasons were still better than the majority of television at the time, it became so terribly predictable and preachy. Like you, I am much more likely to watch those reruns with Trapper any Col. Blake, because then I'm assured that it hasn't reached the point already noted. But that said, the next several seasons after Col. Potter came on board, and even after Maj. Winchester replaced Frank were still excellent. But man, those last two seasons lost all of the quirkiness, the distinctiveness that made the earlier ones so memorable. Klinger, as soon as he stopped trying to get out of the army became pathetically boring.

Count me in with those who felt TNG ran maybe a season, possibly two, too long. Those last two containted so many soulless, unmemorable stories that I hardly have watched any of them but one time. There still were a few that are classic, so it's made me reluctant to dismiss the entirety.

 

[Caleuche]

ER and the X-files remain the only shows I've ever bailed on. I usually watch a show I'm interested in to the end, even if the later series are of poorer quality.

Friends, Simpsons, Red Dwarf and Futurama all lost their funny somewhere along the way.

Shows that went one or two seasons too long would be Due South, Buffy, Charmed and (forgive me) Babylon 5.

Heroes would be on this list, but the last few episodes suggest they may reclaim something out of the mess.

Edit: The Avengers! No need for Tara. No Joanna Lumley! Certainly no Uma Thurman. The show should have ended with Mrs Peel. After this it lacked the class and (relative) sanity that it once had.

 

[bigdaddy]

Friends, Simpsons, Red Dwarf and Futurama all lost their funny somewhere along the way.

The last episodes of Futurama were some of the best they did, Roswell That Ends Well" is awesome and won an Emmy, they had Bender floating through space episode, and the crazy Bee episode. Nevermind the series finale was nicely done.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

I agree with just about all of the choices so far (especially The A-Team!), but not TNG.

I think TNG could've done 2 or 3 more years if they hadn't been holding back planning their movie. Plus, if they had merged into the Dominion War story line from DS9, it could've been great.

Agree with you there, except Patrick Stewart didn't want to go on. And when the star of the show dosen't want to go on, well.... I would have let Stewart go, have Frakes/Riker be Captain, Dorn be First Officer, and have Stewart/Picard be a Fleet Captain who would come back for special episodes.

I didn't see anyone mention Charmed. It went a season longer than the producers wanted and two seasons longer than it should have.

That series should have been like Doctor Strange/Dr. Fate/Jennifer Kale, in that the ladies become the supreme sorceresses of Earth. The writers should have studied the above-mentioned characters for a way to continue the show in the first place.

The last season of Man From UNCLE was pretty bad too. It went "serious" sort of like the A-Team.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. went off of the rails in the third season, but recovered in the fourth. It was always supposed to be serious in the first place, and had it stayed that way, it could have continued. But...we all know what happened.

The show that went on too long that nobody here talks about is Mission: Impossible. That should have ended in 1970, but it was so successful, that nobody could conceive of it going off of the air. But when you have the IMF doing 'impossible missions' against people/organizations the FBI/NSA/DEA/Interpol are supposed to tackle (the Mob) then it's time to end it.

Another CBS show that should have ended after four seasons was Hawaii Five-O: that show went on as long as the CSI shows are going on. Maybe, like CSI, it was CBS's cash cow?

Speaking of CBS's cash cows, doesn't anybody think Gunsmoke went on way too long? Let me know.