Only reason I didn't get through Orphan Black is that my only access to it was Netflix DVD, and that's not a good way to watch a show dense enough to be best taken in small doses.
I've been repeatedly told that I should try watching Babylon 5 again, being a Niner and all. I just couldn't get into it.
Once has had some ups and downs (as do MOST shows), but I'd encourage people who may have bowed out of the series to give it a second chance.
Like DS9, it takes awhile to kick into high gear, but it gets really epic eventually. Although, to be honest, I kinda wandered away again during much of the fifth season. I was always more of a FARSCAPE guy.
This topic lost me when the OP said Futurama wasn't good when it started. Boy are they not going to like the last seasons then. And what's with sitcoms that have horrible endings? Roseanne, Will and Grace, How I Met Your Mother, but not really. I liked the Frozen season and I never seen the movie. However the last two seasons of Once Upon a Time have been really bad. However it will be ending this year, but I doubt it. Orphan Black is on Amazon Prime, I still need to watch the 4th season. Most of this topic seems to be about good shows that went bad, Roseanne, Orphan Black, Futurama at times.
*eyes her dusty Farscape DVD box* I think it has to do with the horrible prosthetics, they make me nauseous. I wish they'd put it on Netflix, I cannot afford to buy myself another DVD boxset I'll never watch.
Talking of Farscape, I guess that's one for me. Watched the first two and gave up. I did come back later on and get hooked though. Some people also tell me that Lexx got decent, but I didn't even make it through the pilot.
Halfway through first CC season now. TV movies were excellent but honestly getting a little tiresome that it seems every episode is about Fry and/or Leela coping with the other being lost forever. I did not like seasons 1-3 of Futurama. They certainly had their moments but the humor was largely driven by easy target celebrities (Pamela Anderson, Richard Nixon, etc), comedy cliches transformed to futuriness, and people getting eaten by aliens. Only early episode I remember thinking was great at the time was the first Zapp episode.
Well clearly you have no tastes as some of the 'movies' are the worst thing I've ever seen in Futurama. :-p But you don't think the CC episodes are about comedy cliches transformed to futuriness? I don't want to say too much as I have no clue what episode you are up to but they did a god damn Apple / iPhone episode that is painful. Plus the Prop 8 joke episode that no one gets even today, oh god and the Obama episode. I will take my Nixon episodes and the big ball of trash in season 1 over a lot of the stuff after the show was uncanceled.
Futurama is 4 seasons of mostly gold, followed by four movies that I rate as followed by followed by finished with The remaining series were then mostly with the occasional and a good dose of I never got around to finishing the final season as it appeared to be in the same place that The Simpsons has been for the past 20 years... some bizarre comedy limbo, but without the fun of Herme's actual limbo Hugo - in the UK Futurama was shipped as four seasons before initial cancellation, not five like in the US, ending with The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
That's probably the most perfect rating system ever for Futurama. However the only people who consider the first 4 season 5 seasons is Fox. I think it's 1-4, the movies are five, there is then 6a and 6b and then 7a and 7b.
Show peaked for me in seasons 4-5. But I'll take post-cancellation over early. Seasons 1-3 are like mid-run Simpsons, plus robots and aliens, minus sentimentality and a moral center. Post cancellation is eh, entertaining, not great. Not without its gems, doesn't make me groan, enough quality to make me want to continue watching. I would put both the ridiculously complex time paradox movie and the Yeevo movie over almost anything else I've seen from Futurama. I don't see the point of making Nixon president. None of the jokes they do with him have anything to do with Richard Nixon. Like he was just the 'Bad president' of 1999 so they just plugged their president character into his head. Early Futurama selects celebrities to make fun of by the same criteria as the casting crew of Celebrity Apprentice. Roseanne's not a show you can really give up before it got good because it's one of those shows that started out great and got progressively less good as it went on. The first season had characters that seemed much more like actual real human beings than any other laugh track sitcom, and as the show went on it got less and less that way, until last season they won the lottery, but didn't move out of their house and prevented a train robbery.
Of course, Neutopia (Which I'm watching now) is far and above the previous bar for "Worst episode ever". First they build an spaceplane that for some reason works like airplanes in space and don't even bother to translate it humorously to some kind of space physics. They make direct references to specific TV shows from the 21st century (And not by Omicronians). Then they string together the gender cliches of a thousand bad standup comedy routines. Which they already did in a much less groan-inducing way in the episode Bender switched genders. One thing about Breaking Bad that I think made a lot of people quit early is that up until the last episode of the second season it looks like the kind of series like Sopranos or Dexter that always maintains homeostasis. Once the show proved it was willing to permanently change the status quo you watch the first two seasons differently.
Apparently this happened for me with Person of Interest. I watched about five episodes then gave up because it felt like just another procedural. From what I've heard it got much better, so I'm hoping to give it another chance soon.
FWIW, the upcoming season of Halt takes place in the early 90s. Their efforts to recapture the 80s in the first three seasons were hit-and-miss, sometimes they were spot-on and other times not so much.
Specifically the 3rd season. I rolled my eyes at the mention of a T1 that early on. The first two seasons had been better at staying in check, but it's as if they gave up trying to be accurate during the 3rd season. It was then pretty much evident when they had it jump to the 90's.