How do you watch a show for 10-20 years?

[Lord Garth]

When I read about shows like The Simpsons or Law & Order that have been going on for almost 20 years, or look at shows before it like Gunsmoke which ran for exactly 20 years, I have to wonder how people can watch these show every week for two decades. Likewise with anyone who watched through all 18 years of second generation Star Trek.

How do you do it? Does it ever get boring, does it ever feel like you're just watching out of habit? Do you ever stop watching and then return later?

~20 years seems to be a long-time to maintain a series and even longer to watch it continuously.

I've never done this before so I'm genuinely curious. The closest I've came is watching new ST episodes from 1991-1999.

 

[Dream]

Did you try asking the SG:SG-1 fans first?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I stopped watching The Simpsons ages ago because it stopped being funny after season 10 or so. There is still the occasional episode that is good that I come across, but most of them are dreck.

I originally watched the early years (i.e the Mike Logan years) of Law & Order at the time but fell out of habit. In the last couple of years, I've been catching up on the reruns played on TNT (prompted by getting into Law & Order: Criminal Intent where Mike Logan resurfaced) and I think I'm pretty close to have seen all of them except the crossovers with Homicide.

So in reality I haven't stayed with either show for 20 years so I wouldn't know. I can't even begin to imagine how some people stay with the soap operas decade upon decade!

 

[unimatrix7]

Simple. If you like a show, you keep on watching until you no longer like it.

I loved all ten seasons of SG-1 and wish I could have another 13 seasons of The West Wing. *shrug*

 

[Sephiroth]

i see the different seasons of the simpsons sort of as different universes, because face it S1-3 homer is a totally different charater

 

[CommodoreKong]

I watched the Simpsons for years but I just can't stand to watch it anymore, the current show is a shallow imitation of the first 10 seasons or so and it's just painful to watch (after 3 or 4 seasons of watching the show turn bad I just couldn't watch anymore). I still do enjoy watching reruns though. Sadly Family Guy is the same, but it's original run wasn't as long.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I have up on "The Simpsons" for seas 6, and stuck around for the Halloween episodes after that. But then those got unforgivably bad about three or four years later, and I dumped the show all together. As a fan of a show that was once something, I cringe when people who have never seen it tune in to a new episode, or say they tried to catch it but hated it -- no wonder, they caught a new one.


Most shows change characters around. Some or all the characters eventually leave, like "E.R.". "Gunsmoke" started out in black & white and didn't even have Festus. Heck, four or five main characters left "M*A*S*H".


What makes a show watchable is that it never looses it spark or is afraid to do something. Take the "M*A*S*H" episode in black & white where each member is intereviewed about the war. Or episodes of "Gunsmoke" where Dillion didn't appear at all. Or -- while this series was only one for five years -- "Newsradio" -- which had one episode where it was a "what if" and the building was the Titanic and was going down, or the outerspace episode where the building was a starship in the future.

Not all series are made to have "what if" episodes, I'll grant you that, but as long as the writing is fresh, the characters interactions dont' get boring, and you got a genuenally good plot that is put together well, you'll always have some kind of success.

"Law & Order" gets a new generation of fans each year who discover the show, and they barely have to come up with ideas becuase they take them right out of the head lines. The plot is always the same:

Some innocent bystandard is having fun, say jogging, and discovers a dead body. Cue two of the main characters looking at the dead body at the scene. One of them makes a wise crac about the dead person. Fast forward to the end of the episode, either in a jail or a court room, and after pressuring the attacker who has been deying his/her innocents, they cave and start describing what made them made while composer Mike Post provides the exact same kind of underscore he does for that scene everytime (poor guy must want to claw his eyes out).

Yet it works. And that's because of a fresh audience.

 

[Jack Bauer]

I watched Law and Order into the Benjamin Bratt years and stopped watching just before he left. Since then I've watched it off and on. There's no way I could watch that show for 20 seasons. I just got tired of the format and there wasn't enough character stuff to get me through it. The longest show I've ever stuck with is NYPD Blue which last 12 seasons. I never got tired of it. If it last that long I'll probably stick with CSI. If there's characters and or actors I like and the episodes still engage me I can probably stick with a show for that long of a time. Some shows are just more habit forming than others.

 

[TGTheodore]

How do you do it? Does it ever get boring, does it ever feel like you're just watching out of habit? Do you ever stop watching and then return later?

~20 years seems to be a long-time to maintain a series and even longer to watch it continuously.

It isn't. it's only about 4-5 months of first-run episodes (usually with mini-breaks scattered in the middle), then you get the rest of the year off.

--Ted

 

[Jax]

Simple answer is I don't...

The Simpsons I just catch re-runs over the past 10 years and i've watched probably 60-70% of all episodes so far.

E.R for example I watched via DVD's & re-runs before I watched weekly for a while (I've seen 5-10/11 whenever Carter left is when I stopped) I think.

Buffy n Angel I missed the beginning so re-runs to catch up then watch the last few years weekly.

The most I watched any one show for every year is probably 6/7 but since am older I watch more TV than before and assuming they aren't cancelled am sure I will extend that record.

 

[MyCylon]

I wonder how many people actually watch EVERY EPISODE of some of those long-running shows. Taking L&O as an example, I've been watching it for years now but it's always been on and off. I'd never tune in week after week. And there's really no need to with the episodic nature of the show.

The longest stretch I've ever had is (like the OP) something like 1991 - 1999 with Star Trek. I watched all of TNG (which started later where I lived at the time), then all of DS9 as well as part of VOY.
Had DS9 continued, I'd have continued watching. As it was, I stopped when DS9 did. VOY just didn't hold my interest. It's where a sort of fatigue set in because it reminded me too much of TNG in some way, I think.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Simpsons is force-of-habit, I guess. I liked it early on (looking back at te first episodes, I'm not sure why), quit in season 2 somewhere, picked it up again in season 3. It was the best show on t.v. from roughly season 4 to...I can't remember, once Conan O'Brien left it started to drop...yes, that long ago. Now its watered down and tired. The movie wasn't even especially good.

 

[John Picard]

I dunno. Ask the Doctor Who fans.

 

[Mistral]

I use the DVR. that way, I can pause it between weeks. Its the only way I've found to stretch an episode out to a decade.

 

[WillsBabe]

I think there are probably shows I've watched for 20 years. I've just been watching an episode of the the British show The Professionals and that was aired in the late 70's/early 80's. I still watch TOS and other old stuff. I don't think I've watched a long running show continually that's been airing all the time, for example soaps. Those, I come into, fall out of, come back to. Many long running shows that I did enjoy I stopped watching - er, NYPD Blue, the Simpsons. I think some shows go off the the boil, but then I catch an episode and enjoy it, but don't really go back to it.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I dunno. Ask the Doctor Who fans.

You know, I didn't think of Doctor Who in my first post.

I watched the show in a nontraditional manner. As a kid I saw mostly the Tom Baker and Sylverster McCoy serials, the latter of which I saw as they were being aired (or roughly so since I saw them on PBS). Since then, I caught up with the rest of The Doctors and now have seen every single episode in existence (fan restorations with audio and telesnaps for the missing episodes). And of course I watch the new series.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Did you try asking the SG:SG-1 fans first?

That's probably the longest I've stuck with any show. And it's a good example of why Ten Years is Too Damn Long (and I Don't Even Want to Think about Twenty).

I could watch Dexter for ten years, tho. I just don't think the producers of the show could pull it off, so they won't give me the chance.

The longest run of a show that didn't make me sick and tired of it by the end was DS9 at seven seasons. And even in that case, I definitely thought that it was ending just at the right length.

 

[John Picard]

Did you try asking the SG:SG-1 fans first?

That's probably the longest I've stuck with any show. And it's a good example of why Ten Years is Too Damn Long (and I Don't Even Want to Think about Twenty).

I could watch Dexter for ten years, tho. I just don't think the producers of the show could pull it off, so they won't give me the chance.

The longest run of a show that didn't make me sick and tired of it by the end was DS9 at seven seasons. And even in that case, I definitely thought that it was ending just at the right length.

I think TNG could have gone for 10.

 

[MyCylon]

^
Really? I actually felt it had gone on for too long. I certainly couldn't imagine more than the 7 seasons.

 

[RandyS]

Well, speaking as somebody who watched the Star Trek shows once a week for the entire 18 years, it only took one hour a week, not counting summer reruns (which I only watched once, because I missed a DS9 first run one time.), that I no longer have to do, because, you know, they're not being made anymore.

That was the long version. The short version is, that one hour a week, isn't that much at all, so there was no reason to be bored.