Add Scrubs, House, and possibly Dexter to the list.
Shows that should have ended sooner than later
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
OK I was thinking and thought of a few.
Roanne should have ended with the Wedding at the end of season 8.
Gilmore Girls should have ended before their introduced Rory's rich asshole boyfriend.
Weeds after season 3 of course.
Will and Grace after probably 4-5 seasons.
7th Heaven had a planned series finale for season 10 and they still got an 11th season. Stupid.
Stargate SG-1 after season 6. Make a DVD movie about Atlantis, and then start Atlantis up and do some more SG-1 movies. The problem with EVERYTHING past season 6 is it seems no one cares anymore and the longer the show went on the less and less the actors cared. Plus season 7 should have ONLY been about looking for Atlantis, that's it. They hardly searched for it at all.
Roanne should have ended with the Wedding at the end of season 8.
Gilmore Girls should have ended before their introduced Rory's rich asshole boyfriend.
Weeds after season 3 of course.
Will and Grace after probably 4-5 seasons.
7th Heaven had a planned series finale for season 10 and they still got an 11th season. Stupid.
Stargate SG-1 after season 6. Make a DVD movie about Atlantis, and then start Atlantis up and do some more SG-1 movies. The problem with EVERYTHING past season 6 is it seems no one cares anymore and the longer the show went on the less and less the actors cared. Plus season 7 should have ONLY been about looking for Atlantis, that's it. They hardly searched for it at all.
I always thought that from the beginning, but that's easy to explain, his dad is the half a man.
To be fair, he is a half wit.
I'm going to put on my asbestos pajamas and say TNG and DS9 for starters. I think both would have been much stronger series if they had ended after maybe 5 seasons rather than dragging for 7. That doesn't mean I'm wishing the Dominion War arc away, but it could have been the focus of Season 5 and left at that rather than dragging on for season after season. And as for TNG, it's a shame it took 2 seasons to find its voice (though lucky the fanbase had the patience they didn't show with Enterprise to allow it time to work out the kinks). The middle seasons, and one season combining the truly good episodes for the first two years (there were a few) with the half-decent episodes of Season 7, would have made it much stronger series.
I already covered Dark Angel in another thread in which I stated it would have been better off ending after one season rather than moving on to an awful second year that ruined the whole thing for me.
X-Files I'll toe the party line on - the show ended once Duchovny was no longer the co-star, and trying to keep it alive with just Gillian Anderson and shoehorning new characters into the mix just didn't work.
I think SG1 ran for too long as well. Basically, unless your show is called Doctor Who, Law & Order or, arguably because it's still scoring high ratings, CSI TOS, once you have to begin replacing a good chunk of your cast -- in particular the actors who made the show popular in the first place -- it's time to call it a day. It was fun to see Ben Browder and Claudia Black on SG-1, but, really, the show ended when Richard Dean Anderson was no longer a regular.
Another sign a show has been on too long is if you start to hear increasingly saying "my god, is that still on the air?" I remember people saying that of Married with Children and Two and a Half Men, as well as America's Funniest Home Videos. I'm also starting to hear it said of Survivor which, due to the quirk of its scheduling is technically in its 19th season (though it started only a decade ago). I mean, do people really care anymore who wins the thing? The first couple of people who won became well known, but the only people who can recall who won Survivor 8 or Survivor 13 are the same type of people who can probably remember who won the British Open of 1922.
Alex
I already covered Dark Angel in another thread in which I stated it would have been better off ending after one season rather than moving on to an awful second year that ruined the whole thing for me.
X-Files I'll toe the party line on - the show ended once Duchovny was no longer the co-star, and trying to keep it alive with just Gillian Anderson and shoehorning new characters into the mix just didn't work.
I think SG1 ran for too long as well. Basically, unless your show is called Doctor Who, Law & Order or, arguably because it's still scoring high ratings, CSI TOS, once you have to begin replacing a good chunk of your cast -- in particular the actors who made the show popular in the first place -- it's time to call it a day. It was fun to see Ben Browder and Claudia Black on SG-1, but, really, the show ended when Richard Dean Anderson was no longer a regular.
Another sign a show has been on too long is if you start to hear increasingly saying "my god, is that still on the air?" I remember people saying that of Married with Children and Two and a Half Men, as well as America's Funniest Home Videos. I'm also starting to hear it said of Survivor which, due to the quirk of its scheduling is technically in its 19th season (though it started only a decade ago). I mean, do people really care anymore who wins the thing? The first couple of people who won became well known, but the only people who can recall who won Survivor 8 or Survivor 13 are the same type of people who can probably remember who won the British Open of 1922.
Alex
At least 12 more to come.
I want to say Heroes is the worst, but really there was enough potential there for four or five good seasons at least, it was just squandered somehow. One might say, bungled. Heroes never quite actualized on it's potential. I think a show has to actualize before you can say it ran too long. Whatever it was, Heroes was certainly disappointing.
The X-Files I think is an example of a show that peaked and then seemed to just be going through the motions for a few seasons. I had already tuned out by the time Dogget appeared, but really that should have been a spin-off. I did tune back in the finale which was pretty awful.
The X-Files I think is an example of a show that peaked and then seemed to just be going through the motions for a few seasons. I had already tuned out by the time Dogget appeared, but really that should have been a spin-off. I did tune back in the finale which was pretty awful.
When Larry David left, the tone of the show definitely shifted. The stories became a more wacky and outlandish.
Do you think if Lost had ended after Season 5 the season finale would have been ranked as one of the most WTF finales in TV history right up with Twin Peaks?
At least 12 - I can see them getting two more seasons out of the premise.
DS9 ended right when it should have. TNG was too episodic for it to really matter much when it ended.
Since the ending was fine, this question makes no sense. Twin Peaks was absolutely incoherent; Lost just has the problem of not being able to please everyone.
I love Entourage, but I think it peaked with the season four finale. I don't see it getting better.
I think it peaked a little earlier than that. It should have ended after the Season 2 finale.
Earth: Final Conflict, as others have said. But I'd kill it after the first season since they were so intent on fucking it up with retooling.
SeaQuest is another one. They had one good season where they tried to do a relatively hard-SF show, and then they went off the deep end for the second season. The third season is a totally different show that I like on its own merits, and I wish had lasted longer, but I don't consider it SeaQuest in anything but name.
DS9 went on a season longer than it should've, which makes sense since they had a season-long detour into studio-mandated Klingon Klaptrap--season 4. The writers and producers were all very honest about it, though. Paramount wanted to boost the ratings and bring Worf aboard, and the creative team decided to build a season around it, so it pushed their original plans back a year. I don't feel that the Klingon War arc really brought much to the series, to be honest. Likewise, there was a hell of a lot of filler in the last 2 seasons that we could've done without.
Voyager had a decent premise and squandered it every which way. I do think it got substantially better once they brought Seven aboard. Almost seems like the writers didn't know what to do with the characters they had, so they just brought a new one on board that they could think up good stories for. It really showed, too. Seasons 4-6 were a marked improvement, I think, but the final season was a joke, especially the atrocious finale.
I quit Enterprise partway through the first season. Just couldn't get into it.
SeaQuest is another one. They had one good season where they tried to do a relatively hard-SF show, and then they went off the deep end for the second season. The third season is a totally different show that I like on its own merits, and I wish had lasted longer, but I don't consider it SeaQuest in anything but name.
DS9 went on a season longer than it should've, which makes sense since they had a season-long detour into studio-mandated Klingon Klaptrap--season 4. The writers and producers were all very honest about it, though. Paramount wanted to boost the ratings and bring Worf aboard, and the creative team decided to build a season around it, so it pushed their original plans back a year. I don't feel that the Klingon War arc really brought much to the series, to be honest. Likewise, there was a hell of a lot of filler in the last 2 seasons that we could've done without.
Voyager had a decent premise and squandered it every which way. I do think it got substantially better once they brought Seven aboard. Almost seems like the writers didn't know what to do with the characters they had, so they just brought a new one on board that they could think up good stories for. It really showed, too. Seasons 4-6 were a marked improvement, I think, but the final season was a joke, especially the atrocious finale.
I quit Enterprise partway through the first season. Just couldn't get into it.
I have no idea where that guy would have ended DS9, really. Sounds like someone who just didn't like it, period, and is using this thread as a side-ass way of taking a shot without being honest about it. Because where you would end it? The end of S5? End of S6? And leave the war unresolved? Please!
Ending it at the end of S2, S3 or S4 and you don't even know the full measure of who the Dominion turns out to be, and what they want. 
I know very few people who like the earlier seasons of DS9 better than the latter seasons. Modding for that forum for 8 years, I think I have run across only a couple. So I'm guessing he just doesn't like the show at all. Anyway, my candidates are:
1. Friends - should have ended several years earlier.
2. ER - should have ended when Carter left, at the latest.
3. Heroes - should have ended with S1, because they clearly had no idea what to do after that.
4. Prison Break - should have ended with S2. One season to break out, one season to clear everyone and set the universe right.
I have never cared for The Simpsons..so it's not really fair for me to judge that one.
I was okay with The X-Files going long. Yes, the quality dropped after DD left...but I remember thinking that considering he was gone, it wasn't a bad show at all. Not what it was, but certainly not bad.
I kinda think they should have ended Stargate SG-1 earlier. We really didn't need the whole Ori thing. Once the Jaffa were free and the system lords destroyed, they should have wrapped it up. But still, I do like Ben Browder and Claudia Black...and there's not much downside to more Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge. Still liked the characters...but the storyline was just sort of lame.
That's fair. Isn't that about the time they ran out of Mark Wahlberg stories?
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