When Good Shows Go Bad

[23skidoo]

A few shows "lost the plot" after awhile. Twin Peaks is a classic example, and the DVD gold box set contains some pretty strong condemnation of the network.

One show that started really strong was Dark Angel. The first year was fantastic, but the second season started out so badly I abandoned the show after about 3 episodes. In this Internet culture there seems to be a tendency for people to abandon shows if someone farts off key in an episode, so I tend not to tow the party line, but I did with Dark Angel.

Alex

 

[blockaderunner]

Agreed on E:FC and Andromeda. But I have to disagree about the X-Files. Granted the Mythology Arc went nowhere and ended with a thud, but throughout its 9 year run, amid all the cast changes and behind the scenes squabbles, it had some pretty chilling and entertaining standalones that were cinematic in nature. That's why that, when SciFi ran marathons of the show, Id tune in to make sure it was just standalones and not Mythology Arc episodes.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

X-Files, once it became clear they weren't going to resolve any plotline in any decent or satisfactory way and just keep piling on the bullshit deeper and deeper with increasing self-satisfaction, added to the obligatorily horrid cliche of Mulder's parentage and Scully's unwavering sceptisim in the face of years of exposure to blatantly alien and unnatural phenomenon.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Heroes

E:FC - first season ending was AMAZING but then it just went to faeces

BSG - when they did "I Borg" and Helo betrayed humanity. Show was finished for me at that point, once the writers were no longer being true to their premise. If you're a Jew in 1940 Germany and you can wipe all the Nazis out of existence by pressing a button there is no way IN HELL you are NOT going to do that.

If you're one of the last of only a few thousand humans left after the death of TENS OF BILLIONS and a race of psychotic, evil robots is using ALL ITS ENERGY AND WILL to hunt you down and exterminate you.......well, you're going to be even quicker in doing it.

MooreRon basically committed the cardinal writing sin here. He gave his characters magic/ultimate power while they were in THE WORST predicament of their lives and then had to come up with a reason for them intentionally NOT using it.

This single episode showed me he did not know what he was doing and showed me any sense that he was treating his show as a "real world" was now over. Liberal moralizing may work in 1980's TNG but for me, at this point, BSG was done.

It's been awhile since I've seen that episode, but I thought, after some debate, everyone basically agreed to go through with the plan and Helo sabotaged it for the sake of his cylon girlfriend. Seemed like a pretty believable rationale to me, considering how sympathetic he (and others) had become towards some of them.

I do think his punishment was a little light, but otherwise I was fine with the story.

That was what it came down to. Helo was in love with a Cylon, a Cylon who agreed with wiping them out. But a lot of it came down to "did they have the right?" Plus it wasn't some magic button, it was a disease that took some time to kill them. I believe they had mentioned on the show that biological warfare was against their laws, but they were going to ignore that just to wipe them out, which is genocide.

Helo saw the Cylons as beings that were just as alive as himself, the only differences between the two were minor. He truly loved one, knew that she loved him, and had a child with her. I completely understand his reluctance to be a part of it. If they had wiped them out, they would have been no better than the Cylons.

 

[davejames]

Millennium had a first season that, five or six episodes shorter, could be called brilliant. In its second year, new executive producers Morgan and Wong retooled it into a silly adventure show, filled with nonsensical religious babble and an attitude that was no longer serious about violence. Attempts to reverse the damage done in the third season only went as far as was possible given the mess left behind after the previous year, and the show was unsurprisingly cancelled.

Agreed. I barely remember the second season at all now, but that dark and moody first season was fantastic.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Sliders got really bad after they killed Arturo. It was all downhill from there.

 

[The Wormhole]

I am often surprised whenever Andromeda comes up in these type discussions. I watched the show for the first half of the first season, and bolted because it was just awful. Then people say it got worse after that. Worse than that? Just how bad did that show become?

 

[Mr Light]

Well it was never amazing, but it showed promise, the way the first season of Babylon 5 did in spite of its lacking production values and clumsy writing. There was the potential of a great show in there that unfortunately never got to materialize.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Helo saw the Cylons as beings that were just as alive as himself, the only differences between the two were minor. He truly loved one, knew that she loved him, and had a child with her. I completely understand his reluctance to be a part of it. If they had wiped them out, they would have been no better than the Cylons.

I think most of the humans would've rather have the "we are no better than them" debate after they were safe...and the way to be safe is to wipe out the Cylons.

"We are really no better...but, oh, well at least we survived."

(Of course, according to the quasi-theme of the show, you have to be worthy to survive, which is ironic, since Rick Worthy and his copies all died.)

 

[Tulin]

Well it was never amazing, but it showed promise, the way the first season of Babylon 5 did in spite of its lacking production values and clumsy writing. There was the potential of a great show in there that unfortunately never got to materialize.

I think you're in the wrong thread.

This isn't the "which show did you give up on after one season?" thread, since you seem to be saying this it is obvious you watched no further.

Yes the first season had some clunkers but, If you had continued watching you'd know that B5 became one of THE GREATEST SF shows ever made.

 

[Snaploud]

Well it was never amazing, but it showed promise, the way the first season of Babylon 5 did in spite of its lacking production values and clumsy writing. There was the potential of a great show in there that unfortunately never got to materialize.

I think you're in the wrong thread.

This isn't the "which show did you give up on after one season?" thread, since you seem to be saying this it is obvious you watched no further.

Yes the first season had some clunkers but, If you had continued watching you'd know that B5 became one of THE GREATEST SF shows ever made.

I could be wrong, but I believe the comparison (between B5 and Andromeda) was just regarding the first season. I don't think Mr. Light was saying anything about B5 post-season 1.

 

[chrisspringob]

Virtually every show that lasted more than one season falls under this category. It's the very rare show that is still going strong (quality-wise) when it goes off the air.

 

[Triskelion]

So perhaps we should be grateful for no season two of Firefly?

 

[Australis]

Ooo, ooo, here's a goodie!

The Powers of Matthew Starr 1982-3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Powers_of_Matthew_Starr

It was doing a Buffy 10 years before the film and 15 years before the series. In brief, an alien prince hides from assassins on Earth, and as he matures his powers frow and change. It was an effective metaphor for puberty and teenagedom.

Then halfway through the first season, he, in effect, became a superspy for the Government. Overnight, it became dull and trite. REALLY dull and trite.

A big shame because it had Lou Gossett Jnr as the boy's protector.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

In retrospect, the moment where Battlestar Galactica lost its magic for me was in the 2nd half of Season 2. I thought it was such a cop out the way they resolved the "Pegasus" cliffhanger. Then Billy died and the show was just killing time and subjected us to the Sam Anders/Starbuck/Apollo/Dee quadrangle of doom! It's so shocking when you consider how addictive the show was back in Season 1.

While I still like the show, I felt like Stargate Atlantis had already achieved perfection in Season 1, yet Season 2 decided they needed to tinker with the formula. I thought the team was perfectly balanced when they had Lt. Ford. Once they replaced him with Ronon Dex, that meant there was no longer anyone for Dr. McKay to tease and the writers didn't seem to know what to do with Teyla anymore. And the less said about Michael, the better.

While I still enjoyed the later seasons, it was around Season 7 that I realized that the Stargate SG-1 writers had no clue where this was going anymore. In particular, I was very dissatisfied with the way they didn't really do anything interesting with bringing Daniel Jackson back from the dead. Once they brought him back, it seemed like they wanted to forget that he'd ever left as quickly as possible. That's a shame, especially since I liked Jonas Quinn.

Agreed about Earth Final Conflict. A decent show for four seasons that was ruined by a horrible fifth season.

I thought it was ruined after the first.

There seem to be 4 basic schools of thought as to when Earth: Final Conflict went off the rails. Of course, NO ONE liked Season 5 (although I shamefully admit that I watched the whole thing). Season 5 was just a totally different show, going from an intriguing series about how humanity incorporates the Taelons into our society to "Renee the Atavus Slayer."

But then there are other fans who gave up around Season 3 when they replaced Lili Marquette with Renee Palmer.

I think a good chunk of fans couldn't tolerate the killing off of William Boone at the end of Season 1.

And some even go so far as to say the show lost its way before the first season was even over. They point to the part where Zo'or showed up. Once that happened, Zo'or became the overtly villainous one and they whitewashed away all of Da'an's previous ambiguity.

Personally, I may be a rare breed of EFC fan because I've never even seen Seasons 1 & 2. (I bought Season 1 on DVD. I'm about 2 or 3 episodes into it right now.) But Season 4 was awesome! Ronald Sandoval rocks!

I am often surprised whenever Andromeda comes up in these type discussions. I watched the show for the first half of the first season, and bolted because it was just awful. Then people say it got worse after that. Worse than that? Just how bad did that show become?

I know what you mean. Occasionally shows will sink far lower than even our lowest expectations. The dim twinkle of promise within the 1st season of Andromeda was thoroughly extinguished when Kevin Sorbo fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe because his writing was "too clever." No one expected the 5th season of EFC to be as painful as it was. And although it's not a TV series, I'd like to mention Highlander: The Source, a movie far worse than anyone's lowest expectations. And if you're a Highlander fan, you know exactly how low Highlander 2 & Highlander: The Final Dimension set the bar. Finding something as bad as Highlander: The Source is like discovering a temperature lower than absolute zero!

 

[Triskelion]

Which fortunately cannot be said about the Highlander TV series (thank goodness they made Raven a spinoff rather than a continuation).

Which reminds me of Adrian Paul's short lived "Tracker". An unassuming little series I quite liked. A single 22 episode season, it ended before it really gathered momentum. It's supposedly on Youtube, think I'll check it out again.

Borgified Corpse, I agree with much of what you say about BSG; it has soap opera syndrome; sequences resolve but you never get a sense of fulfillment. The characters are never permitted to be too happy or too sad for long. For me it was New Caprica. Ugh. It's like they all turned stupid. Including the cylons.

As for Andromeda, it had a lot of sfnal concepts that were worth digging out, particularly involving the Nietzscheans, science fiction's most difficult race to spell, (and it's not fiction). I also enjoyed listening to Harper and Becka's snappy dialogue, they had some good zingers.

About Stargate, I agree also that the loss of Lt Ford was a shame. He brought an innocent and noble quality to the show, something like Lorne with less experience - but Lorne never showed his stuff physically. Ford's fighting style was fun to watch. But his arc never felt resolved. He went off the deep end, so much for his relationship with his grandparents?

And while Ronon doesn't exactly add depth to the narrative, I'd rather watch him than Holling.

The show recovered from Beckett's loss with Jennifer Keller; Weir's loss, though.... Another WTF moment.

 

[Mr Light]

Babylon 5 is my #1 tv show of all time, which is something I tend to say over and over here I'm just saying that S1 started off clunky.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Borgified Corpse, I agree with much of what you say about BSG; it has soap opera syndrome; sequences resolve but you never get a sense of fulfillment. The characters are never permitted to be too happy or too sad for long. For me it was New Caprica. Ugh. It's like they all turned stupid. Including the cylons.

See, for me, the New Caprica cliffhanger at the end of Season 2 gave me some hope for the series. Perhaps the angsty antics of the latter half of Season 2 would turn out to be a minor hiccup in an otherwise excellent series. It turned out to be false hope. Season 3 was just painful. The Baltar story kept me interested but everything else was just angst & filler.

About Stargate, I agree also that the loss of Lt Ford was a shame. He brought an innocent and noble quality to the show, something like Lorne with less experience - but Lorne never showed his stuff physically. Ford's fighting style was fun to watch. But his arc never felt resolved. He went off the deep end, so much for his relationship with his grandparents?

When I first read about Lt. Ford, I expected him to just be a token black guy who never got any character development, like Travis Mayweather. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. True, Lt. Ford never got the kind of major screentime that we saw from John Sheppard or Dr. McKay but neither was he an empty token. He felt like a very real, likable character with real relationships with the other team members.

The show recovered from Beckett's loss with Jennifer Keller; Weir's loss, though.... Another WTF moment.

The problem with the loss of Dr. Weir was that they clearly only did it because they wanted to bring over Col. Carter. I like Col. Carter a lot. However, they really didn't do anything with her on Atlantis, certainly nothing that they couldn't have just as easily done with another character. Hell, Carter got less development in that entire season than Dr. Weir did in the 3 or 4 guest appearances she had that year.

And casting a Firefly alumnus as Dr. Keller is the only reason why the Atlantis writers weren't lynched for killing off Dr. Beckett. I still miss him though. Dr. Keller is sexy but I do find something very platonically cuddly about Dr. Beckett. (I want a Dr. Beckett plushie!)

 

[barnaclelapse]

^ I remember...especially after that demon guy (Bob?) started showing up.

You must not have liked Twin Peaks much. He first appeared in the second episode!!!

In my opinion, the show was only getting better until the murder was solved. The show plummeted to the state of being near unwatchable almost immediately, before instantly regaining it's footing for the last episode. weird

Yeah, that last episode actually was pretty damn good. Lynch himself has said that solving the murder was a mistake.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda both had one good season. Buffy was great from start to finish.