TV Show Whose Decline Saddens You the Most

[Daphne]

 

This show's decline truly makes me sad.  I know everyone has a different opinion on WHEN the show started to decline. For me it was maybe late in Season 5 when the survivors made their way to Alexandria.  The first 5 seasons we saw our survivors living on the road, Hershel's farm and the prison.  Then they made their way to Alexandria and things kinda got back to "normal."  I was happy for the survivors because they finally found a somewhat stable home but for me the tone of the show changed.  Yet, I continued to watch.  From there it continued to go downhill.

 

The show IMO jumped the shark after the introduction of Negan. Now, I understand Comic Negan was all sorts of awesome and what-not, but IMO the TV version does not live up to the hype.  Other messes: Glenn's death lost what relevance it should have had because (1) Dumpster-Gate and (2) his death was tied in with Abraham's in a poorly executed season premiere.  Abraham's death was glossed over IMO because his death was tied with Glenn's.  Carl's death was a HUGE mistake because at the heart of the show was Rick making the world "safer" for Carl.  Rick leaving leaves the show without its core.  

 

I could also go on (and on) about how Tyreese, Abraham and Jesus never lived up to their comic mojo because of Daryl Dixon but I will save that for another post.

[Taoboi]

Heheh...right down to Spy Mama. 

 

I didn't even realize that until someone did a meme on that. 

[Roman]

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[Vee]

Re: Heroes, I remember the stories were pretty clear on what happened with Thomas Dekker's gay character even as it aired - the network clamped down and said he had to be de-gayed, but so did Dekker's management. Fans knew this at the time as did entertainment news which printed stories on it. As a young teen he had been playing a slew of gay roles (even a gay child actor on the WB's shortlived Grosse Pointe) - and he wasn't fooling anyone as Ruthie's super-gay singing boyfriend on fuckin' 7th Heaven either. He was pretty camp and his team was trying to repackage his career and butch him up to become a teen idol. Thus the gay character on Heroes had to become str8 and then went byebye. I was pretty disgusted by it and him at the time. Shortly thereafter he got the lead as John Connor - rugged, tough and of course str8 - on the Terminator series with Lena Headey and Summer Glau on FOX.

 

It didn't last, because Thomas Dekker is a very odd bird who's also had a very tough life by most accounts, typical child actor bad family stuff as well as alleged sexual abuse. Today I don't think it was his fault per se, more a mix of adults meddling along with a very confused young person. But it didn't come from Bryan Fuller, though I do feel he mishandled the way he spoke about it years later. People knew it was NBC and Dekker's team in 2003(?) or whenever the show aired, and many reported on it. Today Dekker is out and making his own movies, doing Gregg Araki stuff, etc., so I'm glad for him.

[Taoboi]

Oh my God! I DO remember that. lol.

 

I always thought it was by his choice though and never knew it was mostly his agent and NBC...or the history of why they did. I do remember him getting casted on TTSCC so he left before the end of the first season.

 

Good that it sounds like Bryan Fuller had a case of misspoken words.

[Vee]

Bryan Fuller didn't name him, but it was pretty obvious who it was. I felt it was unnecessary of him to do in an awards speech, which is what happened.

 

At the time of the actual show, the impression was Dekker fully consented to what his management did. And for years he still kept insisting he'd only had relationships with women but was "open and fluid" even as his career began descending into just gaybaiting schlock post-Terminator. When Fuller all but named him he then abruptly came out and said he was gay and had married a man that year. I thought that was a bit of a convenient dodge for his public behavior for years, but at the same time I don't really fault him today. The reality is Dekker was a maybe 15, 16 yo kid when he'd done Heroes, subject to alleged sexual abuse earlier in his career none of us knew about at the time, and it's natural for all that to have fùcked up his own thought process on a ton of that stuff for years to come. What's important is he's happy now.

[Franko]

In addition to relentless pandering to the shippers and the dominance of spy stuff over political intrigue, there was also the feeling that every episode had to have a moment to blow up Twitter. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Oh dear God, seeing these clips makes me want to watch all of HLOTP again, even the somewhat tepid season 8 and the atrocious season 9. When it was at its peak, I loved the series and its characters dearly. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much I sobbed during The Last Farewell. In fact, I don't think any other primetime series made me cry as often as LH did throughout its run. 

[All My Shadows]

Oh, yes, that final processional set to Onward Christian Soldiers as the Ingalls home stands majestic on the prairie, no longer a "little house" but a salient landmark...baby, my feels get just at activated! The scene doesn't seem to be on YouTube at the moment, which is probably for the best.

LHOTP was exactly what I needed it to be from the beginning until Nellie left - not saying that her departure is what sent the show downhill (obviously it was a big part of it!), but it just so happened to coincide. I wouldn't even say the show limped along. It kept a steady trot even into A New Beginning, and it still felt lively. It was just done.

[vetsoapfan]

 

 

LOL! I just went to youtube to find The Last Farewell (it used to be there, at one point), but alas, it did not turn up when I searched for it.

 

I do have it on DVD and even VHS, so I can still hunt through various storage boxes to find it.

[Soaplovers]

 

Dailymotion has some little house episodes, maybe it has that too.

[vetsoapfan]

 

Thanks, but I checked there to no avail.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I do have the series on VHS and DVD, except for season 9, so if I can move my backside enough to search through multiple boxes, I should be about to find it. 

[koos]

I found little fault with Heroes until the season 1 finale.

 

Joan of Arcadia was IMO really good until the start of the second season. I don't remember much about the S1 finale, so that may be telling.

 

The decline of The X-Files saddened me the most. It was really fantastic until the awful first movie and the much-worse seasons that followed.

[applcin]

Probably Star Trek: Enterprise. I mean, it was on shaky ground all along. The inherent disadvantages when presenting any new Trek (as we continue to see) are the inevitable comparisons to what came before and the amount of adherence, in the fans' perception, to canon. Even though it was a "prequel" set a century before TOS, I think the fans expected more familiarity to TOS than there was, at least initially. I didn't hate it but didn't love it either. I did find half the cast bland and uninteresting and the stories likewise....not to mention the drab sets. It took them until around the third season (out of 4) to start to reach their stride. I think what disappointed me is that it had the potential to have been creatively better and better-received than what it was. It's a tough thing to do in Trekdom as the years go on and the offshoots and reboots increase....facing that choice of trying to keep the overall Trek universe consistent with what's been seen before vs. new visions. It seemed with ENT that TPTB had made too many unpopular choices for too long...and the series finale hit that home all the more, with a couple of story choices that fans found insulting, not just to them but to the cast.
 

[Roman]

I understand that the last season it found a nice drive but then got canceled.  and that series finale.......Dear God that was horrible.