TV Show Whose Decline Saddens You the Most

[Khan]

Has anyone mentioned "Heroes" on NBC?  I never watched the series.  However, I knew it was doomed when its' creator, Tim Kring, admitted he wasn't a fan of comic books.  (How do you create a series about superheroes, the literal bread-and-butter for so many comic books, if you don't actually care for them?)

[soapfan770]

 

Actually, it was Moonves' predecessor Laurence Tish before Westinghouse merger who mucked up a lot of stuff for CBS. Moonves didn't help any either though, but his programming eventually did help CBS reclaim it's "Tiffany" title by 2000/2001 though with Survivor and CSI. 

[Khan]

 

John Ritter's absence just pointed up what his performance had obscured: without him, "8 Simple Rules" was another, standard-issue ABC sitcom.

 

 

Good point.

[Franko]

I liked Ed, but dead on with the other two points. For me, the line in the sand was when Joel and Maggie hooked up. There were good episodes in the last two and a half years, but also a sense of "Oh crap, where do we go from here?" I also wish Joel and Maggie could have legitimately liked each other. At one point, they decided their relationship was as "mutually desirous incompatibles." It's like, God save me from '90s TV at its most self-consciously edgy. 

[soapfan770]

 

I think the nadir for CBS was the 1997-98 season, which in similar fashion to NBC's 1983-84 nothing new was renewed and they're cherrypicking off other networks (Step by Step, Family Matters, Unsolved Mysteries etc.) was a disaster. It's even worse they had sent out a promotional video for all of it too: 

 

 

 

[NothinButAttitude]

Even though it is a bit before my time, I'd add Charlie's Angels to this list (unless someone else already has). I purchased the entire run of the original series, and I feel that the show totally lost it's way the final 2 seasons. I do think that the season with Tiffany (Shelly Hack) could've been a nice shot in the arm, but they never developed Tiffany enough. And Julie's (Tanya Roberts) debut was a total flop and sure sign that this show was on its last leg. I think what enticed people to this show for the longest was that these women were smart, educated women with a background in public service. Julie going from being a model to instant private investigator was insulting. I think had the show kept the formula that worked so well the first 3 season (well four if they had given Tiffany more of a shot), it could've ran for years with them changing out the angels and bringing in new ones in a proper manner.

[EricMontreal22]

 

From what I remember though to be fair Star's SATC was meant to be quite a different thing--it was meant to be a sex comedy except with women which hadn't really been done on TV before.  MPK made it much more sentimental (and arguably deeper though I think the final season and those shitty movies are at least as much his fault as SJP's and let's not forget MPK went on to create and run Two Broke Girls...)

 

Murphy and Falchuk (who by now deserves as much of the blame but since he doesn't like public attention and Murphy loves it is often forgotten) are good even sometimes great at concepts.  And casting.  But... yeah.  I'm glad they now do so many shows that a lot of them don't feature them as showrunners and they're usually much better due to that (Pose, Feud, American Crime, to varying degrees....)

I mostly really enjoyed season 1 though on hindsight it has made zero lasting impression on me--but I remember a group of us friends would always watch it together and everyone was pretty excited by it.  That didn't last more than maybe one or two episodes into season 2.

From the men who went on to become the showrunners of the awful American Queer as Folk (granted they cut their teeth at Family as did a much better team, Herskovitz/Zwick)?  I am shocked...  I somewhat watched Sisters with me, well, sister, but I was too young to really catch onto it so can't really talk about it but I know it was a "Cow/Lip" show"

That reboot is so out of nowhere.  I did revisit season one of NE but only was kinda into it--and was shocked at how homophobic one of the early episodes (2?) was.  I mean I know it was a different time, but man...

[DRW50]

 

I don't think Star's SATC would have lasted long, but I enjoyed it much more than most of what came after King took over. The only character I would say benefited from King was Charlotte, and to a lesser degree Miranda. Carrie became truly unbearable, refashioned from a sharp, harsh but likeable figure to a perpetual princess with purple prose monologues that would have gotten her howled out of any actual newspaper office. Her relationship with Aiden was a black hole. And Samantha was thrown into one stunt story after another (the lesbian story and the black boyfriend in particular do not age well). Star had a story for Samantha in the first season where she was in love with a man, and tried her best to stay with him, but his having an inadequate penis size was too much for her to accept. That was a story which filled the brief of edgy comedy while also being character-defining.  There was a directness which King never understood. 

 

King also had no ability to write friendships between the women, which is why by the last few seasons they no longer seemed even remotely close to each other, with the only hints of genuine bonds being between the women and their gay friends. 

 

The truly ugly publicity about the third movie (which SJP and King revived yet again recently) has reinforced to me how deluded they are and how much this damaged the show. I saw how one of them was telling the Hollywood Reporter about how risky it had been for SJP to do the show because she was a movie star. I laughed, repeatedly, because 1) this was 1997, not 1957, and 2) Sarah Jessica Parker had never been a movie star. The closest she'd come to really starring in anything was Square Pegs. If that was the attitude she had while on the show, no wonder it fell apart so quickly. 

[Roman]

the returning episode where they killed off John's character was to me their last great episode. Katay deserved an Emmy, and Amy Davidson is  a truly wonderful actress. Kaley Cucoo (sp?) has NEVER impressed me.  and that brings me to TBBT, a show I feel should have went off the air 5 seasons ago. it has just outstayed its welcome.

[Vee]

Heroes was bad from the very beginning. Anyone who says otherwise was too young and/or enthusiastic just to see superheroes on TV to know better. Horrible characters, nonsensical writing, no budget. It got by on hype and the novelty of "superheroes - on TV!" Which was pretty unthinkable back then. People gave it so many chances, claimed it would 'be good again'. Its showrunner, Tim Kring, is worse than Chris Carter; Bryan Fuller wrote a good episode or two but never made the show good.

 

I actually watched its revival a few years ago out of supreme boredom. It was actually worse than the original show. And again, made by Tim Kring.

[EricMontreal22]

I won't disagree with any of that.  The first season at least had a good sense of forward momentum that kept it easily watchable--something that from the little I watched later seemed to get completely lost.

[soapfan770]

 

Which reminds me, after Kaley Cuoco’s horrific performance on Charmed during its disastrous last season it’s amazing she ever actually starred on anything else.

[DRW50]

With Heroes I never could watch after learning they de-gayed a character. Bryan Fuller trying to blame it all on the actor many years later also reminded me why I have never been a huge fan of his. 

[Roman]

thank you. she has played the exact same character in everything she does, and to be honest.....I HATED her on TBBT.

[Khan]

 

ICAM.  Even Charlie's beginning narration for the final episode was laughable.  (Something like, "Once upon a time, there were three little girls.  Two were graduates of the police academy.  The third, a graduate of a school for models."  Say what?)

 

Instead of making her an ex-model, they should have had Julie come on as someone who had worked for the NYPD.  Even better, they could have introduced her as someone who had gone to the police academy with Tiffany and was now in L.A. to help the rest of the team track down her best friend's killer.  (Yes, I would have killed off Tiffany Welles.  Very few liked her, and killing her off would have satisfied viewers, provided a strong introduction story for Julie and put a twist on the whole "Oh, she just left town/entered the race car circuit/got married and impregnated" explanation.)