Too many “what got cancelled too soon” questions, what’s a show that went on too long?
Hard mode: no The Walking Dead
Game of thrones. They should have ended it when they caught up to the books. Just leave it unfinished. That’s not satisfying but better than what we got.
I was gonna binge this show after it ended but I can’t bring myself to watch a show that I know has a shit ending, so it will forever be one of those shows I missed
If you’re okay with the head canon, just stop watching when the wall falls. White walkers won, humanity has ended. GG.
that’s 3 seasons into terrible shit.
stop after season 4 first 4 are genuinely some of the best television ever made
season 5 already has serious fucking cracks in it and season 6 and 7 are carried by one big episode.
It was so good early on though. IMO you would do better to just watch the first 5 or 6 seasons and make up an ending in your head vs not watching at all. Or read a brief synopsis of the last couple seasons just to know where the characters ended up.
But then you might feel the call of the void, and want to watch the last couple seasons as a sort of "bad movie night” on steroids. On one hand, you will fully understand the magnitude of the fuckup, but on the other, you will taint your fond memories of the early seasons. The choice is yours.
I personally think of it as “seasons 1-5 happened, then there was a huge, mysterious time jump, and the last 2 episodes of season 8 happened”.
I can see the ending happening, it’s just… Dum&Dumber couldn’t figure out how to get there, and GRRM was too rich and lazy to do what he was supposed to do to get them there.
It was awesome. Definitely worth the watch for anyone that can get over the ending. Maybe if you know it’s bad going into it you won’t be as disappointed 😂
Yeah, and maybe consider a sequel once the rest of the books came out.
I started reading the series around 2002, when there were 3 books. Martin released book 4 in 2005. In the afterward of the book he said that book 6 was basically already done… book 6 didn’t come out for 6 more years (2011).
It’s been 12 years. We’re waiting on book 7. Given his age, it doesn’t seem like the series will be finished by Martin. Hopefully he actually does know what happens through the rest of the story and has it down for whoever takes up the mantle.
I think he stopped because the show gave us his ending and he knows everyone hates it.
GRRM is a cautionary tale, I’ll never pick up a series before it ends again
74 isn’t that old. You’re certainly not a spring chicken but you’re not knocking on deaths door. He does have a little extra weight though.
I think the production team was fully aware that those books weren’t getting finished.
The actors would have aged way more than their characters at that point. Especially the kids and the very old characters.
Oh. That makes sense. Damn, wrong timing I guess.
Spoilers ahoy. If you’ve not seen game of thrones, read on to get the disappointment out of the way now
I disagree wholeheartedly. As much as “who’s got a better story than bran” sucked, I think that was likely the ending that was intended in the books as well (and the extreme backlash against it is why we’ll never see the last books). GRRM stated on multiple occasions that he was working closely with HBO and that they knew the general shape of the story he was trying to tell.
I feel like the majority of the problem with GoT was Benioff and Weiss. GRRM wanted at least two more seasons in which to tell the story (and, knowing what we know now, to delay the revelation that he didn’t really have a way to untangle the story he tangled), HBO made it clear that they would keep riding the money train no matter how far the station, but D&D wanted to wrap the series up ASAP so they could work on producing some Star Wars films. That’s why Jon goes from Dragonstone to the wall in a single cut. That’s why the entire war with the nights king that was central to the whole series was over in an episode. That’s why Dani went psycho in her moment of victory. That’s why cersei’s death was so predictable that it’s a cliche in ttrpgs, that’s why cleganebowl was ultimately disappointing, that’s why the resolution to dragons being in westeros was “idk he just left lol”, that’s why the resolution to aryas story was “idk she just left lol” (even after several seasons developing her character as someone who believes that if Starks don’t stick together they’ll be destroyed), that’s why the resolution to the war in the north was “idk the north…won? but also surrendered? lol”, that’s why LRJ didn’t matter at all, that’s why the spider went from being the most politically adroit character on the show to doing a whole musical number entitled “Do You Wanna Do A Treason?”, that’s why littlefinger’s whole trial was “we know he’s a dick just kill him”, and the fact that House of the Dragon is being made by people who want to make it is why its almost as good as the first 5 seasons of GoT
It all comes down to the fact that they wanted the show to just be over, and now it is I suppose.
The issue isn’t the ending itself, it’s how they got there. They rushed the ending, and as a result it made no sense.
There’s one point on the ending that no amount of taking their time and telling the story correctly will resolve, and that’s that accepting the crown goes fundamentally against who Bran has been since the beginning of the show. I would have been okay with a reluctant king in Jon, because it would fulfill the prophecy, fire would have won out over ice, LRJ would have mattered, Varys would have a complete arc, Jon being a Targaryen raised by a Stark would have given us an emotionally satisfying end to the civil war by uniting the north and south in one person, and Jon had already proven himself to be caring and competent in a leadership role he didn’t really want when he was at castle black.
Bran didn’t just not want to be king, he expressed absolute disdain for the office of king. He repeatedly says that it doesn’t matter who is king. Unless we’re assuming that something happened to make this ending make sense, it just doesn’t. If we are assuming that something happened to make this ending make sense, then it’s incumbent on the show to show us what happened and they failed to do that.
I really don’t think Bran as king is a bad ending but I would have really liked to see Sansa or Jon.
What made it bad for me was how quickly it was decided. “Lol who should be king?” “I dunno not me” “how about the crippled boy” “haha perfect, the end”
There should have been more talk leading up to it - not just the episode but the season as a whole. Nobody ever ponders who will take over when they win??
The last two seasons were so rushed. Things happening nonstop and I enjoyed the slow moments of that show as much as the action. It felt very Hollywood (in a bad way)
And do they honestly expect him to produce an heir? I know quadriplegic men have trouble with that and he also just has no interest in that, Bei the raven and all. It will basically end up with someone else anyway, maybe Jon after all.
That was one of the points made for Bran, that since he won’t produce an heir that the new system of “The Lords Paramount, monarchs of newly seceded nations, and whoever happens to be at the meeting decide by consensus” will continue
I personally think of it as “seasons 1-5 happened, then there was a huge, mysterious time jump, and the last 2 episodes of season 8 happened”.
I can see the ending happening, it’s just… Dum&Dumber couldn’t figure out how to get there, and GRRM was too rich and lazy to do what he was supposed to do to get them there.
Actually I think many people agree with you. I can see the ending happening, it’s just… Dum&Dumber couldn’t figure out how to get there, and GRRM was too rich and lazy to do what he was supposed to do to get them there.
I personally think of it as “seasons 1-5 happened, then there was a huge, mysterious time jump, and the last 2 episodes of season 8 happened”.
Isn’t the main sticking point that they segwayed before the books ran out somewhere before Dorn? and/or they had material supplied to them and basically willfully threw it in the trash?
I would’ve been really pissed off if they just stopped and didn’t even take a stab at it. Now I’m disappointed with the seasons that came after that point but at least the series has come to some kind of conclusion.
What really pisses me off was not just that is was lazily written, but that D and DB knowingly ran it into the ground. They had a Q&A where they admitted it.
Big bang theory. It was absolute garbage.
I think I’d like to point out that they shouldn’t have had even one season. It’s so fucking offensive.
Haha! These people aren’t neurotypicals! It’s so funny!
By today’s standards, yeah. At the time, too, but the ultimate message was groundbreaking and progressive. Archie was written as a bigot for the purpose of creating conflict and addressing difficult social issues. The actor who played him, Carroll O’Connor, was liberal in his personal politics, as was the producer, Norman Lear.
I appreciate the show for what it was attempting, not because I worship Archie Bunker.
I think you’re thinking of All In The Family? OPs comment was regarding Big Bang Theory…
Got sidelined into a conversation about laugh tracks
Did you know he was the inspiration for Cartman on South Park? The creators were fans of all in the family and thought it was too bad that you couldn’t write character like Archie anymore. But then they realized if they made it a cartoon kid they could.
It’s weird with Big Bang Theory, when it first started me and my friend circle loved it, thought it was brilliant but yes it did lose something after a few seasons.
But online everyone just seemed to hate it - could it be because we’re British and it just landed better with us…?
It was good the first few seasons, people shit on it because they shit on everything popular, but it WAS a good sitcom, it just never grew up.
Also, I found the depiction of the Indian guy funny at first but it quickly got racist and never got better, they just kept piling on the racism
Their depiction of “nerds” was also offensive and shitty in many of the same ways. But because that’s what the writers told you is nerd behavior and culture, it seemed more acceptable somehow.
my sentiments exactly…
to be honest, i felt like that general view of culture fueled its way into the real world. i have people at work thinking the IT department is just some bastion of antisocial hermits that you can just talk to anyhow, or know automatically what exact issue you have when you say “my computer is not working”.
Also, I found the depiction of the Indian guy funny at first but it quickly got racist and never got better, they just kept piling on the racism
Interesting. I didn’t like it for a very similar reason. Their depiction of nerds or geniuses or whatever you want to call them was pretty offensive. I could never get into it.
Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying that I’m a genius or even particularly intelligent. I’m not. But the barrage of stupid nerd stereotypes was just obnoxious and offensive.
To me it wasn’t that they were making fun of them because they were smart, it’s because they weren’t neurotypical. Several of them would be considered to have ASD if they lived in the real world and that’s treated as the butt of a joke. It disgusts me.
Nah I shit on it because it was shit, for something that was supposed to be a comedy it wasn’t funny at all, it is subjective of course, I’m sure people did find it funny
Anything with a laugh track immediately turns me off, watch some of the clips with the laugh track deleted and that’s the humour you are left with.
It’s unfair to remove the laughs, fuck up the whole flow and call it bad. If the show had been written to be without a laugh track it wouldn’t come out that way
Nope, I’m British and I hated it.
The newer characters they introduced were just not likeable. Bernadette and the other female lead just dragged the show down. Stuart was shit too. They should have centralised the show on the main characters from the start and actually built on their stories a bit more. Instead they all became flanderised
On the pilot, Leonard even implies that Sheldon masturbates a lot. A few episodes later and that accusation is unthinkable for the character.
British TV is, as a friend said to me once, dire. So it would make sense that it landed better there. I mean, clearly lots of Americans watched it, and I know a few that loved it. I just think less of them. 😁
If British TV is so dire, why does American TV keep trying to copy it? And badly, at that. I will never forgive what you did to the Inbetweeners.
Hahaha. I won’t argue, but I never watched inbetweeners and I thought British office was hard to watch. But I suspect British office culture is different to US.
It’s not all bad. All in the Family was great.
It’s true, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Oh God, so terrible. For some reason I seem to remember that either critics or the show promoters sort of hinted that you had to be smart to watch the show.
Zabinka.
I’m on the flip side with that one. I absolutely loved Big Bang Theory, but honestly I can’t stand Young Sheldon. I mean sure the show has its funny moments, but still, why oh why won’t they just let the show die?
Any show that needs a laugh track to tell you when it’s trying to be funny isn’t going to be funny. I actually heard a perfect description of why BBT wasn’t good (to me) a couple weeks ago from the Venture Bros creators. BBT was a show created by people outside nerd culture trying to tell nerds what nerd culture is. And IMO it entirely missed the mark.
It’s a live audience though, not a laugh track
Laugh tracks are an immediate turn off - literally. I remember being curious about a show, and then switching it off after about 30 seconds when the canned laughter kicked in. It told me immediately that the humor would be broad instead of clever.
This doesn’t apply to older shows, though. All in the Family is still one of the best sitcoms ever, laugh track or not.
Edit: I forgot - they never used a laugh track. That was a live studio audience. Sorry!
Live studio audience is a lot different than canned laughter.
Wow, you’re right. I’m surprised I forgot that distinction. They even say “All in the Family was taped before a live studio audience” at the beginning of every episode. Whoops!
Big Bang Theory also used a live audience instead of a laugh track
Laugh track is about stupid, I’ll give you that. But still, I grew up watching Married With Children and despite the laugh track (I dunno, maybe it really was a live studio audience), I found the show rather hilarious.
Married With Children had a live studio audience rather than a laugh track. Your dignity is intact my friend!
So did Big Bang Theory
Then the audience sucked too, I guess
I actually really enjoy both… which I guess is unpopular here.
I like how the show is basically a telling of the life of Sheldon Cooper. The two shows combined if you were to put them in order show a lot of character development.
Why? Did the last season suck? Or did the show run out of ideas along the way?
Note: I am not very well known with the show.
IMO the show was garbage from the first second of the first episode. I didn’t watch more than one or two over the whole span of its production.
Seriously folks - there can be only one and done:
HEROES
Save the cheerleader, then please - go home. But nooooo…/
Gonna disagree, we needed more Heroes, but from a writing team with a vision and purpose. Or at least one that understood the character driven nature of the first season was it’s selling point, not just the half baked superhero action. The '07 writers strike really screwed that show.
Season 1 rocked but I’m still bitter that Hiro saying “Nissan Versa!” is stuck in my mind so many years later
Boop Boop!
Wait what!? Shit I ended up buying a nissam versa as my first car years later. I always wondered why I chose that car
Could you also please tell the writers not to create 2 characters that are so overpowered that they threaten to destroy the world every time they turn around? Not everyone needs to be a supercharged Rogue…
This really worked for season 1 because you didn’t know which one of them was going to be the catalyst of the bomb. They should’ve disposed both of those characters at the end of the season, but NBC just wanted a money grab and bring them both back for something incoherent in the following seasons.
I always found funny how, Hiro could have saved all of them in all seasons by just traveling in time, so the writers always trapped him somewhere.
I can only judge by what was done - not could have been. From the first episode of the second season, it was clear lightning wasn’t gonna strike twice.
Watch series one of Misfits for more (better) Teen Superpower action!
Quick edit: yeah just watch until Nathan leaves
Or, you know, have them be HEROS. I kept waiting for them to do something that helped someone that wasn’t a HERO or fight something that wasn’t a HERO. If you took everyone that had powers and put them on Mars, nothing on earth would change.
Honestly, I rewatched season 1 again a couple of years ago and it didn’t really hold up for me. The Niki and Micah storyline just seemed to slow everything down. I don’t know if it the newness factor wore off or if my tastes have changed, but it just didn’t have the same feeling.
Westworld should have just been an amazing miniseries.
Enterprise needed one more season.
Yeah!! If anyone interested just watch the first season, it doesnt need continuing it was great!
How I met your mother. They saw a cash cow and milked it.
Big Bang theory. It was kinda ok at first, but then it was just bad.
It says something with HIMYM that the season 9 teaser was the kids, all grown up, yelling at future Ted to wrap things up because it’s gone on too long.
I loved himym, all of it, except the ending. Like I get what they went for, but it dismissed all seasons.
The whole last season was trash and then they had the audacity to say “and then he got together with Robin anyway”. Why have him meet their mother when all he wanted was Robin? Just have them end up together and be done with it.
Scrubs.
I understand that they were trying to create a spinoff. But to continue with the same name and then teasing us with the previous main characters just destroyed what was the perfect series ending.
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I agree, season 9 gets way too much hate for basically being season 1 of a spinoff. There’s a lot to like there and it never really had a chance to find itself before cancelation.
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Original Scrubs was one of the best shows ever made in my opinion - great cast and chemistry, genuinely funny whilst also bringing in the drama and tragedy of a hospital and it’s patients, great writing, kept up momentum until the end (the original end not the crap that come after), great acting, one of the most faultless TV shows ever made.
Honestly, that final season would have been an acceptable sitcom that might have gone on to 3 or 4 seasons if it wasn’t tied to Scrubs.
I’m sure most people here would agree that cancelling Game of Thrones once they ran out of source material and waiting for the books to be done (lol) would have been preferable to what we got.
GoT would have exited the cultural zeitgeist a lot sooner than it did, probably to the detriment of future viewer engagement and thus a source of revenue for HBO, which is why they pushed it forward, but still…
Supernatural
They managed to escalate all the way to God’s grumpy sister.
And then went even further, making the next enemy: The British.
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I watched up to the end of season 5, knowing that was the real ending to the story.
I thought I would stop after that, but I can’t help myself, I just keep going. I’m on season 7. It’s not as good, but it still has good stuff. It definitely helped that in season 6 they go to the set of their own show and watch the original showrunner get killed. I have to give them credit for that level of self-awareness. I doubt I’ll make it all the way to the end, but I’m still enjoying it for now.
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Bruh, they managed to escalate all the way to God himself. Literal God is reduced to a mere human by the benevolent spawn of Lucifer, somehow, and said spawn becomes the new God. Seriously.
Well that’s just the logical next step
Yeah, that show was good for a few seasons and then just got weird.
I was told by a friend; watch all the way up through season 5, then sit for a couple weeks and don’t watch it for a while. Really think about if you want to keep going. Because the writers originally wrote the first 5 seasons to be a self contained story and it worked really well. Then the show was very successful, and they asked them to keep going. What ended up happening was they’d have single or double season long plots that just kinda rolled from one to another and had a bunch of escalation and flanderization going on. Like, in one season the big issue is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They deal with three of them, and then Death is the big badass. He’s the one they can’t actually beat. They spend an entire season leading up to him and trying to deal with him.
Then, the very next season, that same super badass, Death himself, is in the way of something they want. Summoning, binding, and killing permanently this mega badass end season boss is all the effort of half of a fucking episode in the next season. The Flanderization is most obvious in Dean, where he goes from a dude who is characterized by typically masculine traits, and emphasizes that masculinity at times, to “Me Dean, me want burger! Me want pie!!”
Yeah that sounds about right. The writing was extremely good, hunting monsters, lots of love, and then suddenly they faced something super big, and made everything trivial after that.
I randomly decided to binge supernatural and caught up during season 15 with only 3 episodes yet to be released.
The timing was almost supernatural.
The Office. Last couple seasons were garbo
cue downvotes from the “still watches The Office on loop” crowd
The Simpsons is still going.
It hasn’t been good for over a decade or more at this point.
Westworld. First season was perfect and it concluded perfectly fine.
The definitive answer is Supernatural. Shambled on for another 10 seasons as the reanimated husk of a really good that was written to end after season 5.
House of Cards went on far, far too long. Should’ve ended at or shortly after he became President.
- The Office (US) could have ended at the proposal in the rain.
- The Office should have ended at the wedding in Niagara.
- Dear god why didn’t The Office end when Michael left?
I dunno, upon subsequent rewatches, I’m glad we got Robert California.
I AM THE LIZARD KING!
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT ISNT REDDINGTON?!”
Such a great actor.
James Spader is a fucking genius. If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend watching Boston Legal.
Denny Crane!
Do you want the nature or the sex metaphor?
Just sad we didn’t get a Stargate crossover episode…
Edit: Why the downvotes? Robert California is in the OG Stargate movie lol
I still haven’t finished it . Didn’t like the direction and then they butchered Andy’s character and growth. I did watch the finale which i loved.
There is no excuse for what they did to Andy. Robert California is good, though, and it does have one of the best finales I’ve ever seen.
Andy’s actor was paid to take over, then left to go do movies. I blame everyone but the writers for how that turned out.
Simpsons. Hasn’t been great since Season 12. Maybe glimpses in a few later seasons. But it’s now running on 35 years. Most of the original voices have left as have long gone all the good writers. The remaining can’t voice characters outside their ethnicity. And the show. Just “fart jokes.”
Probably the most brilliant show for a dozen seasons. Now just a husk.
The remaining can’t voice characters outside their ethnicity.
This fucking overcorrection has got to stop. If every fictional character must be portrayed by a person who is as close to being that character in real life as possible, it’s no longer “acting.”
If they banned men from playing women visa versa, Bob’s burgers would get cancelled first and that show is just beautiful
Most of the original voices have left. The remaining can’t voice characters outside their ethnicity.
What? The 6 of them are all still there. Hank Azaria gave up Apu/Lou/Carl and Harry Shearer gave up Dr. Hibbert, but the vast, vast majority of characters are still being voiced by the same actors.
I do think that the fact that The Simpsons has been on so long that they had to go ahead and do that is strong evidence that the show has run its course + ought to end, but the re-casting is a symptom, not a cause.
Also not to be morbid, but IMO they should really think about wrapping it up before the main cast starts to retire or pass away. The actor who voiced Mrs. Krabappel already died, and I mean… Harry Shearer is 80 this year, and the rest of the cast is getting up there too. I guess they could always recast or (God help us) try to use AI or something, but yeah, they should try to send it off with a little bit of dignity left I think.
That’s not morbid, so you don’t need to feel bad for bringing it up. It’s a valid, practical concern.
Marge sounds rough lately. Definitely needs to end.
“stop stop… he’s already dead”. Pretty much how everyone feels about the show.
Yeah on that, notice how everyone quotes the original Simpsons?
I often wonder who’s still watching it. Like obviously someone is, because it’s doing well enough to keep getting renewed. But what’s the demographic? I don’t know many young people, but I’d assume they’re not watching it. Certainly nobody in my age range ever talks about it (or if they do, then they just say what the people in this thread are saying - it used to be great, haven’t watched it in years), and I don’t know of anyone in the boomer/parent age group who ever talks about it.
Of course, just because nobody I know watches it doesn’t mean nobody at all is watching it. But just like… who are they?
I watch it during lunch sometimes and have kept up with every episode so far. Its not what it was of course back in the day, but I largely use it as semi- background while eating lunch, knowing that if I have to cut things short or divert my attention it won’t matter.
I heard it’s been better recently but I watched an episode like 2 years ago and didn’t crack a smile the whole time, it was terrible. The Simpsons movie was a good bookend to the series I think.
I feel like I’ve been hearing people say it’s improving for the last 20 seasons lol, but every time I watch an episode past about season 12 it’s always been a harsh lesson.
Every time I make an attempt to watch a newer episode, I have to stop simply because of the voice actors. All the main cast sound so undeniably old. It can’t be hidden and can’t be worked around. Hearing these aged actors just keep going, like everyone is pretending it’s not strange, just makes me so sad that I can’t stand it.
