Biggest Unforced Error By A Series

[AndrewCrossett]

Lots of TV shows out there, good and bad. But some were great and then just took a horrible turn for no good reason, and never recovered. What's your nominee?

For me, Person of Interest has to be right up there. It was exciting, thrilling, took unexpected turns, and had great characters. They even made you care about the guest characters as much as the main ones, sometimes more so.

And then that miserable Samaritan storyline came in season three. The shows became painful to watch, and few bothered. Season four was reduced to a half season as a courtesy, and a highly unusual move. After three seasons, it's rare not to make it to five for syndication purposes. But this one had imploded so badly there was no reasonable prospect for syndication success.

I don't think of another show right now that lost its way so badly and so suddenly. Can you?

How I Met Your Mother, final season.

They had no major cast or creative departures to blame it on, like most good shows that suddenly go in the crapper. They just lost the ability, so consistent over the preceding 8 seasons, to tell a funny story.

[Guy_McNichts]

Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin said the story could've kept going for another five seasons. HBO would've gladly let them. No cast problems. They were still getting good reviews and ratings.
But then Benioff and Weiss decided to sprint to the end in the equivalent of one whole season and change. Even if they personally wanted to move on to other projects, they could've passed the reins to someone else--like other show-runners have done. But nope, they burned it all down and salted the earth so nothing can grow again.

[jetengine]

Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin said the story could've kept going for another five seasons. HBO would've gladly let them. No cast problems. They were still getting good reviews and ratings.
But then Benioff and Weiss decided to sprint to the end in the equivalent of one whole season and change. Even if they personally wanted to move on to other projects, they could've passed the reins to someone else--like other show-runners have done. But nope, they burned it all down and salted the earth so nothing can grow again.

What other projects? Last thing I heard was an AWFUL show about alt history US slavery?

[ZeroBG82]

Penny Dreadful, specifically the final episode. Never before have I seen a creator just take his characters, his world and his audience and just go "F you!" to all of them. John Logan took a show that was at it's creative peak and, rather than just turn out the lights and let it die disappointingly, shot it and it's fans in the face. I have never felt so betrayed by a creator in all my years. He undermined every theme, sold out his two lead characters completely, left 2/3 of his plots hanging and character arcs unresolved (including arcs he'd INTRODUCED in the last few episodes) and then spat in the face of his own strongest character by making her weak, facile, helpless and most of all trite. UGH!

Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin said the story could've kept going for another five seasons. HBO would've gladly let them. No cast problems. They were still getting good reviews and ratings.
But then Benioff and Weiss decided to sprint to the end in the equivalent of one whole season and change. Even if they personally wanted to move on to other projects, they could've passed the reins to someone else--like other show-runners have done. But nope, they burned it all down and salted the earth so nothing can grow again.

Not to excuse GoT, but GRRM says a lot of things, and they rarely turn out to be true. Or to even vaguely resemble the truth. Especially when it comes to his baby. He's probably the single most unreliable source EVER when it comes to A Song of Ice and Fire. Basically, if GRRM says it, you can 100% count on it being at least greatly exaggerated.

[Flash Gordon]

Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin said the story could've kept going for another five seasons. HBO would've gladly let them. No cast problems. They were still getting good reviews and ratings.
But then Benioff and Weiss decided to sprint to the end in the equivalent of one whole season and change. Even if they personally wanted to move on to other projects, they could've passed the reins to someone else--like other show-runners have done. But nope, they burned it all down and salted the earth so nothing can grow again.

This.

I've never seen such a great show get pissed away so quick.

[Joker]

I don't know what the contracts were, but it's interesting how little blame HBO shoulders in all of it. Were they unable to continue the show without B/W as showrunners? Was there no way they could have talked B/W into another season of their network defining show of that decade?

I'm also surprised nobody was able to explain to B/W that they were about to 100% not just not stick the landing, but not even really come close to the mat on such a huge, career defining, and possibly career ending show.

They'll never have to worry for money again, so working probably isn't their big concern, but does anyone really trust them anymore? Whatever they do next, I'm sitting it out until the reviews are good. God forbid it's another TV show, because I'll be sitting it out until the reviews of the ending are good! I'm not spending another 7 years just to have the showrunners get bored and end it with a "good enough".

[titanfan]

I don't know what the contracts were, but it's interesting how little blame HBO shoulders in all of it. Were they unable to continue the show without B/W as showrunners? Was there no way they could have talked B/W into another season of their network defining show of that decade?

I'm also surprised nobody was able to explain to B/W that they were about to 100% not just not stick the landing, but not even really come close to the mat on such a huge, career defining, and possibly career ending show.

They'll never have to worry for money again, so working probably isn't their big concern, but does anyone really trust them anymore? Whatever they do next, I'm sitting it out until the reviews are good. God forbid it's another TV show, because I'll be sitting it out until the reviews of the ending are good! I'm not spending another 7 years just to have the showrunners get bored and end it with a "good enough".

Supposedly, HBO Tried, but since GoT was basically their baby, the station let the creators end the show the way they wanted to. At the time, the thought that they would botch the end so badly that the sequels/prequels are in danger probably never crossed their mind. Prior to then, even when GoT was bad, it was still pretty good.

It sounds like their next projects are all adaptations, which we know they're good at.

[AnakinFlair]

Arrow, Season 4.

Even with magic being introduced into the show with Damian Darhk, I felt that season 4 was still a pretty strong season- UNTIL they killed off Laurel. And it wasn't just that they killed her off in the most obvious of ways, with it being her 'last' mission and all. It was the fact that the showrunners had decided to end the first episode with a flash forward to a funeral, and they admitted at the time that they had no idea who was in the casket. And they never even gave it much thought until they were approaching the episode with the funeral, at which point they needed to pick someone- and since, for some damn reason they chose to kill off Laurel. It was stupid, unneeded, and poorly done.

[Frontier]

Arrow, Season 4.

Even with magic being introduced into the show with Damian Darhk, I felt that season 4 was still a pretty strong season- UNTIL they killed off Laurel. And it wasn't just that they killed her off in the most obvious of ways, with it being her 'last' mission and all. It was the fact that the showrunners had decided to end the first episode with a flash forward to a funeral, and they admitted at the time that they had no idea who was in the casket. And they never even gave it much thought until they were approaching the episode with the funeral, at which point they needed to pick someone- and since, for some damn reason they chose to kill off Laurel. It was stupid, unneeded, and poorly done.

I think the breaking point before that was Felicity suddenly getting her legs back and leaving Oliver just for making a decisions about his kid without her (like she had any business being involved).

Then after that we got the ridiculous episode where Oliver fights a robot made of bee nanobots.

[Osiris-Rex]

Arrow, Season 4.

Even with magic being introduced into the show with Damian Darhk, I felt that season 4 was still a pretty strong season- UNTIL they killed off Laurel. And it wasn't just that they killed her off in the most obvious of ways, with it being her 'last' mission and all. It was the fact that the showrunners had decided to end the first episode with a flash forward to a funeral, and they admitted at the time that they had no idea who was in the casket. And they never even gave it much thought until they were approaching the episode with the funeral, at which point they needed to pick someone- and since, for some damn reason they chose to kill off Laurel. It was stupid, unneeded, and poorly done.

I disagree. Season 5 went a long way toward recovering Arrow and by season 6 Arrow was as good as ever.

[Sacred Knight]

Buffy season 7, focusing WAY too much time on the Potentials at the extreme expense of the rest of the supporting cast aside from Spike. An absolutely puzzling decision when they were well aware it was the last season. Also from the same lore, doing pseudo-incest with Cordy and Connor in Angel season 4.

[Frontier]

I disagree. Season 5 went a long way toward recovering Arrow and by season 6 Arrow was as good as ever.

Season 6 was another breaking point with the Civil War and Diaz plotlines.

[Riv86672]

FAMILY GUY, about 2009.
That was when Cleveland spun off into his own show. Granted, the show had -already- passed its prime, but this is when the flanderization really went into overdrive. The main characters became nasty caricatures, and lost any good qualities they had still managed to hang onto until that point.

[SiegePerilous02]

Buffy season 7, focusing WAY too much time on the Potentials at the extreme expense of the rest of the supporting cast aside from Spike. An absolutely puzzling decision when they were well aware it was the last season. Also from the same lore, doing pseudo-incest with Cordy and Connor in Angel season 4.

Yeah, this is one of my big ones. Season 7 is worse than 6, because even though season 6 did dumb stuff and got ridiculously dark I can appreciate the attempts it made at tackling Buffy's depression and other things. But season 7 retroactively lets it down by not adequately building them back up because it had too many plates in the air. Chief among them is having our titular hero get sexually assaulted in the previous season and then barely touching on her feelings in the last season as they instead coddle her attacker and focus on his feelings. What a lousy note for our feminist icon to go out on and one of the things that most dates the show. Angel's stuff was bad too, but it at least rebounded in the final season.

GOT is also a train wreck, but you could see the signs as early as season 5 when they started rushing through book material and then ran out of it. The seasons being better when they stayed more faithful to the books is not a coincidence. But even when the show was bad, it was still entertaining and had the odd good episode. The last couple episodes of season 6 were great. Season 7 was kind of stupid but in a dumb fanservice-y way that was a bit cathartic at the time since all the characters were finally coming back together. Then season 8 happened. That was one of the most spectacular falls from grace I've seen a show perform. Them sinking that thing in little more than a month was kind of breathtaking.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Lots of TV shows out there, good and bad. But some were great and then just took a horrible turn for no good reason, and never recovered. What's your nominee?

For me, Person of Interest has to be right up there. It was exciting, thrilling, took unexpected turns, and had great characters. They even made you care about the guest characters as much as the main ones, sometimes more so.

And then that miserable Samaritan storyline came in season three. The shows became painful to watch, and few bothered. Season four was reduced to a half season as a courtesy, and a highly unusual move. After three seasons, it's rare not to make it to five for syndication purposes. But this one had imploded so badly there was no reasonable prospect for syndication success.

I don't think of another show right now that lost its way so badly and so suddenly. Can you?

I hardly see how the Samaritan arc was an error. The entire series was predicated on the dangers of AI. You can only go so far then, with an AI designed only to protect.

The show didn't lose it's way, it became more itself