At what point do you stop watching a series?

[Darth Fanboy]

I'll lead off this post with my own personal example: House.

I thought the first three seasons of this show were fantastic, but at some point during season four things started to change a little, though the show was still enjoyable to me. At some point a show has to change a little or it gets stagnant and uninteresting right? Okay so they brought in new characters that weren't always interesting and the sub plots around the characters started to steal the focus away from the weird medical stuff that I appreciated so much but that's bound to happen on a show like this that has been on the air for so long.

Well the middle of Season Five was where I realized that the show hadn't jumped the shark for me. I had already jumped some time ago and was already on the downslide. There were moments that I liked and I still wanted to tune in each week to see what would happen next but I knew I wouldn't be buying the fourth or fifth seasons on DVD and I was glad that this show was on FOX and I was getting it for free.

Season Six for me has been nothing short of brutal. Why do I keep watching? Two reasons. First because it has been a weekly thing that my girl and I to watch the recording of the show together and she is still very interested in the show. Secondly, because even though I don't like the direction the series is taking at all I still want to know what happens to these characters, but i'm hardly watching the show anymore as much as i'm listening to the dialogue as it plays in the background while occupying myself with something else. I'm at the point though were I think I won't even worry about it and if I want to know what happened i'll just read a summary on wikipedia.

Have any of you ever stopped watching an ongioing series after a long period of time? At what point did the series get so bad or so boring that you had to stop? This could also apply to reading as well.

[El Moose Monstero]

I gave up on Enterprise, I don't think that comes as any great surprise to anyone, I think the main reason was actually that Voyager had killed Star Trek for me, but I'd stuck it out, and then I just couldn't stomach any more of the cliches and conventions that had made it become utterly generic.

I gave up on House, although I'd probably watch it if it was on, for similar reasons to yourself.

I gave up on Lost at the end of Season 1 because it wasn't really what I wanted it to be, a little more Lord of the Flies and a little less music montages, golf courses and people not going batshit crazy with terror about an island with polar bears and fucking smoke monsters. I just couldn't be arsed with more stock US-import tv conventions (that's not to say that all US programming is like that, but the ones that make it over to the UK seem to be).

Atlantis was another one I gave up on around half way through Season 2 - I just didn't care about the characters, I wanted to, I gave it a chance, but it just seemed to be a bland and generic version of the latter of SG1.

SG1 - I actually stopped watching at the end of S7 I think, Threads, I think was the episode. In contrast, not because the show got bad (although it sort of did afterwards), but because I genuinely felt that there was a good logical stopping point a'la All Good Things in TNG, it left things open, but resolved. I watched the rest of SG1 some years afterward, but I think if it hadn't been for my girlfriend at the time, I wouldn't have bothered.

Venture Bros - not so much that I've stopped watching it, but I'm really not fussed about it anymore. S1 and S2 were great, but now it feels like they're hitting the 'need to change shit to keep it fresh and straining to do so' barrier, at least for me, anyway.

I think to be honest, my patience for a series correlates to the amount of other shit I'm going through - at the minute, I can barely find time to sit down and watch anything, he says, still posting from work after a 14 hour day, but if you get me good characters and a plot which doesn't make me want to throw something at the screen, I can generally be happy, and ultimately I'm a whore for character moments, one good scene that epitomises the character for me will make up for a lot of shit plot that episode.

[Dalton]

I didn't give up on SG1 so much as I didn't have time to watch it anymore - or anything else for that matter.

I gave up on Heroes pretty much after the second season. It really began to fucking suck in a horrible way, meaning that it began to resort heavily on stupid cliche bullshit like overuse of time travel, whiny angsty introspective protagonists and not answering any fucking questions at all. I can understand wanting to keep the viewer in suspense, but throw me a fucking bone here.

[Big Orange]

It's a now nerd cliche' - I walked out on Heroes about halfway through it's disastrous third season, truly dire for a well made and competently acted sci-fi show. It was almost an inversion with Torchwood - the first season was mediocre, with a few good moments, but I stuck with it out of curiosity, I skipped it in its second bland looking season, and then it hooked me again with the "Children of Earth" special when TW finally found its stride.

I have no idea why I'm watching FlashForward at the moment.

[Spekio]

Monk, when they just didn't care about the mistery part of the show anymore.

Ashes to Ashes, arround the pink tank on series 1.

Smallville, BECAUSE STATUS QUO IS GOOD AND HE LOVES LANA.

Atlantis, after season 1 because I just didn't care about it.


But I still like House. It has its flaws, yet I care about the characters.

[Stark]

I stop watching as soon as it sucks. BO's Heroes is a good example; I liked S1. S2 was a complete misfire demonstrating the writers were either incompetent or had no idea what made the show good, so I stopped watching. His TW example is broken, however; TW S1 was offensively shit and pissed away an interesting premise with garbage, but CoE was ok... for reasons basically unrelated to TW. It could have been a standalone miniseries. I will not, on the strength of this, return to the 'formula'.

In many cases, where I know other people watching it, I drop to a 'kinda watching' state, as with Doctor Who in season 3. It sucked shit and had the worst DW to date, but also the best episode. I filtered it based on worthwhile feedback; by S4 I had essentially abandoned the show due to a lack of episodes 'worth watching'.

I gave up on Burn Notice halfway through the first season, where it was clear that the pacing and premise was to be abandoned for typical soap opera syndicated bullshit. I've seen the entire first season as my girlfriend loves it and I was not proven wrong.

[Ford Prefect]

My ability to stick with a television show is the stuff of legends, but even I draw the line at a giant cake being used as a murder weapon.

[General Zod]

I give up on a TV series when it starts making me cringe. Smallville Season 8 with the stupid wedding episodes being a good example.

[Vympel]

Virtually Never. My tolerance for shit episodes is high.

The only show I walked out on was Reaper, which was a one-trick-pony of a show and got boring before the first season even ended, so I didn't bother with it past about ten or so episodes.

[loomer]

Virtually Never. My tolerance for shit episodes is high.

The only show I walked out on was Reaper, which was a one-trick-pony of a show and got boring before the first season even ended, so I didn't bother with it past about ten or so episodes.

Damn, Vympel, give it another shot. It moves away from the Monster of the Week shit later on- there was at least one episode that had the escapee caught in five minutes and the rest dedicated to a bigger plot thread of the series.

[FSTargetDrone]

I used to watch Law & Order (the first one, not one of the spin-offs) religiously, for years and years. I lost interest somewhere around the 5th or 6th season, when Jill Hennessy was still the DA, but before she left. I always enjoyed the acting and all that, but I guess I just got bored with the show. Nothing really against it. I just lost interest.

I watched DS9 for a few seasons, but drifted away from that for reasons I can't really remember now, though I did recently go back through all of the shows again via rentals and borrowing from friends.

Enterprise and Voyager, I never made it through the first season.

[GuppyShark]

I tend to give a show a run of three or four uninteresting episodes before I drop it. You can't keep wasting your time watching a show you don't like in case it eventually gets better.

[Minischoles]

Virtually Never. My tolerance for shit episodes is high.

The only show I walked out on was Reaper, which was a one-trick-pony of a show and got boring before the first season even ended, so I didn't bother with it past about ten or so episodes.

This pretty much. I'm still watching House, Heroes, Smallville, Flashforward - Hell I even watched Enterprise to its end.
I agree about Reaper, but I still liked that show because of Ray Wise, whose pretty damn near perfect as the Devil in that show.

[Patrick Degan]

I'll lead off this post with my own personal example: House.

I thought the first three seasons of this show were fantastic, but at some point during season four things started to change a little, though the show was still enjoyable to me. At some point a show has to change a little or it gets stagnant and uninteresting right? Okay so they brought in new characters that weren't always interesting and the sub plots around the characters started to steal the focus away from the weird medical stuff that I appreciated so much but that's bound to happen on a show like this that has been on the air for so long.

I recently tuned to a current-season episode of House and it seems that the series has now become almost solely about how House endeavours to outdo himself in assholishness. Each new episode invariably wraps around his latest plot to be a worse asshole than he was a week ago, with him paying little attention to the case that's actually up before his group because it diverts his concentration from the formulation of Asshole Plan n.6 (usually focussed on Cuddy, of course, with whom he's become stalker-level obsessed) or whichever number he's now up to, and he listens to a couple of sentences in a diagnostic conference and plucks an answer out of the air (two answers —since we have to account for the inevitable wrong guess which prefaces the "patient poops a lung" moment in the House scripting formula; as outlined in Cracked Magazine) to the weird medical problem killing their subject after which they give him the right treatment through the $300,000 machine that goes ping! House calls the poor slob an idiot for not taking the blue pill, Cuddy gets all disgusted but does nothing because she secretly thrives on House's ongoing emotional abuse, and at the very end we're left to keep telling ourselves that there's absolutely nothing gay going on between House and Wilson.

Or do I exaggerate?

I don't mind Gregory House being an asshole. That was the basis of the character from the beginning —that and his brilliance as a "medical detective" unravelling weird problems killing their patients which nobody else was able to figure out because their own professional selection-biases kept getting in the way of making a proper diagnosis. There was a good balance between that and the personal dramas of the characters but the mystery was the thing which was the hook that kept me watching up through season two anyway. Real life kept getting in the way of being able to tune in on the series past that point but I kept up on developments. But with this latest season it seems like I tune in and, aside from the familiar faces of the cast, it's a show I don't even recognise anymore and not one I'm particularly inclined to follow out of anything but the most morbid curiosity as to how far it can sink into it's ridiculous soap opera of broken people wallowing in their own miseries.

[Dark Hellion]

I thought the first three seasons of this show were fantastic, but at some point during season four things started to change a little, though the show was still enjoyable to me...snip

Are you sure it was actually season four as opposed to a delayed reaction to season three? I ask this because I bought House as it came out on DVD and generally watch each season of a show I own twice in relatively quick succession after purchase and my experience was that season three represented a vast departure from season two. In season two we often see House attempting betterment of himself, learning from his mistakes, and we see that his relationship with Wilson is very complex (House being an asshole who always tries to act according to an internal moral code vs. Wilson who is a nice guy who will often betray his own internal code for quick gain as seen from his numerous affairs). Wilson and House are complimentary in season two, Wilson's moral failings are bolstered by Houses unflappability and Houses personal failings are soothed by Wilson's affability. In season three we have House going out of his way (as in it would require effort on his characters part) just to be an ass and Wilson's nice-guyism played up much more than season two's darker, more human Wilson. Wilson is the beaten dog of the relationship who often feels like he is maintaining the friendship because the plot calls for it, instead of the more complex view given in other seasons that he feels some responsibility to be House's only friend. {came up while typing but ditto Deagan as well}

Anywho, the show isn't complex enough to really dissect (although I liked season two a bit because it looked like they were trying to go that route) and it has mostly become something to have on in the background.

Generally, I give up on a show when it becomes clear that there is no "metaplot" or the various writing teams don't agree enough upon it enough for it to ever advance. By "metaplot" I refer very generally to the idea that the characters exist within a world were events actually move and as such the characters grow and develop not simply individually (and not specifically only through character development plot points) but their interactions with each other and the world grow as well. A show I really enjoy this aspect in is Bones. Now each individual episode tends to be formulaic and the high point is T.J. Thyne or David Borneaz delivering some great little bit of dialogue but over the course of the seasons we have seen the characters develop numerous interesting aspects of their personalities. We have seen Boothe (Borneaz) go from the cheesy "I hope to catch a bad guy for every person I killed as a sniper" in the pilot to someone who confesses his most embarrassing moment in high school was not a physical embarrassment but was a failure of his ethics. He actually deals with the fact that he has a strong ethical code which he feels he must follow, even though Bones is often mocking of his feeling of necessity. He isn't a strong male character because the plot simply calls for it but because we see him invest effort into being one. When a show decides that characters don't need to invest effort into things because of archtypical character roles I usually will only give it a few more episodes to get on track or dump it.

Overall, lack of character effort is a huge thing that plagues modern television. Star Trek washes away moral conflicts instead of having characters deal with them, sitcoms and romcoms forget about anything that could shake the status quo even if the event could require the characters to massively rearrange their lives to work through, CSI magics away all the work with a lab montage, etc. Far too many shows simply exist in a state of moving character A to spot A so plot point A can happen and then moving them to character B at spot B so plot point B can happen and while doing this the characters do not interact about anything else but the plot point. I don't need the characters telling me what just happened again, I just fucking saw it. I want characters to flirt around for a couple of episodes before they fall in love but I don't want them to flirt for fucking ever unless the characters can actually give me reasons for it. At least Scrubs had Dr. Cox to make fun of the repeated Elliot/JD because otherwise that shit would have been intolerable (for some it is). Far too many shows use the exact same paradigm; each episode is one main plot, one B plot with twenty of these episodes throughout which we have 1 major plot (which generally changes nothing until the final few episodes, were it is just a plot point of the episode anyways) and two or three mini-arcs which consist of some inconsequential thing which is supposed to give us a deeper look at some character or plot element but is promptly forgotten once the next mini-arc begins. I'll admit to the marketing genius of it; it forces people to watch every episode in order, every week, while requiring absolutely minimal show to show continuity and almost no season to season continuity. You can churn the same thing out for hundreds of episodes and unless someone is actually trying to deconstruct the characters or the plot (which the average American audience member is frankly too stupid to do) the quality will be largely undiminished. But god does it suck if you actually engage your brain while watching.

[Tsyroc]

Smallville, BECAUSE STATUS QUO IS GOOD AND HE LOVES LANA.

AMEN!

It's amazing how much that show sucks when they revert to having Clark and Lana going all angsty goo goo eyed at each other. Last season Smallville was on a roll right out of the starting gates and then they killed that momentum by bringing Lana back again. Restarting the angsty BS AGAIN! Coming up with some totally BS reason for why they could never, ever be together. It just made me think that someone, somewhere thought that there were a lot of Clark/Lana fans who only watched the show because of that. The creators of the show had their chance to go that route and skew away from comic book continuity but they don't want to do that but they still had to keep flogging that Clark/Lana horse that should have died around about the time they graduated high school, or at least some time after Lois showed up.

[UCBooties]

I abandoned NeoBSG right after the mid season break for S3. The drop in quality from the New Caprica Arc to the following episodes was so precipitous I really could not see any way for them to pull things back to the level of the Season 2 and early Season 3. I quite Stargate Atlantis when it was no longer sandwiched between SG1 and BSG because I felt I no longer had any compelling reason to watch it. Also, the guy who plays Sheppard? His voice annoys the fuck out of me.

[Darth Fanboy]

Are you sure it was actually season four as opposed to a delayed reaction to season three? I ask this because I bought House as it came out on DVD and generally watch each season of a show I own twice in relatively quick succession after purchase and my experience was that season three represented a vast departure from season two.

First of all i'm pretty sure of my own opinion.

For me it was definitely season four. Season Three had the Tritter plot in the background as a way to connect the shows for the season but that background plot didn't overwhelm the medical portion of the show I found so interesting. As soon as season four began things were different because the part of the show I liked so much became secondary to the "contest" of choosing the new team.

(which the average American audience member is frankly too stupid to do)

Gotta love generalizations made on what is probably anecdotal evidence.

[Wing Commander MAD]

SG1 - I actually stopped watching at the end of S7 I think, Threads, I think was the episode. In contrast, not because the show got bad (although it sort of did afterwards), but because I genuinely felt that there was a good logical stopping point a'la All Good Things in TNG, it left things open, but resolved. I watched the rest of SG1 some years afterward, but I think if it hadn't been for my girlfriend at the time, I wouldn't have bothered.

I beleive that was pretty much a good logical point to end the series (S8), and the remaining two seasons were SciFi milking the franchise. I'm pretty certain I remember alot of fans were less than pleased with the S9 and S10 and would have preferred the series ended with S8. Then again, I also seem to recall S9 and S10 being loathed for the fact that they introduced new characters that seemed to be solely for the purpose of sucking up Farscape fans.

[Themightytom]

I gave up on Heroes pretty much after the second season. It really began to fucking suck in a horrible way, meaning that it began to resort heavily on stupid cliche bullshit like overuse of time travel, whiny angsty introspective protagonists and not answering any fucking questions at all. I can understand wanting to keep the viewer in suspense, but throw me a fucking bone here.

Sometimes you KNOW its time to quit but there you are. Fighting the fight.


I tend to to hang onto a show longer than neccesary hoping it will come out of its nosedive. SG-1 did for me at least with season 9. Enterprise did, for like the last four episodes, Voyager did for.. oh wait.

I think you stopw atching a show when its current disinterest finally overrides the hopes you ahd for it. Scrubs is a show i discontinued, it was just so unfunny and formulaic, I didn't need to see past Season 4. You flip it on every now and then and its same shit different day. Now to be fair I wasn't as engaged in scrubs as I get in Scifi, the only shows I really gave up on in scifi were BSG, ONLY because of the rediculous lags in program delivery, and jericho, because that show neer should avhe come back from the grave. it was a zombie.

So to answer the original post again, stop watching when disinterest overrides possibility of rekindled interest. When even the mere tradition off watching it, doesn't validate the time spent doing so. I used to watch Red Sox games with my girlfriend until finally we were just sick of watching them lsoe, in fact, after we stopped watching we didn't have much in common and broke up.
Then they won the series, Fuck them.
So don't try to calculate it, You'll Know.

[Zixinus]

Andromeda, third season. The drop in quality was incredibly noticeable. You could feel the script writers hurriedly trying to clear away all the things that were competently set up in the last two seasons just to make way for their shit.

I stopped watching SG when the newagism started to become more and more overwhelming.

Dr NewWho when I felt it became clear that they fucked the writing up. Although I am tempted what shit they cocked up in season 5.

I'm also in a limbo state with a few shows. Bleach, Deadwood, the original Star Trek. I've tried watching them, but for some reason I got bored (not necessarily because the series was bad mind you).

Also Forever Knight. I somehow liked the premise, the way they tried to make things interesting but I stopped watching when someone in the script-writing department put the angst on max and removed the dial. Yes, you're a 800 year old vampire, boohoo, we can occasionally sympathise but can you just go and deal with it please?

I try to like Japanese anime, out of some delusional desire for nerd-cred you see, but I have a difficult time going over the culture gap. I find the women's immaturity and squekyness annoying as well as the men's weird way of expressing emotion annoying.

I also made a take on watching Homocide: Life on the (killing) streets. After a while, I just lost interest. I know it was supposed to be about the detectives that make the unit rather than the crimes, but I just lost interest.

EDIT: Oh, and another one. True Blood. I just go sick of Bill and his idiotic personality and the predictable relationship with the main character. I grew tired of watching idiots being idiots and the general angst of the whole thing. Perhaps because I didn't have that much track with the whole vampire thing.

Can't think of any other one, aside House that I listed below.

I thought the first three seasons of this show were fantastic, but at some point during season four things started to change a little, though the show was still enjoyable to me. At some point a show has to change a little or it gets stagnant and uninteresting right? Okay so they brought in new characters that weren't always interesting and the sub plots around the characters started to steal the focus away from the weird medical stuff that I appreciated so much but that's bound to happen on a show like this that has been on the air for so long.

[assuming you are talking about House MD]

I stopped watching House when it has become apparent that it has abandoned everything really interesting about it. It focused more and more on the doc's narcissistic personality rather than brilliant mind. His "eureka" moment stopped being genuine and has become expected, thus uninteresting.

What made the show interesting in the first place was its approach. It tried to be scientific, to approach a disease as a crime that must be solved. It tried its best to make the choices and process clear.

But it stooped down the TV sinkhole when more and more focus was diverted to the characters' private life. Especially House's assholishness: it turned from the biting, insightful sarcasm into just plain dysfunctional assholism. The man in Season 1 wasn't dysfunctional, he was just an asshole but he was justified because he was an asshole with a fucking point. His medicine is just pure fucking magic rather than the scientific deduction that he believed in and followed in Season 1.

A line he said expresses his change fairly well:

House: We had a theory. We tested that theory. We acted on that theory and were found wrong. Is it me or did we find a flaw in the scientific method?

Or something like that. I didn't realize it until recently, but that one was stupid. House should have known what he is dealing with: biology and with that, he knows he needs to use far more advanced methodologies than the basic scientific method.

It also became a bit more and more obvious that the show has a right-wing bend. Perhaps that is why it is so popular with Fox?

The show's quality decline shouldn't come as any suprise of course: keeping the writing level up is pretty hard. I was actually happy when House decided that he should take away all his existing team and try a new one, but somehow I felt that his behaviour was childish and in the end, came back up worse than before precisely because he tried to establish a status quo.

[Jade Falcon]

Law and Order, I've more or less given up on this since Jerry Orbach died. Thanks to Hallmark I do find repeated episodes that I haven't seen. The newer guys okay, but I did prefer Orbach.

[loomer]

To get in on House, I stopped just a few episodes into Season 5. The episodes weren't horrible, and were better than a lot of crap still, but it just seemed too 'weak' after the finale of S4 (which aired here in Aus, by the way yanks, as an unnannounced double. No week's break in the middle of it. Made it quite powerful.), with House being near magically restored to his usual semblance of health.

I don't regret that, though. I think the S4 finale would have been an excellent way to end the series. He starts out as a cruel and callous bastard who doesn't give two shits about anyone else, with only mild care for Wilson, but by that episode he's changed. He's still all about finding the answers, but this time he's willing to kill himself to do it and protect Wilson. He's been humanized to a degree that his the assholishness is just beginning to get kind of sad, and then bam, you have the episode that drives it home and where he even redeems himself for it in a sense.

Also, it had great cinematography.

[Shrykull]

Andromeda, third season. The drop in quality was incredibly noticeable. You could feel the script writers hurriedly trying to clear away all the things that were competently set up in the last two seasons just to make way for their shit.

I hate how they really screwed it up. I just hated it how it underwent a shift from technology based sci fi to this metaphorical, metaphysical crap. Just out of curiousity (I know you stopped watching it but did you want to see how it ended) did you see the final episode?
Spoiler

Earth is destroyed and they kill the Abyss, which I couldn't stand what it was exactly. By trance going supernova. I also couldn't understand that part. Trance was an avatar of a star. The only contexts of heard avatar used in is the context of manifestation of a deity, a machine (like Rommie) or in the Ultima series the avatar (which was a title, rather than what he was) A star is just a ball of gas, it isn't alive

[CmdrWilkens]

Honestly I tend to stick with things through thick and thin but every now and then I just can't stand it anymore...best point counter-point. I was a devoted Veronica Mars fan. The first season was amazing but the second just DRAGGED forever but I stuck it out through a somewhat mediocre then suddenly awesome 3rd season before they canceled. Conversely with Dollhouse I stood by the 1st Season and then got really psyched by seeing the unaired episode...then the S2 premier happened and I just couldn't care anymore.

So now I've got Glee instead.