What’s a long-running TV show you just can’t quit?
Everybody's got a TV show they can't stop watching, even after it runs out of gas or jumps the shark. Here's our list, for better or worse
TV Features Margaret Atwood
From L to R: Gordon Ramsay in Hell’s Kitchen; Ellen Pompeo in Grey’s Anatomy; A still from Family Guy; Yvonne Strahovski in The Handmaid’s Tale; Kenan Thompson in Saturday Night Live Photo: Scott Kirkland/FOX; Liliane Lathan/ABC; FOX; Sophie Giraud/Hulu; Will Heath/NBC
There’s always that never-ending television program you love, and whenever a new trailer or any casting information drops, people are bound to ask: “Is this thing still on?” Why yes, several long-running TV shows can continue only because people still insist on watching. It could be comfort-viewing, the simple inability to give up on characters we’ve grown to love, or curiosity to see how the narrative trots on even though the quality dipped a long time ago.
With that in mind, here’s an AVQ&A that asks: What’s a long-running TV show you just can’t quit? For the purposes of this piece, any series with at least five seasons counts.
131 Comments
It’s an interesting question. I’ve had no trouble giving up shows that no longer appeal. In fact, sometimes I’m provided with an opportunity for self-reflection when I ask why I watched something for as long as I did. And if this answer sounds self indulgent, you did ask.
I felt the same about Family Guy. Started watching it last year and would binge 2 or 3 episodes a night which was enough. I think watching it every night for months is the reason I stopped and haven’t felt compelled to go back.
For me it depends on the night. It’s really tough to drop a Sunday night viewing habit and I’ll watch anything that gets its hooks in me until the end. I have to make myself remember to watch a show I enjoy that’s on a Thursday.
I quit Game of Thrones after season 5. I just felt satisfied with it.
are you giving stock picks, o wise wizard of the mountain? i watched it all the way to the bitter end.
Same. In fact, quitting a show can often feel like a relief for me.
I remember feeling something like a sense of relief when I bailed on Arrow and Flash, at the same time. “Welp, there’s a couple hours I’ll get back to burn on something else.”
I couldn’t even say exactly where (what season or storyline) Arrow was in at the time — it was sorta running together for me by then. Before Oliver married the tech girl, I guess? Dunno how many trips (flash)back to that island they had made by then, or since.It was also sad for me, because I really liked the Green Arrow and The Flash comics, but I never felt like Arrow really captured the comics flavor. Flash got closer in the first season or 2, but off the rails after that.OTOH I made it through Gotham all the way to the end. In retrospect I could have cut that one loose earlier too.
I agree about all 3 of these shows. And though I did drop Gotham somewhere in Season 2, I kept an eye on it, for newsworthy events. Same with the Arrowverse.
I fell off all 3 of those shows, though I can’t say quit because I do plan to finish them up eventually.
The Simpsons. I’ve seen every episode.
Damn, dawg. Respect.Family Guy for me — I know it’s raw sewage at this point, but it was never very good to begin with, so I don’t find myself thinking of its decline while watching it.
I’m still watching Family Guy. The problem with the current era, is that they seem to be holding back, and pulling punches. They aren’t pushing boundaries or even going for shock value. It’s like they’re trying to be on good behavior for some reason (Disney?). For example, Quagmire can’t even make his signature sex creep jokes anymore, making him completely pointless now.
I was never into it for the boundary pushing. What hooked me at first was the joke pacing (as quick as Golden Era Simpsons), effective use of cutaways, and total disregard for continuity/plausibility as long as the humour was served (which again, Golden Era Simpsons did well, and The Critic pushed even further).
We still watch every episode of both Simpsons and Family Guy and let me tell you, 2020’s Family Guy is a million billion times funnier than 2020’s Simpsons – and that’s not me heaping praise on Family Guy.
Family Guy is wildly uneven and mostly awful but every now and then there’s a really good episode. Like they give some young writer free reign and nobody cares enough about the show at this point to muddle it up.
And even a bad episode can still have a quality cutaway or two. A bad Simpsons episode is just lukewarm and sad.
The last standout good episode was last year’s Customer of the Week. A rare Louis centered episode where she steadily becomes a homicidal maniac bc she feels unseen by the employees of her local Starbucks.
American Dad went even more into that , nobody seemed to give a crap about the show , and consequently the new writers could do whatever the hell they wanted ..hence stuff like “Rabbit Ears” which is amazing.
American Dad somehow kept getting better from season 7 to 13 or so. The last couple seasons are still entertaining as hell but maybe not improvements.
As far as I’m concerned, The Simpsons ended after s10 in 2001. It was replaced by a new show with the same title and characters, but it clearly wasn’t the same show. That new show is beginning it’s 21st season now.
Simpsons has had some actual ..”holy crap that was good “ episodes in the last year or two , like the ‘Fargo” two parter .
I still watch new Simpsons once in awhile…and TBH, its not nearly as bad as people say it is. I enjoy what i see. I do wish they would do the following: 1-Put an end date on it- like two years from this date. 2- Do the final two seasons, 16 episodes or so each, as four 8 half season arcs. And each arc moves the story ahead by 5 years. 3- Call every. single. old. writer. back.
Ummm, there is no “story” to move ahead 5 yrs.
its not nearly as bad as people say it is
I see this defense a lot, and I think it’s just a perspective thing. Almost anyone who watches The Simpsons will objectively note a severe drop in quality after its 9th season and continuing down for years. There are actually a lot of episodes and some really great lines throughout this quality drop, and it continued to be very watchable show for a while. But the best years of the series are simply unparalleled. It’s unreal how many jokes they used to fit into just a 90 second scene.The writers don’t miss a single opportunity. They don’t bother to even set up jokes, they just glue punchlines together with visual gags. Sherri and Terri are Trinidad and Tobago, Skinner bangs his shoe, Bart’s pages are blank. I’ve said as much elsewhere, but most shows don’t commit as much time and energy to an entire episode as these jerks did to this 90 second intro, which by the way doesn’t even figure into the story line. It’s from “Das Bus”, which has the kids play out Lord of the Flies after a bus crash. If that episode came out anytime after Season 14 or so, you can be sure that the episode would just start with the kids getting on the bus.The later seasons just have nowhere to go. The writers are all people who grew up watching The Simpsons, so they’re just copies of copies of copies. A modernish comparison is Community, which has a Season 4 that is markedly worse than the rest, but actually is still pretty good TV compared to a lot of other shows. The highs of Seasons 1 and 2 were already wearing off in Season 3 anyway, not to mention there were a lot of really great and popular comedies on TV at the time. So people abandoned it, and in the modern fashion, decried it as the worst thing ever filmed. The Simpsons has a much higher hill to climb though, because if a regular series gets stale after three seasons, you can probably stick it out for another few years. But I gradually stopped watching The Simpsons around Season 16, and since then, they’ve doubled their episode count. The handful of episodes that I’ve seen since then haven’t been awful, but that Model UN scene still makes me laugh a dozen times. Why bother with over a hundred hours of “not awful”?
It’s unreal how many jokes they used to fit into just a 90 second scene.The Conan episodes operate at a joke-a-sentence level. I’m only sort of exaggerating.Marge vs. the Monorail has a fundamentally absurd/funny premise, so it’s not surprising that tons of jokes got crammed in there.New Kid on the Block, though? That was just a standard sitcom episode, written as James L. Brooks and Matt Groening expected. (They hated cutaways and absurdity, and Brooks was big on the audience ‘feeling something,’ which mandated a certain amount of sappiness.)Every single sentence in that episode is funny, or at the very least amusing. Also it opens with a Northern Exposure reference, but the scene still works for people who don’t know about Northern Exposure.It’s just masterful TV, and the show never got back to that level.
It quit me before I quit it, but I first heard of Supernatural when I was dating the woman I ended up married to, and we split up less than a year after it ended. So that’s certainly something.
Your love of heavily implied Wincest was what kept your marriage strong, shame it had to end
Archer and Outlander are the only two long-running shows we’re watching. Everything else has only aired 3 or 4 seasons so far, and like 90% of those shows have already announced that they’re ending.
I was all set to be smug Mr. “I Don’t Even Own a TV” guy and claim I have cut the cord and no longer watch any “long-running” show (I’m in the middle of She-Hulk right now and will be starting Andor at some point) but then you brought up Archer. And I’m sure I’ll watch the next season of Always Sunny, whenever it happens.
Just a side note but I think worth mentioning, if you didn’t/don’t have Hulu, all 3 seasons of The Orville are now on Disney+ and honestly, one of the best shows on there rn.
For me it’s Walking Dead, there was like a 2 or 3 season slump there, but I hung in there, and last season was pretty decent. I even tried the spinoffs but bailed on them after a while. I am still not decided on whether or not to give the future spinoffs a shot.
Last season – or the first 1/3 of this season or whatever they’re calling was surprisingly good. Mrs. F. and I would agree after each episode that, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad; actually pretty good.”
Yeah,, I agree, Mrs. S gave up, due the show being so goddamn repetitive (other group of survivors= bad guys that will kill us). But the Whisperers was a pretty good storyline and I told her it got watchable again, but she had no interest. She never bothered with Fear the Walking Dead (I lasted 3 seasons) or any other TWD spinoff.
The thing about The Whisperers is that they showed our heroes how to easily control zombies, SO WHY DON’T THEY???They learned how to do it, cause they did make masks and use them to lead a zombie army against the Reevers(?), but then I guess they just forgot again.All they have to do is carry zombie masks with them, and they can mosey through any zombie horde at their leisure, or lead them off a conveniently nearby cliff anytime the want, BUT THEY DON’T!!!And yet, I watch. Every week. Fear too, which is often even more ridiculous. Not Beyond though. I guess I have my limits.
Because it would make too much sense to do!
Colman Domingo is the only reason I ever watch “Fear” and it’s been getting harder to use that as a justification for several years now.
Domingo’s problem is the same as all the other TWD heroes.He goes from savage to saint and back every freeking season.And it was Morgan’s hero complex that caused him (to try) to idiotically go it alone on the sub. How fucking stupid is it to lock his friends out to keep them safe from radiation when you’re trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. If you fail, the people you’re trying to save are fucked anyway. The reason everybody’s dying from radiation is 90% Morgan and 10% Domingo.And it’s good to see Alicia carry on her mom’s tradition of destroying every settlement she comes across. I mean, they’re not utopias, but she’s killed thousands of people. And Madison steals babies now, cause… reasons.In the end, I wish AVClub followed Fear, cause I got thoughts.
I mean the entire premise of the show is passing around the Sociopath Ball. The way Domingo hams it up is enough fun that I didn’t care about the plot for a while, but I finally got to the point where it’s not really worth it.
To me it’s always been a blatantly low-effort soap opera and I’ve loved every minute of it
I made it to the tiger attack. Never picked it up again after that. Not because I hate-quit it or anything, I just couldn’t make the time to sit down on Sunday night and watch it anymore.
Don’t bother with Tales. It’s a shitshow.
I haven’t, I am burnt out on zombie stories, I just figured I made it this far, might as well watch the last handful of episodes left.
Counter argument , if you hate the grimdark “yeah , yeah we get it …people are the real monsters” regular walking dead , then tales is actually worth watching …at least the few episodes that regular WD fans hated the most , like the one with Gillian Bella and Parker Posey/or the Terry Crews Olivia Munn one . As they were actually fun , and probably closer to something like Z Nation which is a bit silly and loosey goosey with its tone. But yeah understandably fans of the regular Walking.. shows hated it, since it took the lore and did some odd things with it.
I liked the the episode with Dee/Alpha, and the second one was at least kind of funny, but yeah I think it’s going to wildly vary in quality at best and mostly just suck in all likelihood.
I bailed after season 4. And I was an early super fan…
I didn’t officially quit, but I did fall off. I can’t claim it’s bad, but everything is sooooo drawn out. The comic was very fast paced, big stuff constantly happening, you care about it. If it was the same content in like 6 episode seasons it could have been the best show on TV for a while there. Unfortunately, it was like 16+ episodes.
Yeah I mean, they have a set time for a show they have to fill, a comic book you can pick up and read/finish at your leisure. So everything has to be drawn out and filler added.
For scripted shows, definitely The Walking Dead. It’s been predictable for awhile and full of dumb character decisions, and yet I am a post-apocalypse junky and can’t quit. But it’s also had some pretty terrific episodes in its later, not well regarded seasons (this season’s horror-tinged episode with Connie & Virgil in the house full of crazy feral people was awesome).Unscripted (but probably scripted), I will take all the Catfish you can serve me, please and thank you. I cannot get enough of people who are somehow still this technically illiterate and/or gullible in 2022. I love how they stretch what should be 5 minutes of work into whole episodes, and I love that the most recent season had SEVENTY episodes to quench my thirst for internet drama.
I will never be able to give Catfish a chance because I found the feature doc that started it morally reprehensible. The SECOND those asshole suspected that she was mentally ill the cameras should have gone off and they should have left her the fuck alone. Even now it makes me sooo angry. Exploitative horseshit. From what I understand the TV show is less “har har, let’s poke fun at a disturbed person”.
Yeah, that is a very fair & valid criticism of the movie. The show, especially as time has gone on, is pretty far removed from what the movie was. It largely boils down to someone doing it for the lulz, someone doing it to siphon money from suckers, or that it’s actually the person they’ve been talking to online despite how off things seemed. Every now and then they’ll end up with a catfish who does seem to need help with their mental health, but they seem more sensitive to that now at least. It’s reality TV, so it’ll always feel exploitative, but at least to me it feels less like that than the movie did.
If I had to guess, they probably got a handful of folks who felt like I did giving them feedback and adjusted. To be fair, I never got the sense that it was *malicious*. Just deeply inconsiderate and reckless.And to be further fair, I’m sometimes a tough audience for docs that involve ethical questions. Like I could not get past the first episode of Tiger King because of how fucking awfully those tigers were treated. And all to serve some asshole’s ego. I get that the dude is fascinating, but he’s an attention seeking shitbird and that’s ALL that documentary did. When everyone flipped for it all I could think was, “You’re giving him what he wants, you idiots.” Which is unnecessarily judgy.
Oooooh, Tiger King. I skipped it knowing it was just going to be animal abuser glorification (or if not glorification, at the very least it’s animal abuse as entertainment, which fuck all that), but it puts me into angry rant mode nonetheless. Anyone involved in that garbage, including any of the peripheral garbage like the fictional version with Kate McKinnon and others, can die in a fire.I have similar angry feelings about Cruella. Hey kids, check out this movie where you’re meant to root for the puppy murderer!! Yeah, no, fuck off with that too.
With you on Catfish. Love it so much I had to add Catfish UK to the mix.
Nothing. Life’s too short to watch bad TV.
Or bad movies unless they’re on MST3K.
Or Rifftrax. All due respect to Joel and the new crew.
It’s all in the same family.
My friends and I used to watch a handful of bad movies over and over in high school, but in the modern age I can’t see the appeal of doing so myself (unless I’m extremely high). I’ll just let Best of the Worst take care of that for me.
Yeah, I have a hard time enjoying Neil Breen without at least one other person around. Mostly so I can look at someone every few minutes and say “Can you fucking believe this?!?” and then have a breathless laughing fit where I almost die.
I found myself enjoying Rifftax more because all the sketches and breaks in between broke the comedic momentum on MST3K.
I’m a fan of the host segments, particularly the SciFi years (not a common opinion). But I also became a “Mike guy” over time and now I prefer that trio. Although I also have been enjoying Bridget and Mary Jo, especially the weird Mary Higgins Clark TV movies.Honestly I also haven’t loved the writing or performing on the new episodes of MST. Nobody is bad per se, they just didn’t click for me. I’m interested in the Emily episodes as I’ve seen the live show a couple of times and she was great. But I’m hesitant to drop cash on the Gizmoplex.
It sucks that the new season is paywalled behind their own little homebrew platform. It’s a goddam sin Netflix cancelled them and that no other bog streamer took them in. I’ll watch the newest season somewhere at some point, but I don’t like their current platform or the prices they’re charging .
Yeah, that was a shame because I’m already subscribed to a handful of streamers. And I try to catch a Rifftrax or two semi-regularly. It adds up.It doesn’t help that I didn’t love the new episodes on Netflix.
Ditto. I have way to little time in a week to just watch TV so if something is not working for me I just stop. Dropping Doctor Who was a big deal since I had watched on and off since I was a kid watching PBS, but I pushed through the Matt Smith years even though there was a lot I did not like and by the time he regenerated I wasn’t interested in continuingPicard season 2 lost me too. Season 1 was not great but I feel like they rewrote half the casts personality and then decided to set the whole thing in modern day to film it cheaper. Even my precious MCU I have realized that its not worth slogging through every movie and Disney+ show.
Good call on MCU shows not being good for much. The only good one so far was Wandavision. Could give a rats fart over She Hulk, Ms Marvel, or Moon Knight.
Honestly you named two I did enjoy. I liked Miss Marvel and am enjoying She Hulk. Moon Knight lost me, so did Falcon and Winter Soldier and Hawkeye.
I’m your opposite, on Doctor Who , used to watch it in the 70s and 80s ..when nuWho came out I watched a bit of 9 and couldn’t get into it , tried again a few years later 10 and just hated it , (I love Tennant, and will watch him in nearly anything but just hate his Doctor and Russel T Davis writing , sorry folks ), tried it again for Matt Smith and became a huge fan of the show, loved Capaldi even though he was a bit wasted ..tried pushing through the Jodie W. era and it was ok ,but gave up when it stopped making any sense with the lost child or forgotten child or whatever it was . I’m giving it a wide berth for a few years until RTD goes away again and will try it again when they actually get someone fresh in.
Life’s too short to sit down and actively watch bad TV but a lot of mediocre shows are good for half-watching while you fold laundry or something.
I find myself having various strains of law & order or Chicago shows on in the background while I’m terminally online. And I will actively bitch about how they are copaganda while I’m doing it!
That’s some gorram A-level trolling right there.
Very long running show!
Oh if only Mrs. would give up Grey’ Anatomy*. Every Thursday we have to reconfigure the DVR tapings to accommodate all the shows we have that night. If this, the worst one went away life would be good.*Meredith Grey, by far the worst character on the show, should have bit in in the bomb explosion with Ron Livingston. Show would have been much better for it.
How long has that show been on?? More like Dorian Gray.
I watched it religiously until three years ago. Not sure why I stopped watching but I remember looking at a trailer and thinking, “Yeah… I don’t need this anymore.”
I gave up when I realized I didn’t care if Christina Yang and the red-haired guy got back together. That was a long time ago.
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.Yes, I know the question asked for a TV show, but I almost always lose focus on pretty much all of them sometime during the 3-5 year mark. I just wanted to be part of the convo.
Is this with or without the vast ocean of community mods?
Oh, with. Definitely.
Is it even really an Elder Scrolls game *if it doesnt have 200+ mods running ?(sorry console people)*
(Plays on console, can confirm)
My deepest condolences.
It’s the Walking Dead for me, but only because we are so close to the finish line. I’ve stopped watching with my wife because she doesn’t care and will just fit it in whenever i can.
It used to be Doctor Who, but i bailed after the huge Doctor origin re-con. It helps that that show goes on super long hiatuses so when it comes back, i’ve allowed myself to get out of the habit of watching it.
The break between Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker was too long. My attention was already starting to flag (Peter Capaldi being brilliant in the role helped keep me in) but by the time the show came back, I just had no drive to see it.Still not actually seen an episode of 13’s run. Paradoxically the only one I have a box set for because I missed the whole season (when before I never missed an episode), thought I could watch the season at the end … still unopened several years later.
Doctor Who is still one for me, and I find it easy to keep up with since it’s such an inexpensive use of my time. It’s not like tuning in to something every Tuesday, twenty weeks in a row. There are only three specials this year, and even though the first two were mediocre at best, I’ve been searching around for the past few weeks for info on the third because why not. I have taken my time getting into several of the seasons over the past few years, sometimes letting four or five episodes pile up before I start watching, but I still get to it eventually.
Call The Midwife.That show can go on forever.
If Better Call Saul counts it was that. Every other thing I watch is either new or ended long ago.
I think the question was specifically about shows that have lost the appeal they initially had, although most of the writers didn’t address that part. I feel like Better Call Saul is the rare show that ran for several seasons and was consistent from beginning to end. Breaking Bad had higher highs but also some very questionable choices. (IMHO, YMMV obv.)
I cut the cord back in 2010 so there honestly isn’t any.
The Walking Dead. I enjoy the show, and Fear the Walking Dead. The one with the kids was meh. The new Tales anthology was fucking terrible. The only shining light was the Alpha episode. And even that could’ve been better. I thought they got someone else to play Alpha, then realized that Samantha Morton lost a bit of weight (I don’t pay attention to credits).
I thought I was going to stick with NCIS, but I bailed after Pauley Perette left the show. But even at that point, I was still only watching because I had invested a decade into it. But the cast changes were terrible.
I almost bailed on Supernatural over the last few years it was on. I got so tired of the Angel shit, I just wanted it to go back to the Monster of the Week format.
I’m with Gil on Hell’s Kitchen. I still watch it. Ramsay’s verbal abuse has softened a bit because times have changed, but those early years were hilarious.
Pluto has a Ramsay Uncensored channel and it’s even better to hear him go off in all it’s unbleeped glory.
I bailed a long time ago, but even then, I couldn’t believe people would go on that show without knowing how to make fucking risotto, or the other dishes they made every single season. Do they still do that?It’s like going on Survivor without practicing how to make fire.Who does that???
Those damn beef wellingtons have undone so many contestants, lol
For the purposes of this article, I’m going to consider the AVClub a tv show I’ve followed for…twenty years? Or so? It’s not anything like it used to be but…I keep tuning in.
I hate to be the one to tell you but the AV Club’s TV Club is long gone!
Doctor Who’s a weird case since it gets a partial or total reboot every few years.
I’ve quit everything. When my parents when back to our hometown in August 2021 until June 2022, the TV was off the entire time.The entire use paid streaming services in my life (Netflix/Disney +/everyone else) combined would easily fit well inside 12 hours and that includes a break for lunch and a nap.
I think at this point I’m only watching The Flash because of sunk cost fallacy but I’m determined to see it through
I’ve stuck with The Simpsons and it still gives me a few good laughs.I stuck with ER to the fucking end. It’s final season is really good after having a huge slump of seasons near the end.
I’m a doctor (was an ED (ER) doctor).I have never seen an episode of ER.
The first three seasons are excellent television, especially by the standards of network TV in the 90s and largely hold up.Season 4-6 are still excellent but the cast (including Clooney) start to depart and the show’s chemistry shifts. Seasons 12-14 particularly are really rough as the show is stuck with a bunch of young doctors and pressure to be more like Grey’s Anatomy.
I just couldn’t handle all the horrible shit they kept doing to Abby after awhile.At some point, Abby was relatively happy for an ep or two so I noped the fuck out before they could start torturing her again.And speaking of ER and shows I just can’t quit on, Doc Green was just on maybe the best ep so far of Tales of the Walking Dead.
Yeah she copped it bad during her time on the show. She’s a character who also probably stuck around a few years too long.
ER had a bad habit of tanking great actors with really bad characters, particularly during the Ming Na years. I think they recovered nicely with the addition of Neela and Sam, and the last season’s writing had a nice zip to it (one day pop culture historians will write about how Lost inspired shows in every genre to take on a feeling of moving more quickly – even if the plots still stagnated – around 2006). They still tended to spend months building up a relationship only to tear it apart two episodes later.
For me, I would say The Voice. They’ve never had a successful winner. During every season, I get to a point where I think, “How many people left to eliminate? This is dragging on too long.” But I still stick with it. The auditions are fun, and I regularly wind up crying from the sad back stories and overly happy parents jumping up and down on the side of the stage.I loved The Simpsons enough to have a poster with all the characters in my bathroom, but even I gave up on them a good 10-15 years ago. Same with Family Guy.Thanks for explaining that Vanderpump Rules is a Real Housewives spin-off. I had no idea who the eff these people were and why anyone would make a show about them.
I have complicated,hard-to-nail-down opinions on NuWho. I can see the DNA of the original show in there, but it is definitely a different beast. Despite my nostalgia for original run Who, I will readily acknowledge it had many flaws (one-note cardboard characters, plodding pace, cheap effects), so it’s not necessarily a bad idea to change the formula. It feels less genre-centered, more genre-adjacent, where the genre elements are just set dressing to explore character interactions…which, again…is not a bad thing. It just may not be my thing; it feels too similar to every other basic cable sci-fi/supernatural show. Mind you, I still try to keep up with it; occasionally, I get an episode (or run of episodes) that really showcases the potential of the series, that is fit to go on a shelf with the classics from the original run. I still hope to be surprised by the show and I hope the next Doctor can pull the show out of its slump (no disrespect to Whittaker; the writing was subpar to middling for much of her run).One opinion about the current run that I am less ambivalent about: please stop giving us more backstory on the Doctor! The more you try to make the Doctor more interesting, the less interesting she gets to me. The Doctor should be mysterious, unreliable, eccentric, and even a little dangerous (maybe not “Sixth Doctor strangling Peri” dangerous, however). There’s a reason so many past companions have been rootless, curious, and unsatisfied with their life (you could also make an argument that the Doctor abducts many of his companions); there is no reason to put up with it otherwise.
Does Four Corners count?
I learned how to “quit” bad tv around season 10 of the Simpsons. I hadn’t missed an episode until then, but it had been bad since around season 8, and by season 10, maybe 11, i just said “no more”. I don’t owe a tv show anything! SNL is hot garbage 90% of the time as well, so why anyone would watch that out of a weird obligation is beyond me.
Curb your Enthusiasm. The last few seasons have been hit or miss but occasionally there is a classic (Most of the “spite store” season was fantastic).
I don’t think I watch any shows that have gone on that long. I will say I have bailed on Jessica Jones S2 after slogging through S2 I could only make it through 1 episode of S3. Bailed in the Flight Attendant halfway through S1, too outlandish. Bailed in Ms. Marvel halfway through, too teenager. Only made it 2 eps into Severance, just not for me. Think I did 3 episodes of Foundation and I was terminally bored.
I suspect I’ll stick with Doctor Who for a while yet. I dropped out of classic Who soon after Peter Davison left (and had been finding it a chore for a while even then).SNL is an easy one as it’s more a matter of watching a couple of sketches here and there in breaks from work on the Monday these days.As for Handmaid’s Tale, we used to record it on Sunday night (in the UK) and also record a triple bill of Allo’ Allo’ (classic British WW2 sitcom). Every Monday evening we would ask ourselves which we wanted to watch, and the grimness of HT meant it was Allo’ Allo’ every time. So we bailed out early in Season 2 of HT.
Family guy is background noise for me and my SO, it’s good for laughs if you aren’t paying attention to the plot since there are so many jokes that aren’t even related to the plot. Yeah, some jokes are problematic, but those are mostly few and far between, though some episodes deserve a skip entirely.
Survivor just started it’s 43rd-season and I’m back onboard for more buff-dropping and immunity idols, thanks to Amazon’s Paramount channel option… been catching up on the few seasons I missed as well.
So when I think, “Who is still watching Survivor??”, the answer is you.
I think I gave up after season 10 or so.
I’m watching. Season 42 was awesome
Me too, dammit. I always think I’ll drop Survivor and then I get stupidly excited when a new season begins. It’s a pretty addictive formula.
Top Chef would be top on my list – I get excited when new seasons are coming out still and am really excited for next season (an All-Star season featuring contestants from all of the international versions of the show).But I don’t know if that really counts given I think the show is still top notch. I assume this list is more for shows that have gotten mediocre to bad but people keep watching. And if that’s the case, I’d say Shark Tank.
Honestly none at the moment, but I watched Criminal Minds way longer than I should have, mostly because I loved Matthew Gray Gubler and Padgett Brewster. Like it was always shlocky, but at some point it just became 98% sexualized violence against women* and 2% the team trying to solve the crime of the week.Yes, I KNOW that was always an element of the show, but it didn’t used to be most of the running time of each episode.
Bob’s Burgers. I just kind of think that every episode is…fine. It’s never hilarious, but never bad. I pretty much know what everybody is going to do. I’m not going to get surprised to crack up laughing, but it’s good enough that if it’s on I’ll watch it. But I absolutely will not leave the house and pay $16 to watch it in a theater.I realize this isn’t a popular answer for this site, but it’s my truth
The Simpsons has been on so long it has become almost like a comfort show at this point. It isn’t great anymore and you know it should end, but you don’t want it to, which is why I keep watching because it’s familar. The Amazing Race is another one I enjoy. It’s easy to watch, the basic format has rarely changed, and seeing new places never gets old.
Can someone, somewhere please explain to me why I appear to still be watching The Blacklist? It was so bad during the (spoiler, not that anyone cares) Liz dies season that I just read recaps but I crawled back and have been slowly working my way through the current season, which then proceeded to endlessly show flashbacks from the horrible season I mostly skipped. Yet somehow there are still nights when I grimly turn it on. I think i need professional help!
I’m right there with you on Blacklist.I never liked Liz or Tom, but I guess the rest of the cast, especially Spader, has pulled me along. I’m way behind, cause there were so many breaks last season, I kept forgetting it was on.It was so weird how Red’s world revolved around Liz, but he had no interest whatsoever if her sister lived or died. Liz builds a loyal team that would give their lives for her, and then they do as Red casually has them murdered one by one, and Liz just gets over it. And I forget exactly why now, but the Empire Red shows Liz just made no fucking sense.And how about that half animated COVID episode?
They are also still talking about some damn secret for 10 years now yet we still don’t know how the Red we see on the show is really connected to Liz. It jumped the shark over to ridiculous at least 5 years ago.But I am glad I’m not the only person in America still watching this show. I was thinking it was getting to the point where they might as well just act out the episodes in my living room ;-). (And that partially animated COVID episode was nuts!)
still don’t know how the Red we see on the show is really connected to Liz. You know, I was gonna include that in my post, but they’ve come so close so many times, I thought they must have resolved it and I just don’t remember. And yet I watch, like a monkey pushing a button for a chunk of fruit.BTW, where do you read recaps?
I subbed to Paramount+ to watch The Stand with every intention of unsubbing within a few weeks. I ended up keeping it because I always meant to get into Star Trek, so I watched a bit of that.
Now, I’m stupid hooked on Survivor (which I hadn’t seen since Season 1). I’m so addicted to Survivor and I imagine, when I catch up, I’m going to addict myself to The Amazing Race. So, for someone who has claimed to hate reality TV for decades, it’s embarrassing to admit that the long running TV show I can’t give up is Survivor.
I was a How I Met Your Mother dead-ender. Now I pull the plug pretty quick when I feel the bottom falling out of a show.
I’m such a completist that I have an embarrassingly small number of shows I ever did quit after being a devotee for multiple seasons, but interestingly enough, two of the ones I managed to drop are on this list: Handmaid’s Tale and Walking Dead. I feel somehow like my cessation is validated by both being included on a list of shows that viewers think they’ve been watching too long. Sounds like I made good choices, for once?
I will watch The Simpsons until one of us dies. And that’s likely true of Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers and Archer as well. And when the new run of Futurama shows up, I’ll be there (Fun fact: If Futurama continues to be exactly 1000 years in the future, it’ll be 3023 or ‘24, meaning Fry will have spent almost as much of his life in the 31st century as he did in the 20th, and will be effectively 49 or 50 years old).I’ve wandered in and out of SNL over the years, although I never really officially stopped watching—not even during the mid-’90s, when I spent an awful lot of time staring at the TV, repeating “The end…THE END!…THE SKETCH ENDED FIVE MINUTES AGO! WHY IS IT STILL GOING ON?”
I know that you have to pretend that Bowen Yang is funny, but would he be if he was straight and white?
Not that long ago, I would have answered South Park, but alas, I’ve given up on the show entirely once Randy became a marihuana farmer. Never has a more middling and annoying plot point been more stretched out and expanded to engulf an entire show like a giant all-comsuming black hole.
There was once a time when South Park did an incredibly smart thing: they reeled Mr. Garrison in.
Like Randy, Mr. Garrison was very much a break-out character whose specific brand of insanity generated boatloads of laughs and was quite instrumental in South Park breaking out from it’s early years where they were just kind of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Ultimately, however when he became a Mrs., he slowly veered off into parody. Matt and Trey ultimately decided to revert him to an earlier version of just a relatively average grumpy and sardonic kindergarden teacher and explored other story lines.
Well, same thing happened to Randy. By S15 I started to notice Randy, who was always great but in small-to-medium doses, start to completely dominate the show, with the original gang of kids now serving as spectators, very often sidelined in their own show. And indeed, no one can deny the genuis of Medicinal Fried Chicken, Broadway Bro Down, Craime Fresche, Informative Murder Porn and countless other Randy-episode classics. However, this time, instead of easing up on Randy a bit to allow other characters more breathing room, they did the opposite, more or less treating Randy as the Fonz of South Park. This, combined with an increased serialization simply extinguished the last vestiges of any active desire in me to watch South Park.
And it’s such a shame. We live in an insane time. The South Park of the 2000s would have had a FIELD DAY with what is happening now! The modern South Park couldn’t even make Trump’s election particularly funny. Instead of belly-laughs we were treated to a convoluted series-long mythology and a take on internet trolling that would have been considered stale even in the late 00s. It’s a sad day for South Park when SNL beats it for cultural relevance.