People Are Sharing The TV Shows That Started Off Really Strong, Then Completely Went Off The Rails, And I'm Disappointed In Some Of These Writers
A while back, Reddit user u/RedWestern asked, "Which TV show got too big for its boots?" and people had some pretty strong opinions about shows that started out good, then became wayyy too convoluted. Here are just some of the shows that people submitted!
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
1.When Riverdale turned from a simple murder mystery into a show about cults, pseudoscience, and serial killer parents:
"The first season was highly promising. They unfolded the mystery very nicely; we got good ships, a dynamic relationship between the teens and their parents; they also showed how a teacher-student relationship is NOT ideal (looking at you, PLL); in fact, even the songs were good.
But them oh my lord, we went from dark circle to black hood to bear attacks to serial killer genes to cults ... and don't even get me started on Cheryl."
2.When zombies became public knowledge on iZombie:
![<div><p>"[The] show faltered from there."</p><p>—<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/t49e12a934" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:t49e12a934;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">t49e12a934</a></p><p>"I couldn’t even keep watching."</p><p>—<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/khloebare" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:khloebare;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">khloebare</a></p></div><span> The CW</span>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/odn1h7zh1SWYvoCHmRsZpQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTk2MA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/1df90acdab5d96c59a94240ccc2a62c0)
3.When Rio turned out to be alive and somehow didn't kill Beth for shooting him on Good Girls:
"When Beth shot Rio and thought she killed him and he didn't kill her afterwards?? I get the whole vibe between them and the 'will they or won't' thing but still, Rio has recklessly killed people for way less! And they both get away from everything — kind of takes some danger factor away."
4.When The Walking Dead introduced King Ezekiel and his pet tiger:
"I jumped ship after the tiger. It sucks because the first few seasons were SOOO good."
"I loved that show but they let it get too big. It turned into those awful soap operas that come on before Jerry Springer. No storylines wrapped up and camera panning to new people every 1.5 minutes. They even had comics mapped out for them and they couldn't even follow that."
5.When Gotham introduced Bruce's clone:
"[I] was really enjoying Gotham up until the laziest trope of all: the clone story. [I] tapped out totally with that dreck."
6.When Designated Survivor introduced a storyline about a virus that sterilizes BIPOC:
"That show just gets wack after Season 1. As in, kill off all but four OG characters by Season 3 and have a disease that neuters non-white people, wack."
"Designated Survivor was one of those shows that has a great premise and then had no idea where to go from there."
7.When Heroes created all-powerful characters, then kept taking their powers away to justify the difficulty they had saving the world:
"Remember when Peter took his girlfriend to the future and then just left her there? Honestly, my biggest issue was when they started nerfing Peter and Sylar. They had become a little too powerful, since they could collect powers, but the way they kept trying to do it was just lazy writing. Season 2 also had the really annoying Nissan Rogue product placement — which only contrasted with how well they did the Versa in Season 1."
8.When Once Upon a Time kept doing memory wipes, then introduced characters from Frozen:
"I enjoyed the show, but how many times could they repeat the whole 'forgotten memory and new evil villain appears in town' trope? The first season was great and interesting, and the idea was neat. But then they just kept rolling with the whole idea of the first season nonstop. Hell, the final season was essentially Season 1, just in Seattle. It was like they ran out of ideas after the first season. Also, the Evil Queen's reason for hating Snow White was just...stupid."
"I knew once they introduced Frozen that it was over. Frozen wasn’t even out when the show started, so at that point it was obvious they had no real plan for the show and just wanted to do what the audience 'wanted.'"
9.When Weeds went way too far past its original premise by leaving the suburbs:
"Once she left the 'burbs, the whole premise was lost and shit went off the rails."
"I didn’t mind when they were in Ren Mar. Once they were on the road, it just became a joke. How many times can you screw up, Nancy?!"
10.When True Blood made Sookie a fairy:
"They crammed so much shit into that show, I'm still amazed Batman didn't make a cameo."
"They lost me with the fairy shit."
11.When Lost introduced the flash-sideways:
"IMO, the first five seasons were great. Yes, the seasons were too long and contained some filler subplots, but it appeared that the show was headed toward some kind of mind-bending twist that would (at least in part) explain things in some sort of palatable manner that was consistent with what we'd seen up to that point. Maybe something corny like, 'It was all a crazy experiment,' or a wild sci-fi 'the island is Earth's control center!' kind of deal. Then Season 6 totally ruined the whole thing. The dumb 'sideways reality' full of stupid gimmicks (Sawyer is a cop now? Jack saved Locke's legs?), Jacob and the Man in Black (who was sometimes Locke) with the pointless metaphors, the gang constantly scurrying up and down cliffs for no reason, the pointless 'temple,' that dumb cork thing...and then it ends with everyone dancing around in a gauzily lit magic interdenominational church. Blech."
12.When The Vampire Diaries kept throwing in new doppelgängers and creatures:
"That show was amazing in the first couple of seasons — like, good plot and great characters — and then Season 4 happened, and they prematurely ended the Stefan-Damon-Elena love triangle, and the supernatural plotlines got to be way too many at one time."
13.When Glee tried to simultaneously tackle every popular song and every societal issue:
"In the original 13 episodes, it was a really well-written show about outcasts and underdogs. You'd hear an eclectic mix of covers, many of songs that were fairly obscure (as far as 'network TV jukebox' is concerned, anyway). All these bumbling, naive characters really made you root for them. Then the show got so massively popular that they had two simultaneous pressures: 1) be the voice of minorities, especially the LGBTQ community, and 2) do covers of super-popular songs. It quickly turned into 'When will Glee do (song)?' or 'When will Glee tackle (recent social issue)?' when it used to just be a quirky show about weirdos."
14.When The Flash kept bringing back Harrison Wells and giving people super speed:
"I really liked Season 1. Great cast, Great writing, and a hell of a lot of great moments. Season 2? Eh...not bad, but a repeat of Season 1. Then they just kept repeating the trope of 'evil speedster' and then making the characters dumb. I also got tired of the many different Wells.'"
15.When Orange Is the New Black moved to a high-security prison and tried to tackle too much:
"When it started out, it was a fantastic show. It had a diverse cast, a perfect blend of genuinely funny moments mixed with the hard-hitting, brutal reality of prison, a realistic portrayal of both the prisoners and the staff, and a genuinely compelling story. With all of the praise they received, the creators got into their heads that their show would become a huge vehicle for change and was providing a voice for the voiceless. But in the pursuit of that goal, they ended up doing away with the other important stuff that made the show good. They replaced most of the prison staff with one-dimensional brutes and clichéd, mustache-twirling villains (like Donuts, Piscatella, Thomas Humphrey, Hellman, and Linda Ferguson); added a few equally one-dimensional, brutish villains (like Madison Murphy and the Denning sisters) among the prisoners; and just sacrificed their entire plot. By the end, it was nothing more than just injustice porn."
16.When Pretty Little Liars brought Ali back to life and kept creating new A's:
"I could excuse the second A after Mona (even though the Cece storyline was stupid), but the THIRD A was where I couldn’t handle it anymore. Like, why?!"
"It’s like, okay, wait, Mona’s still a bad guy, but there’s more?? Do we still hate Noel? I’m very confused! When they finally revealed Alison to be alive, it wasn’t even a shock anymore."
17.When Sherlock gave Sherlock an evil sister:
"I could enjoy parts of Season 3 and even some bits of Season 4, but that last episode with Eurus was enough for me to quit the series. They got too big with everything. After Season 2, it was like they couldn't just go back to normal cases, so they started building up the characters to comic book–level ridiculous. Eurus was 'brilliant' in a way that went way past suspension of disbelief and might as well have been magic."
18.When Arrow kept making everyone a superhero and gave their heroes impossible abilities:
"By like the third season, everyone and their mom becomes a superhero."
"'So you want me to take these nanobots you stole from a government lab and reprogram them to fix some guy's cancer after we inject them into his arm?' 'Yes.' 'Could you give me like 30 minutes?'"
19.When The Fairly OddParents introduced Sparky and focused way too much on the anti-fairy world:
"The writers were fine, but Nickelodeon got too greedy. The addition of Sparky the dog, the new neighbor girl, and the whole 'anti-fairy world' subplot was too much. They just kept adding stuff, but the original structure was pretty good to begin with."
20.When Supernatural kept the show going after the Winchester brothers beat the devil, eventually having them fight God:
"After Lucifer, they just kept raising the stakes and eventually had to fight God himself."
21.When The Handmaid's Tale kept June alive despite all the rules she'd broken, erasing any and all tension about whether or not she'd survive:
"If it had stopped at one season, it could have been incredible. Now it's so far up its own ass, it's unbelievable. The plot armor on June is so thick, it could stop a nuke at this point. Anyone else in that society would have been put on the wall two seasons ago."
"I really like the show, but I felt that during Season 1, anybody could be taken away and killed at any moment, and it was incredibly tense when...June was doing something she could get killed for. Now I feel like she could do anything and they'll find a reason to keep her alive. From what they set up in Season 1, June would've been sent to the colonies after giving birth."
22.When 13 Reasons Why introduced a ghost, then became a full-on murder mystery:
"It really should have stopped at Season 1. It couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to be anymore. Like, it started as a cautionary tale, but then a ghost story, then a clue murder-mystery whodunit. It just got too out of whack."
23.When they kept changing Red's identity on The Blacklist:
"I had to stop after the third or fourth time Red switched from being her father. It finally dawned on me that it was just a terrible bait and switch to keep people watching."
24.When The X-Files let the aliens plotline get way too convoluted:
"The first few seasons, Chris Carter seemed like he was building to something big and revolutionary with the aliens arc, and then it just kept getting more outlandish and convoluted. Even as a faithful fan who used to hang out on the discussion boards and write fanfic, I couldn't tell you for sure what the black oil really was, what really happened to Samantha, what the aliens really wanted, or what the pact was that the splinter government had made. So much wasted potential."
25.When Grey's Anatomy kept putting its staff through life-altering disasters every season:
"They started losing me with Izzie’s brain tumor thing where she was fake having sex with the ghost of Denny. Like, c’mon, man, they weren’t even trying anymore. I quit watching totally after the shooter in the hospital. It was just too much."
"I didn't last long after the plane crash. At some point, you just start to judge them all for working in such a clearly dangerous environment. Go to a hospital where the death rate for the doctors is less than that of the patients, ya know?"
26.When Dexter gave Dexter so much plot armor, you never thought he'd get caught, then gave his sister romantic feelings for him:
"Trinity would've been the perfect endpoint. I stayed for one and a half more seasons, and then it was just over for me. Another thing was how much it started jumping out at you that the only reason he manages to still always be one step ahead of the police is plot armor — aka they're writing the police to be stupid."
"Deb was a drag during the whole show, but once things turned romantic, it was such a dive for an otherwise entertaining show."
27.When Game of Thrones pushed all the characters together and made the finale super rushed (which included allowing characters to make journeys in days that had previously taken seasons):
"It arguably crashed under the weight of its numerous plotlines, poor direction, and self-imposed time restraints. HBO would have thrown them all the money they needed to make as many seasons as they needed and the story deserved, but showrunners said no."
28.When all the murder plots on How to Get Away With Murder just got too convoluted:
"I mean, I know they tried to evolve the characters and show growth, but any changes after like the second season just sucked. First-season Annalise was the only good one. It was really how impressive her character was that really sucked me in, and I kept hoping to see that impressiveness again with every new season, but it just never got back to that level...I kept being genuinely surprised by plot twists, but after a while, it just became predictable and boring."
29.And finally, when Prison Break kept having the characters break out of prison again and again:
"They kept having to break out of prison every two seasons."
What other shows just tripped over their own plotlines and got too big? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
