Biggest TV show busts in history

[Guest starvenger]

The first season very nearly turned me off. But yes, Zsasz, I agree with your assessment.

I think that the first season would have been much better if they gave Sisko the bad mofo look from the beginning.

 

Okay, maybe not, but those first 2 seasons were all about the show finding it's legs.

 

Speaking of which, Enterprise is sadly going the way of Voyager, and I hope that in the 3rd season they snap out of this creative funk.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

Enterprise started out bad-ass. They have an actor who EVERYONE loves playing the captain, potentially likeable characters, and a feeling of almost palatable menace.

 

I havn't watched since the end of Season 1 (Which I though ruled it.) so what's happened to it?

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

The John Larroquette Show. Absolutely brilliant and cutting edge in it's first season. Then a little less the second with a few gems here and there and then utter shit by the aborted third season. It was like some high brow executive cut off the shows balls and then forced them to lift scripts from My Mother the Car.

[Guest NoCalMike]

Top of the Heap - supposed to be some sort of spinoff from Married w/ Children with one of the pukes from friends in it.

 

Mantis - I have never even seen it, but it must have been bad since it lasted no time at all.

 

90% of the NBC-must see TV sitcoms were complete garbage.

 

Sliders - with Jerry O' Connel, the one where he made the little mechanism that could open portals to parallel universes. Funny, cause I thought it was actually a good show the first few seasons on network tv, then it was sent off to the sci-fi channel and the cast changed every other episode and it eventually got canned.

 

A lot of the stuff you guys listed weren't ratings champs, but the shows lasted a long time, so I am not sure if they can be considered "busts"

[Guest EQ]

Maybe someone already said this, but Osbournes gets my vote

[Guest SP-1]

ENT suffers from the same things VOY did. Wonderful premise that's been ignored and/or shot to hell by the powerhouse of crap that is Berman and Braga. I was really excited about Bakula playing Archer, but I have a feeling they neutered him to playing a wooden board in a purple flightsuit.

 

Lately I hear he's gotten a chance to bear down and inject a little manliness into Archer. There've been a few good episodes (good by alot of accounts anyway, I generally miss ENT) this season but I think most of them weren't written by B&B. The whole Temporal Cold War storyline gets revisited once or twice a season it seems, but generally it's kind of ignored. Which is a shame.

 

I hope it picks up in season 3 and finds it's legs as well.

[Guest godthedog]

although it's certainly not the biggest case, i think 'mystery science theater 3000' shriveled and died a slow, painful death when it got picked up by sci fi. none of the original cast was there, corbett didn't make a very good crow, & the storylines got really...really...weird. it just didn't have that comic energy anymore, & got depressing.

[Guest Eyeball Kid]

As recently as last season, I would've agreed with anyone who says that The Simpsons had become mediocre, but I've found myself enjoying this season a lot more than I have in ages. The show has acquired some of its old compassion, and the writers actually seem to care about the characters again--see the loving treatment of Ned in this week's episode--rather than portray them as crudely drawn caricatures.

 

King of the Hill, however, has never been worse. Peggy is a fucking cunt. Terminal cancer is too good for her.

[Guest Lethargic]

Action had 13 episodes, not 7 or 8. Fox only aired that many, but then the whole show aired on FX. They just played the whole series again on Trio in December. Fox totally screwed that show. Hell, HBO screwed it. Why HBO passed on that show I'll never understand. It's much better than what they have on there now and then. If HBO had this show I'd actually shell out the money to be able to see it. FOX totally screwed it by cancelling it so soon. They didn't even show the episodes in order. I noticed that things were happening that didn't make sense while watching it. So I had to get the production numbers for each episode to get them in the right order just to watch it where it made sense. Here is the order that they aired it:

 

Ep. 1

Ep. 2

Ep. 3

Ep. 4

Ep. 9

Ep. 5

Ep. 11

Ep. 8

Ep. 10

Ep. 6

Ep. 12

Ep. 13

Ep. 7

 

That kinda ruins continuity believe it or not! Characters appear out of nowhere and then later on you find out why.

 

I think the only thing that sucked about the second season of Twin Peaks is that there wasn't more of it.

[Guest razazteca]

Action ended with Peter Dragon getting the heart attack right?

 

As for King of the Hill, I have seen a new episode lately nor know when the damn thing is on, but I still enjoy the repeats of the early seasons at 5 and 6 in between Drew Carrey and Simpsons reruns.

[Guest phoenixrising]

Babylon 5 started out good and got even better with the Shadows storyline and my favorite when they are forced to rebel against Earth, and all the storylines eventually were settled for what was their last season. Then TNT decided to buy the series (it was syndicated) for a fifth season.

 

The final season blew.

 

Several reasons. Season 4 (the next to last season) was supposed to be the show's last season, and all the storylines were supposed to culminate with that season. Claudia Christian (Ivanova) also decided to leave after season four. Then TNT stepped in and bought a fifth season. The problem was that all the kickass storylines from the first few seasons had already been resolved. They couldn't get Christian back so they resorted to killing off Ivanova (which really sucked personally cause IMO she is one of the greatest characters in sci-fi and doesn't get enough credit but again, just my opinion) and replacing her with Tracy Scoggins. Who was hot, but had nowhere near the character of Ivanova. There were a couple of episodes that were "recaps", just episodes that gave the general idea of what was going on, but were just really boring. If you get a chance to watch Babylon 5 all the way through you'll see what I mean. You're on the edge of your seat up until those final episodes...and then bleh.

 

Family Matters - Urkel killed it. In moderation Urkel was a great character and very funny, but with repetition his act got stale very fast.

[Guest Youth N Asia]

WHat happened to the Drew Carrey show?

 

It was one of the funniest shows on tv for a while, and a couple years ago when I caught a few episodes I didn't catch myself laughing once.

 

It's gone now, right?

[Guest The Tino Standard]

Drew Carey is still on the air, tho the show might as well be considered D.O.A. I watched some episodes in September before Boston Public started its new season and wow, the Drew Carey Show was painful. Kate O'Brien is on Scrubs now (that's the first time I've seen a character jump from one show to another and been totally floored by it... and a hell of a career-saver for her to boot). The DCS is bleeding profusely and I don't see it getting rescued.

[Guest red_file]

Mantis - I have never even seen it, but it must have been bad since it lasted no time at all.

M.A.N.T.I.S. actually wasn't all that bad. It was a kinda interesting idea, but the execution was a little poor. I think it was also the first or one of the first t.v. shows that Raimi's production company produced, so I don't think they knew quite what they were doing yet. It did get a little strange towards the end with aliens or something, but it was enjoyable for the time that it was on.

 

Action had 13 episodes, not 7 or 8. Fox only aired that many, but then the whole show aired on FX.

 

Did not know that. Now I'm going to have to track down the ones I didn't get to see. Any chance it's coming out on DVD?

 

A show that never really rose to any great heights but one I liked nonetheless and that ruined itself was Earth: Final Conflict. The first season was very well put together and had an extremely likable lead. And then the lead was replaced and the show was shifted to an ensemble cast. Then elements were introduced to the show that kinda contradicted the coolness of the first season. Then they did some type of parallel universe thing (do all syndicated skiffy shows have to play around with parallel universes?) and then I stopped watching.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

I...Liked...Voyager...

 

*Cries*

 

Shit, Sliders takes the cake fellas. That was a really good fuckin show until they ran out of ideas.. then they started copying from movies... I mean, REALLY, REALLY, Blatently copying from Movies... They had a giant snake eps. and an alien sextress eps... *shudders*

 

And THEN they had to introduce a continous villain... The last shows only had *one* cast member left. Geezuz.

[Guest RevEvil]

I do agree that Twin Peaks probably has to take this honor. The first season was probably the most critically acclaimed thing on television; it vaulted Lynch from shadowy cult figure to America's premiere indie director, getting his picture on Time (or was it People?); and it got pretty good ratings because of people being interested in the murder mystery. All of that fell apart starting with the second season. It didn't just destroy the image that the show had produce, it also severely damaged Lynch's reputation (I still wonder why Frost didn't take a bigger hit) to the point where everything he had done was reevaluated as if he was a crackpot.

Twin peaks was originally only supposed to last one season. ABC then decided they wanted a second one.

[Guest red_file]

I do agree that Twin Peaks probably has to take this honor.  The first season was probably the most critically acclaimed thing on television; it vaulted Lynch from shadowy cult figure to America's premiere indie director, getting his picture on Time (or was it People?); and it got pretty good ratings because of people being interested in the murder mystery.  All of that fell apart starting with the second season.  It didn't just destroy the image that the show had produce, it also severely damaged Lynch's reputation (I still wonder why Frost didn't take a bigger hit) to the point where everything he had done was reevaluated as if he was a crackpot.

Twin peaks was originally only supposed to last one season. ABC then decided they wanted a second one.

That seems unlikely given the nature of the first season. After the first season, Laura's murder remains unsolved and it ends on quite a cliffhanger. Were the first season self-contained, there'd more than likely be some sort of resolution for the season.

 

The two hour pilot was originally filmed as a self-contained movie that was shown a bit in Europe. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of.

[Guest starvenger]

Shit, Sliders takes the cake fellas. That was a really good fuckin show until they ran out of ideas.. then they started copying from movies... I mean, REALLY, REALLY, Blatently copying from Movies... They had a giant snake eps. and an alien sextress eps... *shudders*

 

And THEN they had to introduce a continous villain... The last shows only had *one* cast member left. Geezuz.

I think that part of the problem with Sliders was Jerry O'Connell's increasing creative power there. He started getting producers credits, then got his talentless brother onto the show, and eventually asked for too much power which led to the bloody confusing last season.

[Guest SP-1]

I remember thinking Sliders was one of the coolest shows on when I was younger.

 

Then I lost track. I've tried to watch a few SciFi Channel episodes but it was so different and weird that I just said screw it.

[Guest Madmartigan21]

Shit, Sliders takes the cake fellas.  That was a really good fuckin show until they ran out of ideas.. then they started copying from movies... I mean, REALLY, REALLY, Blatently copying from Movies... They had a giant snake eps. and an alien sextress eps... *shudders*

 

And THEN they had to introduce a continous villain... The last shows only had *one* cast member left.  Geezuz.

I think that part of the problem with Sliders was Jerry O'Connell's increasing creative power there. He started getting producers credits, then got his talentless brother onto the show, and eventually asked for too much power which led to the bloody confusing last season.

Did they ever get back to THEIR Earth?

[Guest Dmann2000]

I completely agree on Family Matters and Step by Step.

 

Family Matters became a cartoon towards the end as every episode revolved around Carl and Urkel doing something stupid.

 

One they had Lily- Step by Step went down the shitter

I always contend that Step by Step went downhill once the Tomboy started acting like a typical boy-crazy teenage girl.

[Guest Dmann2000]

The John Larroquette Show. Absolutely brilliant and cutting edge in it's first season. Then a little less the second with a few gems here and there and then utter shit by the aborted third season. It was like some high brow executive cut off the shows balls and then forced them to lift scripts from My Mother the Car.

I mourned the death of the John Larroquette Show, I loved that first season it was edgy and felt real. I was such a huge Night Court fan.

[Guest starvenger]

Did they ever get back to THEIR Earth?

Damned if I know. Like I said, it's hella-confusing. Nowadays I just read eXiles from my Sliders-like fix...

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

They did, and it was destroyed by an EVIL ALIEN RACE~!

 

*shudders*

[Guest razazteca]

Maggie and Crying Man died which made way for Jerry's brother and that MTV girl to join the show, this was the begining of the end for Sliders. I think the Professor also died but not sure.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

The Professor got blind and then died.

 

They did this whole thing with Maggie getting sent to an internment camp and weird shit like that.

[Guest Youth N Asia]

Last Drew Carrey I saw was one where he was doing street racing and dating Wanda Sykes (who's very unfunny herself)...and nothing in the episode was funny, and the one I watched before that was awful.

 

I think the show started to sink when every single week he was dating a new girl that was so far out of his league it wasn't even funny.

[Guest razazteca]

Wayne Brady is not funny. The attempts at being the next Rosie or Sammy Davis shows are lame.

 

WTF happened to Titus? Did FOX just have too many shows with the comedian just talking to the camera or what?

[Guest Youth N Asia]

Wayne Brady is not funny. The attempts at being the next Rosie or Sammy Davis shows are lame.

 

WTF happened to Titus? Did FOX just have too many shows with the comedian just talking to the camera or what?

I agree with Wayne Brady...now I don't mean this to sound the way it's going to sound...but I think he has a talk show just cause he's a friendly non threatening black guy. I don't mean that to sound racist or anything, and I hope it doesn't. But that's the guy's selling point...like Will Smith.

 

Titus never made me laugh, gave up on it after two shows.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Brady was/is good on whose line...