Topic: Disappointing TV Shows

[Vincegamer]

agree Dollhouse sounded cool but wasn't

I'll add "No Ordinary Family"

[Eternally Learning]

There are actually a few shows that are angsty teen soaps with vampires (e.g. The Vampire Diaries, why are there so many bad vampire TV shows), True Blood is not one of them.

Thanks for the correction.

Vampire Diaries has all the trappings of an angsty teen soap, but manages to keep me interested.  Mostly, the Salvatore brothers are captivating and the fact that they've managed to actually avoid a lot of typical vampire tropes.  Also, they've done a good job of crafting and expooring their own vampire mythos and have managed to keep the genre fresh.  I'm a big fan of it and think that perhaps the title of the show has steered people off undeservedly.

[MikeHz]

The River sounded pretty good, but turned out to suck. Same thing with Terra Nova. It was Terra No Go. Both series were filled with annoying characters that viewers couldn't connect with, as well as predictable plot lines and terrible dialog.

[PANTS!]

The first season of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite good, but the second got less and less interesting as it went on.

I tend to think the exact opposite about this show.

[ricree]

Heroes isn't disappointing as much as just failed to stay as good as it was after the first couple of seasons.

First couple?  You're being way more generous than I would.

IMO, Heroes didn't even manage a single season before starting a downhill slide.  Granted, the season leading up to what I consider the show's peak* were rather good, and the ones after took a while to become outright bad.


*the episode "Company Man", in my opinion.

[Caffiene]

Heroes isn't disappointing as much as just failed to stay as good as it was after the first couple of seasons.

First couple?  You're being way more generous than I would.

IMO, Heroes didn't even manage a single season before starting a downhill slide.  Granted, the season leading up to what I consider the show's peak* were rather good, and the ones after took a while to become outright bad.


*the episode "Company Man", in my opinion.

Thatd be my assessment too. The first season I thought was certainly good, but still had a little room to improve if it wanted to. But then instead of improving it went downhill. Counts pretty well as a disappointment, for me.

[Neon Genesis]

Heroes always struck me of being like a B movie soap opera rip off version of X-men.

[ricree]

Heroes always struck me of being like a B movie soap opera rip off version of X-men.

That's definitely not an unfair summary of the show.

Still, early on in season one I thought the pacing, buildup, and characterization were very well done.

None of it ever wound up paying off, but I definitely felt a strong glimmer of potential there that ended up unfulfilled.  Seeing such a strong opening squandered so terribly was definitely a disappointment.

[teethering]

Battlestar Galactica (though in fairness, it was good occasionally, just rarely... and it was cringe-inducing-ly horrible whenever Starbuck and/or Balthazar were on screen)
Spaced
30 Rock (I really tried.  It's just not funny enough.)
Shameless UK version
The Killing (I can't stand the endless crime investigation format I think, otherwise it would be a good show.)
The Borgias (so much promise, so much terrible, terrible acting)

[D'oh!]

The first season of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite good, but the second got less and less interesting as it went on.

I tend to think the exact opposite about this show.

Really?  I thought they wasted the liquid Terminator lady.

Another show I'll add is The Office (American version).  The British is quite brilliant but I thought the remake came into its own after the first season and had some really strong episodes.  After Michael Scott left, however, it went downhill quickly.

[Ah.hell]

The first season of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite good, but the second got less and less interesting as it went on.

I tend to think the exact opposite about this show.

Really?  I thought they wasted the liquid Terminator lady.

Another show I'll add is The Office (American version).  The British is quite brilliant but I thought the remake came into its own after the first season and had some really strong episodes.  After Michael Scott left, however, it went downhill quickly.

I'm with Pants on this one.  Particularly the 3 for episodes before the very last one.  It was far better than Dollhouse anyway.

Spaced was very disappointing for.  I expected so much better from the creators of Shaun of the Dead. 

[ricree]

Battlestar Galactica (though in fairness, it was good occasionally, just rarely... and it was cringe-inducing-ly horrible whenever Starbuck and/or Balthazar were on screen)

Even a couple years later I still haven't decided whether I'm disappointed with the show.  It definitely had a lot of great hight points.  Outside of the third season and some parts of the fourth, it was rarely bad on an episode to episode basis.  Taken as a whole,  though, the overall narrative was just so sloppy and weak as to undermine the many other good aspects of the show.

Still, the individual pieces of the show fit together so well if you ignore the big picture that I have a hard time calling it an outright disappointment.

[seamas]

Lost.

Yeah.

I watched the first episode or two, then we stopped watching for the rest of that season anmd most of the next two.

Somehow we got hooked on it.

But the ending made it totally worthless. For me it was exactly the ending I feared they would go to.

[lukebourassa]

I tend to not give a show much chance, if I'm not into it, but shows that were hyped a lot (either by fans or by marketing) and ended up not being worth it to me:

True Blood - cool premise, but I don 't get why each epidose takes so long to get to certain points in the story arc, especially since HBO has no commercials; also the acting was crap, which was another real disappointment from an HBO series.

Bored to Death - a lot of people liked this show, I didn't find it funny

The Shield - after The Wire, it's hard to watch almost any cop show

Lost - trying too hard to make me say "wtf!"

The Borgias - too melodramatic.. could have been a real winner but wasn't.

[Plastique]

Battlestar Galactica (though in fairness, it was good occasionally, just rarely... and it was cringe-inducing-ly horrible whenever Starbuck and/or Balthazar were on screen)
Spaced
30 Rock (I really tried.  It's just not funny enough.)
Shameless UK version
The Killing (I can't stand the endless crime investigation format I think, otherwise it would be a good show.)
The Borgias (so much promise, so much terrible, terrible acting)

Agree with 30 Rock; just can't care about it. Bummer about the Borgias, was thinking of checking it out.

Outside of the third season and some parts of the fourth, it was rarely bad on an episode to episode basis.

Jesus, you think? Although, to be fair, I don't remember the details of each season's story-lines. But I do remember thinking there were a shit-load of bad episodes in general.

True Blood - cool premise, but I don 't get why each epidose takes so long to get to certain points in the story arc, especially since HBO has no commercials; also the acting was crap, which was another real disappointment from an HBO series.

So many people are into True Blood. I don't get it.