Hello America, one question. Why do you ruin all your best television shows?

[Sennz0r]

Damn you Americans and your awesome tv. There are about 20 shows I need to watch each week because of you and I get them all 8 hours after they've been tweeted and Facebook'd to death.

Anyway what pretty much everyone else in here said is true: Final word goes to the ones financing the shows, and if they say a show keeps going it keeps going. You can squeeze at least 2 more seasons out of a show when it starts to deteriorate: 1 before the audience notices something's up and another before a significant amount of them decide to stop watching altogether. It's not pretty, but it's the money that matters to these people. Not to mention the extra 30 bucks a pop they can shove into a collector's DVD box because they put in 2 more seasons.

I hope House MD doesn't overstay its welcome though. Eventhough I love the show to death and wish it could go on forever I'd rather see it having perhaps 1 more awesome season or maybe 2 than having it tank because they can't figure out what House is supposed to be struggling with next. If you ask me if they put him back on Vicodin the show's slipping.

 

[manaman]

Well, Lost and Chuck are my two favourite shows from the States, and Lost was given a definitive ending midway through season 3, and I believe Chuck is on it's last season also (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!).

But I agree with you, it goes out of control. Not to mention that our shows typically have something like 6 episodes to a series, where an American season is usually double that at least.

A full season is around 20-24 episodes, 13 episodes is a short season, you run into quite a few hour long shows that have only 13 episodes.

But that really isn't it. You just can't keep a show fresh forever. So what OP, your gripe is that the show doesn't end at that point? Why would they end it when its still making money? Obviously someone likes it or it wouldn't be doing well enough to make monet.

 

[McNinja]

So, it has come to my attention that many American TV shows are run into the ground. Series such as Scrubs, Two and a Half Men, the Simpsons and CSI(just to name a few) were great shows, but after several series they've all gone down hill, and by down hill I mean fell off a cliff.

This isn't to say America is the only offender, but it's certainly the worst by far. So while truly great and original shows like Futurama and Firefly get cancelled (although I hear Futurama is coming back), Two and a Half men, which was great to begin with, has long stopped being funny, yet it continues to run, and the less said about Scrubs, the better.

Now I understand that popular shows make a lot of money and it's for that reason that they keep going for as long as they do, but don't the writers want their shows to be remembered for being great? Not 'that one show that started great and then was pretty shit for several years'.

Here in Britian, shows like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder, while very popular, only ran for 2 and 4 series respectively. You can gurantee that if any of those two shows were to suddenly return with a new season, their ratings would soar. But they won't return any time soon, for one reason. The writers don't want to write a new series for the sake of writing a new series, they want their work to be just as funny as it's always been, not churning out some forced plot just for the sake of it.

It's certainly the safe option, milking a series for all it's worth (let's not forget how guilty the video game industry is that), but it saddens me to see so many good shows(say what you want about America, but they have some damn good TV shows) die, when they could have finished with a bang and always be remembered as a great series.

So, fellow escapist, what are your thoughts on the matter?

Because the writers get replaced, they can't think of good material... etc. Scrubs died because it stopped being funny (the same joke for nine years isn't good after a while). The Simpsons has a following dedicated enough to watch whatever the writers fart out this week, so they don't have to worry about going off of the air. And I think South Park is getting up there as well, but they have their own niche of shocking people, so they are secure as well. Cartoons like The Last Airbender only have four seasons, and they are awesome because they don't outstay their welcome.

People simply stop caring after a few season as well, so people attempt new things to get viewers back (like American Idol bringing in two new hosts).

Captcha: Had to refresh like eight times. I wonder why captcha feels that we can do umlauts and accents all willy nilly?

 

[chunkeymonke]

What do you mean Dear America?
you think i have any sway to what shows are on T.V?
make this dear T.V producers i dont know what people take shows off t.v but i have no sway over it

 

[imaloony]

Trust me, The Simpsons is fairly good compared to what else is on right now. I mean, come on, does Seth Mc-Fuckin'-Farlane really need THREE shows? Especially when two are crap and the third is a spin-off that looks so terrible that I wouldn't want to watch more than five seconds of it at a time.

The biggest hit for me has been Cartoonnetwork. They dump all their good shows (Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy, Samurai Jack, Megas XLR, Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Johnny Bravo, Ben 10, ect.) for such terrible shows (6Teen, Ben 10: Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, Total Drama [ANY OF THEM], Chowder, Flapjack ect), and they don't even seem to care what they're doing to what was such a great station. Worst of all, they killed Toonami, which was my childhood. Seriously, at my high school when I went into one of my classrooms and announced that Toonami had died, half the class crowded around my laptop to watch TOM's final message, swearing at how terrible it was. But they didn't kill it before they let it suffer for a while by introducing TOM 4 (The worst TOM), cutting the block in half, and filling it with nothing but Naruto and One Piece! God, can I have my childhood back please?

 

[elcamino41383]

-whines- Futurama needs to go away...again...and stay away! -runs off-

 

[Shraggler]

Really? Two and a Half Men is included in the list of best shows? Another story for another day I suppose.

The reason America ruins its best television shows? Because American Idol averages 8-10% of the population's viewership. People are dumb and boring. Statistics prove this.

Series to check out:

Dexter
Firefly
The first season of 24
Supernatural (really. It starts out cheesy as hell, but the characters get surprisingly fleshed out and enjoyable after a while. I'd never have believed it looking at their doll faces.)
Arrested Development. Seriously the Banana stand is enough to warrant this series a viewing.
Burn Notice (Bruce Campbell is in it!)

TV is actually maybe better than ever, you just have to sift through the shit.

I agree with you on most of those.

Dexter is an awesome show that feels like it wouldn't have any other place in television history besides now to be put on air. Character and story development are top-notch.

Supernatural is great. I agree, it starts out cheesy and you don't expect much (especially with the Biblical overtones and the light dash of the "morality" question here and there, I find the need to check the calendar) but the character development is strong, the story is well thought out and the overall arc is very interesting and has depth. The plot is well paced and progressive.

Arrested Development was ahead of its time. The "mockumentary" style hadn't caught on in America at all, yet now everyone is sucking at the teet and they have been the most successful style of sitcoms of the past decade.

Burn Notice is one of the best on TV right now. It's very well written, very well acted and the story arcs fit together like a puzzle. It's very thought provoking, but not overly so, and it gives your vigilante sense a feeling of "justice served".

The problem, for the most part, is that there is so much more shit to shift through. Other times, by the time you find a show and start getting hold of the plot, it's been canceled in favor of more reality shows.

I'm with Atmos for the most part. I hit the "Bullshit" button years ago and don't miss it. I don't, and can't, sit around and watch TV. I don't own a TV. If I want to watch a show, I find a way to stream it. About 90% though, it's a friend who recommends a show to me and lends me the DVDs. Television has too many dumbass commercials, too many dumbass shows, too little quality to content ratio. I mean shit, a 45-minute show lasts an hour because there are 15-minutes of commercials. Not willing to sit through that.

 

[stabnex]

We all blame Fox.

 

[oreopizza47]

Agreed, sadly. I haven't been able to watch anything on T.V. in years without mentally hearkening back to the old days... and I'm only 16. The only shows I still watch are NCIS, Royal Pains, White Collar, Warehouse 13... hell I pretty much just watch Sy-Fy and USA, with a few joke shows like Manswers and The Soup thrown in. It's getting recursive, in that I watch WWE, which has been a joke for years. I'm watching a terrible show, because it is a terrible show and knows it, and just rolls with it. God help me.

 

[Jake the Snake]

*Gives you the middle finger* Fuck. You. Scrubs is one of the greatest shows on television. How dare you compare it to Two and a Half Men.


(Granted this is after you pretend the "9th" season ever happened).

 

[vivalahelvig]

I'm a boy and i miss powerpuff girls.
I also miss: Ed, Edd, and Eddy; dexter's lab; old spongebob; and everything else cartoon network and nickolodian cancelled that was good!

 

[mireko]

Fringe is still airing and has been getting exponentially more awesome since season 2. Watch it, people.

 

[Caligulove]

As an American, I'm quite insulted that you include Two and a Half Men into a list of our best television.

Besides that, I would say that there's some sort of difference on the level of television stations or networks when involved in the production. Something that would not stop them from producing just as many episodes into each series.

Something like time and money, different markets for hiring people or even differences like filming on location or what-not. Especially something like, say, Top Gear where I can't stand that their are so few episodes in a series- until I step back and think about just how much time must go into doing a single episode of that show- let alone 6 or 7.

 

[tthor]

Because we are whores. Next question?

 

[Faladorian]

-snip-

You're right. It's part of why I spend most of my time on the Escapist, and not watching TV. There's nothing but crap crap crap all day

 

[tthor]

Fringe is still airing and has been getting exponentially more awesome since season 2. Watch it, people.

eh, i kinda quit watching Fringe the day they had the one guy killed by a giant flu virus. I'm sorry, but viruses are practically inanimate bits of floating DNA from what i understand, they aren't single celled organisms, and they don't squirm across the ground >.<
..somehow, i find it kinda sad that it was THAT that ruined my suspension of disbelief...

 

[Doinstuffman38]

I used to love Scrubs, but I just can't get behind the god-awful 9th season. The earlier seasons were great, and I even enjoyed most of the 8th season, but the newest one sucks.

However, Friends is my favorite show of all time. I've never seen a bad episode. There are some that are less good than the others, but they're not terrible.

As for The Simpsons, I gave up on them post-movie. I liked the movie, but the subsequent seasons are not good at all.