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

[tthor]

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

futurama use to be good, until it started making pop culture references... DAMNIT, the show takes place in the year 3000, i watch this to get AWAY from the popculture references!!!

 

[Logic 0]

I always believed the original writers quit after a few seasons and the networks just keep milking the shows.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis stayed great all through their 10th and 5th seasons respectively before they got cancelled.

 

[elcamino41383]

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

futurama use to be good, until it started making pop culture references... DAMNIT, the show takes place in the year 3000, i watch this to get AWAY from the popculture references!!!

I've only really ever found it funny when Fry ate the really old/bad egg salad sandwich and said "It's like there is a party in my mouth and everybody is throwing up." Then the episode with the Amazonian planet. Those are the only things in that show I've truly ever enjoyed. I do have to thank you for being one of few (it seems) from this site to at least partly agree with me!

 

[M4A1Sopmod]

A debilitating disease affects all Americans. Its very sad and we don't like to talk about it. It is called "The Stupid" and is, unfortunately, highly contagious. Anyone who sets foot on american soil will eventually catch this tragic and potentially deadly disease.

 

[Zinaxos]

America is to television as LucasArts is to the Star Wars franchise. Sadly.

 

[Drake_Dercon]

1st: The proven method. One of the most base human logic forms means that once you've got something right, you shouldn't change it. Once you do try to change it, you're usually late enough in the game that you're doing some major shark-jumping.

2nd: Boredom. Writers will eventually become disinterested with the show, often causing plot stagnation, or frustrated that they can't take it anywhere (resulting in giving up and doing the same). Sometimes, writers want the show to be over enough that they actually try to make it worse. This fails with more frequency than one might expect.

Essentially the only remedy is to keep it fresh and moving. If you stop or slow down, it will just get worse until it peters out.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

To quote "Episodes" on this (which really gets the topic pretty well)

"How long did your show run in the UK?"
"4 Years"
"That is..."
"24 Episodes"
"Well, thats one seasons for us"
(damn it that this show gets so low ratings, it might get into line with firefly)

Its not about quality, its about hyping people by ads, then giving them their methadone every week for as long as possible.

But it really is a pure american thing. There are Shows here in Germany that did the same mistake (they even went from : every monday night ; to 5 times a week! damn that cant work people!)

Well i cant say that i am happy when a grreat show is over, and sometimes i just wish that it continues with even half the quality. But becoming a classic piece and then making room for new definatly isnt the worse way to go. (usually a show with more than 30 episodes cant be good at all, or you at least can see that it wasnt intended to last that long= actual story is spread about season after season as a spoon full of honey over jupiter)

 

[Cat Cloud]

This is actually the main reason I don't watch TV anymore. They just don't know when to stop, and obsessed fans can't tell the difference when a show starts to suck. I really wish American TV shows were more self sustained, but as it stands now I'd rather spend my time reading or playing video games, and it's nice to know that in the long run I won't be missing much.

edit: I really do miss some older cartoons (Courage the Cowerdly Dog, etc), and I feel like quality is beeing dropped for quantity, mindless drama, etc. However, keep in mind that although Americans tend to watch American tv, I, although I am an American, cannot keep the idiots away from watching tv and dumbing it down. They are attracted to it like moths to a lamp. I'm sure many of them would marry their tv if they could, and it makes more sense anyways since they probably spend more time with it than with anyone they remotely care about. The simple solution to all of this is to stop caring and this solution has served me well.

 

[Shadowkire]

Lot of hate for America in these posts...

But the main reason our television shows go in the crapper after a handful of seasons:

They start the show without an idea of where they are going to end it. An analogy would be a guy who breaks into a full sprint and goes until his lungs are burning, towards the end he didn't run nearly as fast as at the beginning. Good shows tend to have an idea of how things will end, or else they pace themselves so they don't get caught in a cycle where each season premier/finale has to top the last in awesomeness/shock value, thus avoiding situations where you make your show a joke.

 

[AgDr_ODST]

in america they run until viewing figure drops or the figurehead talent walks away. but even scrubs was bled for a while when the latter happened.

Scrubs is one of the worst offenders. It was pretty bad past season 6, then when they finshed, they decided to carry on a for another season. One terrible season, and then when that finished they decided to go for one more season, this time, cutting 90% of the original cast and introducing new characters that nobody liked.

Why Scrubs! WHYYYY!

oooooh man why must everyone remind me of the sad crap that was the finally few seasons of scrubs DX....but thier is a bright spot....I believe at some point in season 8 it was all about the original cast when they all went to Hawaii(or some beachy place) cause the Janitor was getting married

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

Well,you have explained it in your own statement.America has nothing to do with it.TV just likes to milk its series until they are dry.No series fan build up

 

[kuyo]

do you really expect a show to stay original after a decade?

 

[Cat Cloud]

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?

The problem is that here in America we're retarded unaware that too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

American TV shows are designed to be never-ending, and the way they do that is by never setting a plot

[sub]If the above picture doesn't make any sense to you, you'd make a great American TV writer.[/sub]

Plot's are standard in books and movies because books and movies are finite entities. having the END of a story looming helps give the action purpose. That's what makes certain shows awesome (Firefly, Buffy, a metric fuck-ton of animes I could mention, Twin Peaks, hopefully The United States of Terra, probably some foreign shows I haven't seen, and Miniseries's like The Room[sub]If you haven't seen The Room, you should get on that[/sub])

They all conform to the story arc and they all have endings.
More general American TV shows tend to go for the infinite story approach where they have a bunch of one or two season story arcs where all status quo is restored at the end but then they're on to something bigger and better and more intense. (see Burn Notice or Dexter or 24 or any show really they all get interchangeable after about 3 seasons. Dragon Ball Z is the worst offender)

Then there are comedies (2.5 men, Simpsons etc.) sit-coms, Situational Comedies, they have characters and they have situations. and that's the full extent of the plot
(Charlie is an alcoholic womanizing jingle writer, Alan is a broke divorced father, what mischief can they get up to this episode.) the good ones start out funny as all hell but then the running gags get played out and the stereotypes get tired. (South Park and The Simpsons are the only two that are consistently funny)

This got long-winded didn't it?
how's about a TL: DR

American TV shows don't follow a traditional plot line (intro, rising action, climax, falling action)
they tend to go for a more milk-able story structure (intense thing happens, status quo restored, intestine thing happens, status quo restored, repeat ad nauseum) and that gets boring fast.
the reason comedies all eventually suck is that the jokes get played out.

This is spot on. I haven't watch tv in so long I almost for got about this. They just drag on and on and on, in the end everything stagnates. Having a character who is pregnant/engages/in colleege/university gets old after they've been like that for around five years. I hope one day our tv might get over it's self and evolve into telling actuall stories, but until then I remain disinterested.

 

[B1i nd Luck]

i am american and i still can't figure out the to this question.

 

[Ninonybox_v1legacy]

I'll have you know that we have great TV, We have......um..... there's...no thats not one......we got anime......wait that's Japanese......we have....um.......!dammit!

in all seriousness your right.....we have nothing.

 

[Braonan]

Watch Films!!!!!

 

[Sonic Doctor]

*snip*

The problem I see with American television is that the people behind it care too much for ratings and don't pay attention to see if people actually like the shows.

Many times these days, ratings really don't say anything, because many people tend not to have time to watch a show when it airs, and usually see it when somebody puts it online.

Shows could have a giant fan-base being very popular, but if for some reason a show doesn't have these unreliable puffs of smoke called ratings, the show will get dropped.

The worst offender of this is Fox. And their problem doesn't just stem from canceling. Just about everybody around knows the Firefly fiasco, though people might not know the whole story.

Firefly had many fans, a very large following, Fox canned the show. Now one fault on why the show had lost some ratings is because some people got confused with the show. That was Fox's fault because they aired episodes out of order: You'd be watching an episode where they would be talking about something that happened, but the viewer would get confused because didn't happen yet because Fox didn't air the proper episodes that were suppose to come before the one they decided to air first.

Moving on to the worst part of their offense other than canceling the show. The Sci-Fi Channel saw how Firefly had a fan-base and it would be successful if given a chance. Joss Whedon was okay with the Sci-Fi Channel taking over producing of the show, of course it was Whedon's show so he should have say where it goes. But Fox in a dick move, held onto the show and wouldn't release the rights to Sci-Fi. There stance was that they canceled it and it was going to stay canceled because they don't want anybody else being successful with it.

Now I give an example of a show that deserved to be canceled, but could have survived if the people that produced it would have just paid attention to franchise fans and made it like it should have been.

Stargate Universe, it had potential. The problem was that they didn't focus the stories like Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis did, which is on classic sci-fi plots. Instead of focusing on the Stargate and the ship that the people were stuck on and any kind of true stargate-like story, they focus 90% of the show on relationships of the crew. They had love triangles, an affair, a baby from the affair, no loves that end up getting killed, and lesbians. They had turned an awesome sci-fi franchise into a space soap opera that had little to do with the franchise that it was taking the name of. It took them a season and a half to develop any kind of plot that dealt with the ship and and aliens. Aliens did appear in the first season, but they were like an afterthought.

I'm actually glad they canceled the show. But I'm dumbfounded by the stupidity of the Sci-Fi Channel(SyFy is idiotic) and the producers of the show. They blamed the cancellation of the show on bad ratings because they aired the show on a bad night(Tuesdays). Oh no, it couldn't possibly have had bad ratings because they pissed off pretty much 100% of the fan base with the crap writing and to top it off they canceled Stargate Atlantis to promote the piece of crap that was Universe.

A smart person knows that the day a show airs on, has an insignificant effect on ratings. Especially these days because more people than every have recorders and people catch their favorite shows on their own time online.

I would rather a show get milked for all its worth instead of being canceled before it has a chance. Just as long as they milk it right.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Personally, Simpsons isn't completely terrible lately. It's just REALLY hit-and-miss. Some episodes are quite good while others warrant the writing staff to be sectioned or something.

Also, I've seen bits of Scrubs... I just can't get into it. It comes off as such a stupid show. Then again, House spoiled me with it being the best medical show ever (thus far). So anything even slightly related will pale in comparison to me.

As for 2.5 Men, yeah... It's going through Malcolm In the Middle Syndrome. Both started out superb and were some of the best shows produced by their respective networks (I actually think it's Fox for both). That being said, once the kids started getting older (and I mean they looked older than the parts they were playing) the show just didn't feel right at all. Not to mention as the characters got older, their personality problems got more exaggerated because the writers were running out of new ideas. So let's rehash old ones! Malcolm still went out well, but it could have been better had it ended sooner. Preferably before Malcolm started looking way too old to be in high school. Maybe he hangs out with Harry Potter or something.

But 2.5 Men is the exact same as that. Kid's getting too old to play his part and the show looks awkward because of it. Plus little kids are funnier than teenagers. People genuinely hate teenagers (from what I noticed).

 

[Viptorian]

I would submit that a number of our best shows are not beaten to death. Rome, The Tudors, The Shield, to name a few, ended at times the creators felt were correct for the show. The Shield is the best show I've ever seen and it ended at the PERFECT time. Now, mainstream network shows, yes, they are beaten to death. Even my beloved Law & Order has died/gone stale.