In an age of a thousand TV channels, it’s become harder than ever to really break out and enjoy that fleeting sensation known as “success” in television—-the kind of thing that can get Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner and The Sopranos’s David Chase enough money to never have to work for five lifetimes—-and that can guarantee your favorite show can be on for many, many years to come. Still, for all the talk about TV shows that were “gone too soon” (I’ll miss you Rubicon, Brotherhood, Luck, and the recently deceased Bent), what about shows that were “gone too slow?” TV shows that started out promising and either 1. Were so successful they stayed on too long, or 2. Were so successful, they started coasting big time because they could. [We’re already seeing “hits” like Person of Interest and Grimm begin to get very, very stale in their FIRST seasons.]
In fact, I would say that there are far more shows that were ruined by success than cancelled because they had a lack of it. [There may be at least one show a year I love that cancelled but that’s better than the ten shows I don’t love that get renewed.] And it made me wonder what shows currently on the air have been undone by too much success.
One I Should Mention: Family Guy. I have never liked this show, but those that do swear it is so much worse now that it’s a hit versus how it was in the early days. Of course, I remember the early days when it was just a bad Simpsons-ripoff and don’t see how it’s any worse now, so I suspect that this may have more to do with it being more popular than actually worse in quality.
One I Won’t Mention: The Simpsons. And of course you can’t talk about a Simpsons knockoff without mentioning the mothership. Every Simpsons fan in the universe bitches that the show has severely lost its quality, and the show (which is now in its 23rd season) hasn’t truly been good since the 4th or 6th season. So…that means a show that has been on for 23 years hasn’t been good for 17 of them but people are still watching it just to talk about how bad it sucks? Yeah, not buying it. Even after being around for nearly a quarter century, The Simpsons has more laughs than almost any show on TV. [Although South Park has seen much better days from its brilliant peak and probably should think about wrapping it up sometime next year.]
One I Will Mention: Dexter. A show about a “good” serial killer shouldn’t be on the air for eight seasons where the formula essentially remains the same with few changes (there’s a main bad guy every season, Dexter will kill him in the last episode of the season, and dispatch a few lesser villains in the first half of the season as all of his co-workers remain clueless and fail to develop into interesting characters). It should remain lean, mean, and be gone before we’ve had the chance to accuse a show with a remorseless killer at its center of getting stale. [Ideally, you would have had the first season, combined the second and third seasons into one, had the fourth season, and one final season after it, thus forgetting the bad season 5 and very bad season 6.]
5. Modern Family. The perfect example of a show that had success very early on and is now coasting on it (big time) in only its third season. Not a “bad” show, so much as one getting progressively lazier and content to repeat the same jokes ad nausea because they’ve grown smug in the knowledge that their monster ratings will let them stay on the air for quite a while.
4. The Office. The little engine that grew big and the polar opposite of Modern Family in that it started out under watched and barely appreciated, struggled to get a second season, and eventually clawed its way up to be the highest rated show on the last place network (oh NBC, how far the days of Friends/Frasier/Seinfeld seem). Unfortunately, that success has blinded many to the fact that The Office stopped being truly good years ago and is now actually bad this one. I wasn’t one of those people who thought losing Steve Carell would kill the show (I never thought he was the prime reason to watch and still don’t) but it’s now clear the show has no clear direction post-Carell and has really devolved into a fucking mess. Andy as the new manager? Spader as the new CEO only to be replaced at the end of the year? Some British woman they’ve forced down our throats as the new manager? It pains me to say this, but when Carell left, the show should have too.
3. CSI. The first season of CSI, I watched every episode. Today, I don’t think I’ve watched five episodes in five years (although I did like the addition of Ted Danson recently). This is THE definition of a show ruined by success as CBS doubled down hard on CSI (with the inferior spin-offs CSI Miami and CSI New York) and has saturated the network with crime-solver procedural shows. All of it has hurt CSI, and now that the show has been on over a decade, I can’t say I’ll watch another full season anytime soon…or ever.
2. The Walking Dead. This is not only a show ruined by success but a show that ruined an entire network. Before The Walking Dead had such monstrous ratings: AMC produced four time Best Drama series Mad Men, my personal favorite show on television Breaking Bad, the awesome and under appreciated Rubicon (which only seems timelier every day as we inch towards war with Iran under false pretenses), and developed a general rep as being the finest TV channel not named “HBO.”
AFTER The Walking Dead’s monstrous ratings: AMC cancels Rubicon, they mishandle contract negotiations with Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner that keeps Mad Men off the air for 18 months, they nearly let Breaking Bad go to another network and then decide to split the final season into two “mini” seasons which nobody wants, they green light FOUR reality shows nobody will watch (AMC prided themselves on being the anti-reality show basic cable network), they produce the misfire that is Hell on Wheels and green light it for a second season, and they make the awful The Killing plus inexplicably give it the second season they didn’t for the far-better Rubicon. This drastic change in quality has come because The Walking Dead gave them a taste of big ratings for the first time ever and they liked it like a drug…but just like a drug, The Walking Dead is trash not worthy of what they used to be.
1. Desperate Housewives. When Desperate Housewives first came onto the scene, it was a pop cultural phenomenon and (along with Lost) helped single handedly change the fortunes of then-last place ABC. Success like that meant the show stayed on for another seven seasons, and now it’s going out with the excitement of a wet fart as no one in America really gives a shit how the show ends. Not to mention the fact that the show’s wild success led to the accidental creation of The Real Housewives of [insert city here], a reality franchise that I like to call “the Ebola virus of television.”
As the target demo for both who observed all of this as a participant whilst it was occurring, I’m fairly certain that the Real Housewives Series were Andy Cohen’s by-product of mass hysteria over MTV’s The OC – which came on in 2003, a year before anyone was Desperate about why that lady killed herself (or whatever the plot of DH kind of is). The Moms of MTV’s tweens and teens who watched the OC show were a ready made audience for the Real Housewives of the OC, and in fact most of the audience even knew what and where “The OC” was because of the MTV show (especially in a place far away like Bama). Desperate Housewives may have been a part of it too, but since you hate it so much I just wanted to make sure you hate on EVERYbody appropriately. Lauren Conrad is the evil you seek. I promise.
I agree with everything you typed. Good TV doesn’t seem to last past season 1. Why? With all the reality CRAP (Why don’t people get their own life and not watch some bullshit) good TV is really, really hard to find.