How do you say goodbye to one of your favorites? After years of devoting hours of your time, when do you know its time to just hang it up, let it go, and move on to something else? Recently in a TV season in turmoil the question has come up time and time again, how do you know when its time to stop watching a particular TV show, and move on to something else, something new?
Over the years of my career as a critic I’ve watched a lot of TV shows, picked a few up in the middle and worked backwards to get caught up, or just flat out started from the beginning and joined the most current season in progress.
There are lots of reasons to stop watching a show. Waning attention span, boring, redundant storylines, uninteresting characters, Jump-the-Shark moments, bad ratings with the forgone conclusion of cancellation, but the biggest factor just seems to be time.
For the last five years I’ve watched The Dead Zone on USA. The series was interesting in the first few seasons that branched off from the original movie and book, but as it kept going, and turning into its own, the storylines just seemed to dry up until, this past season, I just lost all interest in finishing it up. Sure I have the final four episodes sitting on my DVR ready for me to watch, but I haven’t, and I don’t know if I ever will. Instead I moved on to USA’s new original Burn Notice which provided a much more enjoyable experience, and even though it was on a different night and time, I still just let the episodes of Dead Zone sit on the DVR while I viewed Psych and the aforementioned Notice.
I had a similar problem with FX’s Damages this fall. The show is spectacular, don’t get me wrong. There are so many twists and turns to the over-arching story that it kept you glued to the set, for the most part. About half way through the season though I nearly canceled my season pass to record simply because the show wasn’t delivering anything to me. I’m glad I thought better of it and continued to let the season play out (in a very rewarding fashion) but as shows try harder and harder to keep you entertained for 10, 13, 18, or 22 episodes a season, there’s got to be some filler that almost turns you off.
Some shows are immune from this however, two prime examples are FOX’s 24 and ABC’s Lost. Heavily serialized shows sometimes, more often than not, become immune because viewers will always make time for fear of being left behind in a much larger story. Season six of 24 was a huge disappointment, but there were some shinning parts throughout the year that you were rewarded with for having to watch meandering stories about unlikable CTU agents and the overall angst of a freed Jack Bauer. Lost was nearly destroyed by ABC last year by splitting the season in two (problems that also plagued CBS’ Jericho and NBC’s Heroes). Serialized shows risk losing viewers because of network interference and the need to get the series on the air, but also prolong their shelf life past its intended date.
Several shows are tipping on the edge of me just giving up. The biggest of which is ER, the show is old, really old, and it routinely brings in one-third of the audience it once did during its early years, yet NBC continues to chug along, and the writers, strike or not, continue to deliver stories that just aren’t that interesting anymore. Early seasons focused more on the patients, the surgeries, the trauma, later seasons are all about the characters with not much focus left for the hospital, the part that made the show so engrossing in the first place. Still, I watch because I long for the day when the show impresses me once again, hoping that this is the final season and the producers aren’t going to pull any punches, they’re going to go balls to the walls and deliver the best one yet, but after nearly half the season has run already, and with the prospects of it continuing in the hands of money grubbing producers and writers, ER is just wasting away slowly with tired retreads and a collection of uninteresting characters.
Since the beginning of the season I’ve watched K-Ville on FOX, for what ever reason I continued to watch past the pilot when I knew the ratings weren’t spectacular and it stood a very good chance of being canceled. With the writer’s strike in full swing the show has been allowed to continue even with the dismal ratings that doomed shows like Viva Laughlin and Nashville. Still, with networks scrambling for scripted material, K-Ville has lasted a good 2-3 weeks longer than it would have during a normal TV season. Last night my cable went out in the middle of Chuck, I was upset, I voiced my opinion to my cable company, but I was upset because I couldn’t watch Chuck, not because the upcoming K-Ville (or CSI: Miami another show on the tipping edge for me) would be missed. Is that the first sign of your ambivalent attitude towards a show? I’ve been in the industry long enough to know it doesn’t stand a chance of being renewed, no matter what the subject matter, so maybe it’s the same thing that happened last Spring with Drive (also on FOX). It was a great show, but I knew it was going to be canceled so I gave up after the third aired episode. Sometimes, no matter how good a show is, you just don’t watch to not have to deal with the disappointment of it being gone.
Friends have had similar troubles with shows like Studio 60 and the never-ending, week-to-week doubt that NBC will not renew the aforementioned Chuck. All I can tell them is what I hear every day about ratings, industry whispers, and rumors that might save or doom their favorite show.
But, for whatever the reason why you stop watching a show is usually a hard decision in your mind. With shows like ER, you’ve been watching for 12 years, for me that’s since I was 12 years old, how do you cut out such a big part of your life, something you’ve set your clock by, been engrossed in, spent hundreds of hours snacking in front of? It’s a hard decision to make, and more often than not it’s impossible to just hit delete on the DVR without just watching maybe a few minutes of it to see if it’s still worth giving up. You’ll end up watching the whole thing and wondering again, next week, if its time to finally call it quits.
What about you? What makes you stop watching a show? Tell us and you could win a cool prize pack.
