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33 TV Shows That People Once Loved, But Eventually Had To Break Up With
"<i>Lucifer</i> should have ended with Season 4. The season was ridiculously good; there was so much character growth and each episode advanced the storyline — it was awesome and ended on such a powerful note for Lucifer and Chloe. But then for the next two seasons, the writers did NOTHING with that."

33 TV Shows That People Once Loved, But Eventually Had To Break Up With

I think we’ve all experienced the pain of getting super invested in a TV show, only for the quality to massively decline over the seasons. There was so much potential, but something just…stopped working. Maybe your favorite character was killed off, maybe the plot twists started making no sense, or the writing became downright awful. The show you once loved became more like a chore you had to get through. SIGH.

MTV

Sometimes a show declines so much in quality that you might not even bother finishing it at all. This week, Reddit user u/shamanKAshamanTAKA asked, “What is a TV show you got really far into but eventually quit watching before its conclusion?” And boy, did people have thoughts to share! Here are some of the shows fans just couldn’t bring themselves to finish:

Spoilers ahead!!! ?

Note: Some of these shows are still ongoing.

1. Once Upon a Time

Lara Solanki / HBO Max

“I thought the ending of Season 1 was stupid. The twist was absurd. I tried Season 2, but I gave up after the first episode.”

—u/Zealousideal125

3. Grey’s Anatomy

Eric Mccandless / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

“I got 18 seasons into Grey’s Anatomy before I got irredeemably bored. That’s probably the biggest sunk cost ever.”

—u/DealerCamel

“One of the biggest things that irked me was how much trauma the doctors constantly went through. The first hospital shooting was pretty intense. But by the third or fourth brain tumor, explosion, fire, bombing, etc., it just became sloppy.”

—u/extrabees

“I can’t believe that show is still on the air. At one point they had killed off — or almost killed off — practically every character. Once a show does that, the characters dying just feels like a joke.”

—u/buttcheeksmcgee47

4. Arrow

Cate Cameron / CW Network/Courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection

“I got tired of the main character flip-flopping from season to season. I felt he was hypocritical when he killed people in the first season and then hunted down people doing the same thing he did in the next, only for him to go back to killing people in the following season.”

—u/ItinerantKnight

5. Money Heist

Tamara Arranz / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

“The first season blew me away, but every subsequent season felt more and more like a watered-down version of the original first season.”

—u/mileau_

6. Orange Is the New Black

Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

“Piper was so relatable initially. She’s based on a real person too, so I wonder how they feel about the direction her character took. The panty operation was weird because Piper came from a wealthy background. I don’t care how fun or satisfying it was, she was risking more prison time for money she didn’t need. Half of the characters became irrational.”

—u/BunsMunchHay

7. Pretty Little Liars

ABC Family/Courtesy Everett Collection

“In my opinion, the real problem with Pretty Little Liars was that none of the Liars were nearly interesting enough to warrant that level of stalking from A, Big A, Uber A, and everyone else who was working for the A-Team. Basically, the whole town was desperate to track the group’s every move, but they just weren’t really doing that much outside of worrying about who was tracking them.”

—u/Handsome-Jim-

“The ultimate issue was that the writers cheated. On shows like Pretty Little Liars, writers are supposed to be sophisticated and drop hints and clues and red herrings so that when the BIG reveal happens, you’re supposed to go, “OH MY GOD! HOW DID I MISS THAT, IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW!” But the viewer needs to at least have the opportunity to figure it out. The “big reveal” at the end had A be a brand new character who we had never heard of nor met before. That’s awful, lazy writing!”

—u/RegisterAfraid

8. The Walking Dead

AMC

“The show just never went anywhere. I wanted a conclusion, a solution, or something new that wasn’t killing and fighting other people. I wanted smart solutions, but they never arrived.”

—u/IAmAQuantumMechanic

9. Suits

USA Networks/Courtesy Everett Collection

“I liked the show to begin with, but it eventually just turned into a soap opera. For example, there was too much focus on the Mike and Rachel thing.”

—u/bipolarfinancialhelp

10. Shameless

Showtime Networks Inc. / Courtesy Everett Collection

“There’s only so much wanton self-destruction that I can stomach, and that show hit my limit well before it wrapped.”

—u/Daddict

“I stopped watching when Fiona left the show. Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, her character was the main reason why I watched the series.”

—u/rashi_aks08

11. Glee

20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

“I loved Glee so much. It started airing when I was a sophomore in high school, and I was absolutely obsessed with it. I watched it every week, listened to the soundtracks all the time, and even read and wrote fanfic about it. The main characters all graduated and went to college around the same time I did, and I grew out of the show. I went back a few years ago and tried to rewatch for nostalgia’s sake, but I couldn’t get more than a few episodes into that fourth season. Since then, I’ve read a few recaps of how those later seasons went, and it sounds like the writing quality was on par with the crappy fanfics I was reading back in the day. Rewatching, I still stand by the first half of the first season. It was a little cheesy, but that was part of the charm. After that though, it was a slow steady decline to Season 3 and then a sharp drop off.”

—u/PrettyPossum420

12. The 100

CW Network/Courtesy Everett Collection

“The biggest problem with the show was that they didn’t let enough time lapse before the characters went back to Earth. Just 100 years had passed, but society collapsed so much that everyone believed in a new god and had all these traditions for doing certain things. 1,000 years, sure. But 100 years post-space flight, with all the technology they had? Everyone just forgot everything and then started speaking their own made-up languages?!”

—u/Clid3r

13. Heroes

NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection

Heroes was such a shame. The show lost so much budget that they failed to include any of the parts that people were there to watch. I remember the big final showdown was done behind a door with some lightning effects under the door while someone just cried, and I was like, ‘WTF?'”

—u/The_Superginge

14. Dexter

Showtime Networks Inc./Courtesy Everett Collection

“It started off incredible, but then just tapered out and got worse every season.”

—u/razzledazzle626

“For me, the show died with his wife. She was his beacon of hope that he could become a normal person. After she died, that part of his character vanished, and it was just, ‘How do I not get caught?'”

—u/Long-Ad5483

15. Riverdale

Jack Rowand / The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

“I’ve given up on Riverdale at the moment. The plot in Season 6 was just too weird and bizarre to me. Many of the characters gained ‘powers’: reading minds, controlling minds, sensing ‘bad aura’ coming from someone, invincibility, time travel?! It just didn’t make any sense to me, and the explanation of how the characters apparently gained the powers wasn’t sufficient to me either. The previous seasons were a bit odd at times, but this just went too far. Seasons 1 and 2 were really good in my opinion, but the show just seemed to get weirder from Season 3 onwards. It’s a shame because the actors are really talented.”

—u/amethyst015

16. House of Cards

David Giesbrecht / Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

“I stopped watching well before the Kevin Spacey shit came out, but that was definitely the nail in the not-finishing-this coffin.”

—u/Playful_Fold4385

“The show was a lot more interesting when Frank and Claire were conniving their way to the presidency. Once they succeeded, it just turned into a half-baked international politicking thing. I also hated that they drove a wedge between Frank and Claire — their sick relationship was the show for me.”

—u/Hammerheadhunter

17. The Blacklist

Will Hart / NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection

The Blacklist was great until they ran out of ideas and just kept recycling the same plot over and over. The little guy from the DMV becoming a major player was the sign the end was near.”

—u/doowgad1

18. True Blood

HBO

“Season 1 was soooo good, but it made me wonder if it’s impossible for shows like True Blood to KEEP being good. They have to keep topping themselves, and the audience just doesn’t make the jump with the writers. Like, it has to be grounded in something, otherwise it just comes off like poorly-written fanfic.”

—u/buttcheeksmcgee47

19. This Is Us

Ron Batzdorff / NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection

“By the end of This Is Us, I actually couldn’t stand the Big Three. Every single one of them pissed me off. The only redeeming character, in the end, was Beth — everyone else sucked.”

—u/lookalive07

20. House M.D.

Fox

“I quit House M.D. at the end of Season 7. When House drove his car into Cuddy’s dining room, his character immediately became irredeemable to me. All I could think about was how he could see through the window that all the adults had left the room, but what about Cuddy’s little daughter? What if she had just been out of view? House was no longer a complex human being with faults who I both loved and hated — he was a narcissistic abuser who risked murder because he couldn’t stand the fact the woman he supposedly loved was moving on.”

—u/frabjous_goat

21. That ’70s Show

20th Century Fox Licensing/Merchandising / Everett Collection

“I hated Randy, and the show was just not the same without Eric and Kelso.”

—u/-eDgAR-

22. Castle

ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection

“The showrunners pushed it a season too long, pissed off one of the two leads and most of the fandom, then tried to write the lead out in the most horrific way possible before the show was taken behind the barn and put out of its misery. I got to the start of Season 8, and then I just bailed.”

—u/SDLRob

23. The Flash

The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

“Barry could only use the speed force to save his mom, not save his mom, and then save his mom about four times before I gave up on the show.”

—u/fluroshoes

24. Supernatural

CW Network/Courtesy Everett Collection

“It was a great show for a while, but eventually it just became Sam trying to leave the lifestyle and Dean trying to get him to come back, then Dean trying to leave the lifestyle and Sam trying to get him to come back, then Sam trying to leave again, blah, blah, blah. Also, it became pretty much just angels and demons with very few other supernatural beings and monsters.”

—u/steppenfloyd

25. How to Get Away With Murder

ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection

“The first couple of seasons were good, but as soon as they killed off that main character from Season 1, it just went downhill for me. There was just too much going on, and none of it felt relevant.”

—u/dinomelia

26. Outlander

Aimee Spinks / Starz! Movie Channel / Everett Collection

“I watched it with my girlfriend, and I was pretty much done with it after the third season. We ended up watching a whole other season before one of us spoke up and said we didn’t want to continue. Turns out we were both bored of it, but stuck with it because we thought the other person was enjoying it. Let that be a lesson to you, kids: Communicate!”

—u/capn_ed

27. Lucifer

John P. Fleenor / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Lucifer should have ended with Season 4. The season was ridiculously good; there was so much character growth and each episode advanced the storyline — it was awesome and ended on such a powerful note for Lucifer and Chloe. But then for the next two seasons, the writers did NOTHING with that. They reverted back as if Seasons 3 and 4 had never happened, and it turned into just a slapstick show. Lucifer deserved so much better than what he got.”

—u/andychamomile

28. Lost

ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection

“Once they introduced the 500th mystery without wrapping any of the previous ones up, I decided I was done with the show.”

—u/Vulcnar

29. The Vampire Diaries

Kharen Hill / CW Network/Courtesy Everett Collection

“After the original vampires left, it became very boring really quickly. Klaus was the main attraction of the show for me, he was really funny in a sick and twisted kind of way. I liked Kol too, but they didn’t really use his character much. Almost all of the other characters in TVD were annoying to me, and the romances got old fast.”

—u/ISIPropaganda

30. Bones

20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

“I stuck with the show until Bones and Booth became a couple, and Bones began compromising her entire ethos to be more like how Booth wanted her to be. He needed to be more like her, TBH.”

—u/Abusedink75

“I made it as the crossover with Sleepy Hollow. The mere idea of those two shows existing in a world with the same rules killed the appeal of both shows for me.”

—u/CoffeeIsMyPruneJuice

31. Weeds

Showtime Networks Inc./Courtesy Everett Collection

“The show went from being really fun to watch to feeling like a depressing chore I had to get through just to find out what these characters whom I used to like were doing. Very disappointing.”

—u/2fingers

32. Teen Wolf

Quantrell D. Colbert / MTV/Courtesy Everett Collection

“After Allison’s death, the show just became extremely weird, and it was hard to follow all of the different plots and extra characters. Void Stiles was the only good thing to come out of the later seasons.”

—u/Plenty-Implement4854

33. And finally: Game of Thrones

Helen Sloan/HBO

“I watched every season until Season 5, Episode 2, then realized I was only continuing the show to appease the people who wanted me to watch it, not because I actually enjoyed it.”

—u/EXPWARRIOR

Reminder that I, Kelly Martinez, do not necessarily endorse all of these opinions!

Note: Entries have been edited for length and/or clarity.