The show centered around a misfit bunch of singles who all lived in New York City and hung out together in their apartments and at their favorite café. The audience was hooked on the relationship (or non-relationship) of Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), as well as the goofy antics of Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) and Joey (Matt Leblanc), among other things. Even when an actor playing a major character on the show left, some shows didn’t want to give up the viewership those shows created. Once in a while, the TV show continues to thrive, but more often than not, the writing starts to suffer and producers are left without any fresh ideas.
Sometimes, even if a show is still popular, they jump the shark. That saying comes from the Happy Days episode when The Fonz literally jumps a shark while waterskiing, and the rest of the show loses the logical thread. Although that show isn’t on this list, plenty of other series have had the same problem.
Survivor: 35 Seasons
Now, Season 2 of Squid Game hasn’t been released yet, so I could very well end up loving it, and how the story continues, but for right now, I maintain Squid Game should’ve been a one-season limited series. It was so well thought out and plotted, with some truly jaw-dropping twists, that I just don’t know how you top it. It felt like a moment in TV history we’d all remember fondly, but I don’t need to return to it if that makes sense.
As much as we hate to see an anti-hero get what they deserve, a fall from grace is often what does them in. We’ve seen this with Ozark and Breaking Bad; they didn’t have pretty endings, but they made sense. Dexter did a disservice to its fans when Dexter got off scott-free after faking his own death. As much as we loved following the psychotic story arc, it didn’t seem authentic, and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. We don’t think we’re alone when we say that The Walking Dead should have ended with Glenn’s death.
Although six seasons is on the shorter side of this list, Lost ran out of magical steam pretty quickly. It’s probably still one of the most confusing series finales of all time. These three seasons of “Prison Break” are great, finding fun and organic directions to play with its premise. It’s the fourth season — as the series shifts to globe-trotting espionage action — when the show starts to go off the rails.
Given that the pool of watchable series is famously bottomless, you can go ahead and pick out the best episodes per series and still have enough to binge. I want one final season where I know it’s the last hurrah so I can enjoy saying goodbye to everything and the magic Shonda Rhimes created. When rewatching The Simpsons now, it’s best to stick to those first eleven seasons.
Digitec Deal of the day
Consisting of just seven episodes, it tells a coherent, well-rounded story. The protagonist conquers her demons and achieves her goal of beating the Russian world chess champion. Following it up with another season would be excessive and totally unnecessary, even though people would undoubtedly tune in. Protagonist Michael Scofield’s original mission – to free his wrongfully convicted brother from prison before his execution – was relegated to subplot status long before that. The authors dug deep into their bag of tricks to keep the story going.
House of CardsSeries finale: Season 6 (aired Nov. 2, Should have been: Season 5
There’s still a lot of money to be made from the franchise though, so there will be inevitable sequels and spin-offs long after Yellowstone itself is done. Although Charmed is a cult classic and there are even talks of a reboot, most fans of the show are in agreement that the show took a more campy direction after Prue’s death in the season 3 finale. Things got even worse during the show’s final season, when Kaley Cuoco was added into the mix. Glee really should’ve ended when most of the main cast top 10 movies graduated high school.
And that’s exactly what I’d advise any frustrated TV buffs reading this to do. If you notice that the plot’s starting to drag on, just stop watching. As I said above, Season 1 and Season 2 of Euphoria were appointment TV for me. I loved watching live and talking about everything that happened with friends, and the rest of the internet. So much has happened for that cast between Season 2 and when filming is scheduled to begin for Season 3 in 2025.
The viewers loved Scully and Mulder’s dynamic and were thoroughly engaged in the cases these two agents had to resolve. The only problem was that David Duchovny had to leave the show, and it was not the same without agent Mulder. At least until someone decides that even a miniseries could be ripe for milking for the right price. Some TV shows build on a promising first season to achieve true greatness in their second and third and fourth seasons.
In other words, the fourth season was a convoluted mess and the fifth season couldn’t recover. Arrested Development should’ve ended with its third season, but now has a tarnished legacy. Sadly, the revived Arrested Development lacked the spark of the original run. Fans were flabbergasted, unable to understand how the great cast lost the magic that made the show so exemplary in the first place.
While there are some amazing TV shows that ended much too soon, there are others that overstayed their welcome on our screens. What’s more, there are even some series that would have probably been better off ending after Season 1. The past few years have shown us that an expertly crafted limited series can dominate the TV conversation just as much as an ongoing one.