Finale FinalityList about TV season finales, series finales, cancelations, remakes, revivals, adaptations, and everything else you need to know for tomorrow morning's discussions at the water cooler.
Updated September 24, 2021 108.4k votes 22.2k voters 946.9k views
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Vote up the season that ruined your favorite TV show.
Just as a bad apple can spoil the bunch, a bad season of a television show can ruin a great series. We love our TV shows like we love our friends – we bring them into our lives, share experiences with them, and excuse their minor infractions. So when our favorite show has an exceptionally bad season, it hurts. A TV series ruined by a bad season is a personal affront, and can be heart breaking.
What are some TV seasons that ruined good shows? Some shows start off strong but end in a hot mess that leaves fans crying on their knees, regretting the hours they spent reading fan theories on Lost forums. Other shows, like Parks and Recreation, have a learning curve, one that turns off viewers before the show can find its groove. Yet others flounder in the middle.
Many can agree that these shows would have been more palatable if they had left out the following seasons. Vote up the tv season that ruined the show you most care about. The one that really just hurt.
It’s a major blow to a show when one of its principle cast members leaves, but when two leave, that’s a critical hit. This is exactly what happened in the eighth season of That 70’s Show, when Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left to pursue roles on the silver screen. Fans reeled from the introduction of Randy, an obvious and unworthy stand-in for Eric’s character and Donna’s new love interest. Fans also questioned the relationship between Jackie and Fez, which felt forced, and not true to their characters.
Although Roseanne Barr is often the butt of many jokes, her sitcom Roseanne was a ratings hit. The show remained popular until the very last season, when the titular character and her working-class family won the lottery. What followed was a season-long parade of Roseanne attending fancy soirées and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. However, in the season finale, viewers learn that all of the events of the season never happened. Roseanne never won the lottery. She made it all up to cope with her husband’s death. The shift in tone, the introduction of wacky gimmicks, and the retcon in the finale contribute to making this the weakest of the series.
For many fans, Season 7 of True Blood was horrific, and not in the way they were hoping. True Blood’s final season unceremoniously killed off several of its major characters, ones who deserved a better and more meaningful end. The season also overused new characters and unimportant side characters, like Tara's mother Lettie Mae, while giving some of the more interesting supporting characters, like Pam, little to do. The moronic finale was the final nail in the show's coffin.
According to Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, the ninth season of the show was meant to be a spinoff, but the network wanted to use Scrubs’s brand recognition to earn more viewers than would a spinoff. Lawrence credits his inability to market the show as a spinoff as one of the reasons this season wasn’t as successful as previous ones, but there were some other notable issues. The new main character was bland, and the show began recycling plot lines from previous seasons.
Season 2 of Heroes is widely regarded as a filler season with little to no character or plot development. The season rehashes storylines from the first season – Claire has to hide her powers, Peter needs to relearn his powers, and that’s about it. The 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike occurred half way through the production of the second season, which resulted in only 11 of 24 ordered episodes being produced. The shortened season is cited as one of the many problems with this particular season, as the writers unable to take the season’s arc to its intended climax.