It takes a lot for me to give up on a TV show, but there’s only so much constant crappiness I can take. The following shows started out well, but for whatever reason took a ride down a slide made of frozen diarrhea into a pool of rotten fish urine.

 

Heroes

When I Bailed: Before the end of Season 3

I think the vast majority of Earth’s population gave up on Heroes in the third season. The first season was a lot of fun, had some really interesting twists, and was a take on the superhero genre we hadn’t really seen before (in the days when TV and movies weren’t completely oversaturated with superheroes). Then, by the end of season 2, it was becoming more and more ridiculous and uninteresting (culminating with the now-infamous unresolved plotline of Peter leaving his girlfriend trapped in a horrifying alternate dimension). Instead of being a fun show about regular people discovering they have superpowers, it just became kind of full of itself.

 

The Simpsons

When I Bailed: Midway through Season 14

I’m amazed I lasted as long as I did with this show, but I guess a lot of it had to do with nostalgia and growing up with it, like a lot of people, especially those poor souls still insisting that the show is good when it so clearly hasn’t been for more than a decade and a half. Besides the show becoming less and less funny, it was getting dumber by the second (even for a show with a dimwit central character), and was relying on guest stars much more heavily than relying on good scripts.

 

Entourage

When I Bailed: Beginning of Season 7

The first two seasons or so of this show were pretty good. It was a fun look at the Hollywood life of a rising star, but mostly it was watchable because Ari Gold was such an excellent character. Then it got stale and became progressively more annoying and the main cast of guys started acting like they were in a douche commercial. Then all of a sudden Vince is strung out on drugs because they ran out of things for him to do, and Drama became the single most irritating character in television history. I can remember when this show really started to lose me, when Vince was making Smoke Jumpers and the director didn’t think he was a good enough actor and that made Vince very upset—meanwhile, he (and Adrian Grenier, by extension) really was an atrocious actor and it made no sense that he would get any high-profile roles.

 

Dexter

When I Bailed: Midway through Season 3

The first two seasons of this show were pretty excellent, but Dexter got more and more annoying (the droning monologues and constant references to his “dark passenger”), and Deb was always absolutely insufferable. I fondly remember watching an episode in season 3 and telling my wife, “I don’t care about anybody or anything that’s going on,” and she agreed, and we turned it off and never went back. I hear that the season with John Lithgow was good, but after that it really went to hell and had one of the worst finales ever.

 

House

When I Bailed: Midway through Season 4

House was an excellent character (a shameless Sherlock Holmes ripoff, but still great) and Hugh Laurie played him perfectly. I loved how cantankerous he was and how he’d put people down with sharp witticisms. And then that continued, and continued, and continued, and every episode was almost exactly the same. House’s cantankerous personality went from amusing to grating (do you really need to be that big of a jerk all the time?).

 

Deadliest Catch

When I Bailed: After Season 9

Speaking of repetitive shows, this was 9 seasons of guys yanking sea spiders onto a boat. Needless to say, that got pretty boring. Plus, it seems that a lot of the drama was manufactured. Because just filming guys sitting on a boat wouldn’t have been all that entertaining.

 

Ghost Hunters/Ghost Adventures

When I Bailed: Ghost Hunters: Season 4 (2008 Halloween Special); Ghost Adventures: somewhere during Season 9

Did someone say something about manufactured drama? I liked these shows mainly because I love Halloween. I was really interested in the history of the places they would investigate and the spooky aspects of them. So I was pretty into these shows for a while, and even went on a real-life dumb paranormal investigation (spoiler: we found nothing). I don’t even believe in ghosts or the afterlife, I just like the whole horror aspect of all of it. But then, these shows just got awful. For Ghost Hunters, the kicker for me was the 2008 Halloween Special, when one of the lead guys, Grant, clearly faked a ghost tugging on his jacket. It was so obvious and horrible, and coupled with the fact that I found everyone on that show to be kind of a douche, I checked out. Ghost Adventures I liked better, because the group was more entertaining, and the format was a lot more informative, and they seemed to be really into it. But as the seasons wore on it got hokier and hokier (consistently integrating dumb things such as psychics and possessions) and the guys, especially Zak, were overflowing with douchiness, so I lost interest.

 

Prison Break

When I Bailed: After Season 3

I love the first season of this show. It’s completely ridiculous, but always entertaining. If it had only existed for that one season, it would be pretty fondly remembered. Then in season 2, the prison break has already happened, so it’s just about the escapees being fugitives, and it kind of stunk. Season 3 went back to a chaotic prison, and it was better than season 2, but didn’t hold a candle to the first season. By the end it was heavily into government conspiracies that nobody cared about and I was out. And judging by the fourth season apparently being about these prison escapees now being the Mission Impossible A-Team, I made the right call.

 

24 (Season 6)

When I Bailed: About 3/4s of the way through

24 as a whole is a lot like the first season of Prison Break: incredibly stupid, but incredibly entertaining. Jack Bauer is a classic TV character and an even better name for a cat. But midway through season 4, the show got pretty tedious, and suffered from intensive repetitiveness (diagnosed by Dr. House). Halfway through season 6, I was pretty tired of hearing Jack shout, “WHERE’S THE DEVICE??!!” and “WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR??!!” and “WE ARE WASTING TIME!!” over and over and over again, so I skipped the rest of that season. But I did come back for the final two seasons, even though I remember virtually nothing about them. The latest season, Live Another Day, was pretty decent, even though it did drag like its predecessors.

 

Homeland

When I Bailed: After Season 2

This one’s a little different, because the show’s quality didn’t really decline, I just stopped caring. It’s not you, Homeland, it’s me. Well, some of it’s you, namely Brody’s intolerable daughter. Word on the street is that season 3 was a bit of a letdown, but season 4 picked it up. I’ll probably catch back up, someday.

 

The Walking Dead

When I Bailed: Last week

And here we are at the newest member of this Hall of Feces. Remember how exciting it was for us zombie fans to finally have a decent show about zombies? Remember how great the first season was, how many turns it had, and how many great characters we were introduced to? Remember when Daryl was a cool badass? Remember when they ended up at Hershel’s farm? Annnnnnnnnnnnd we’re done. Everything went downhill and stayed there. The most wildly successful show on cable, and AMC decided to spend $30 on its budget. I could go into a 4,000-word rant about how excruciatingly boring, lazy, and laughable this show has gotten, but I’ve already been doing that over at Snap Crackle Watch! There’s no redeeming this show. Every single character is unbearable. For the duration of this show’s existence, all they will do is walk around, whine, find a new “safe haven” which is not what it seems, have a confrontation with those people, repeat. I’ve shambled through it long enough, and I just can’t resurrect my interest anymore.

 

Honorable Mentions

My Name is Earl (just wasn’t feeling it anymore); Nip/Tuck (most ridiculous show ever produced); The X-Files (like most people did after Mulder left); The Office (US) (painfully unfunny after season 2)