Giving up on watching TV series you started to dislike (spoiler, prison break)
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I often start to watch a series and I like it at first. Season 1 is fun and entertaining. Then season 2, 3, 4 and sometimes even more come and I start disliking the series more and more. But, now I'm in the middle of watching or even close to the end, so I don't give up. I'm bored and annoyed, but still feel bad about giving up, so I try to endure. I often start doing other things while watching, keep looking at the watch, etc. I torture myself.
Did anyone else have this problem and how did you solve it? How did you simply decide to stop watching the series you began to dislike without feeling bad about it?
I don't feel bad about it. If a show becomes bad, that's on the showrunners, not me. There have been quite a few TV shows I gave up on over the years.
ALIAS. The first two seasons are great. Everything after that is bad.
SONS OF ANARCHY. I held out for several seasons, but the show got to the point where there was not a single sympathetic character left. I wanted everyone either dead or in prison. I'm not enough of an emotional masochist to endure that, so I bailed.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Season 1 was okay, not great. Seasons 2 and 3 were a lot of fun. I think I made it two or three episodes into Season 4 before I bailed.
WESTWORLD. I still haven't watched the last two or three episodes and not sure I will. The show has gone off the rails.
HEROES. Season 1, despite some glaring flaws, was a lot of fun. Season 1 finale pretty much ended the story, and everything after that was a mess.
TRUE BLOOD. I confess season 1 is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Everything after is hilariously awful. I think I finally gave up somewhere in season 3. I could endure no more.
LOST. Great first season. Wandering incoherence after.
PRISON BREAK. Once they broke out of prison, the show's entire reason for existence ended.
Did anyone else have this problem and how did you solve it? How did you simply decide to stop watching the series you began to dislike without feeling bad about it?
Why would I feel bad about it? You can't hurt a TV show's feelings, and if watching a show becomes a waste of time, find something that isn't.
I've kind of paused "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice". Both seem to have WAY too much drama. In "Private Practice", two of the female doctors have been subjected to horrible violence and I think every possible male/female coupling among the main characters has taken place. Patients have the worst possible mix of barely-treatable symptoms and weird circumstances. I haven't looked at the latest season of "Grey's Anatomy" but it seemed every episode there was a plane crash or a car crash involving the main characters, or a shooter in the hospital... the type of thing that might happen once every 20 years anywhere else. With all the ugliness and uncertainty in the world right now, I don't need violence and disaster night after night on TV.
So now I watch "Heartland". I can handle the occasional poacher and cattle rustler.
Loved Lost but gave up about season 4. Same thing with The Walking Dead, Person of Interest and Designated Survivor. If the show isn't enjoyable I quit watching. I'm on the fence about watching the new season of The Handmaid's Tale.
How did you simply decide to stop watching the series you began to dislike without feeling bad about it?
When that happens, I still have the show on but I ignore it for the most part while I get household chores and/or cooking done. The show becomes background noise for the most part and I pick up tidbits here and there so I know more or less in which direction the show is going.
For me, the biggest culprit was The Walking Dead. I loved the early seasons, but they just started dragging each plot line out for far too long. I understand they have a budget, but if it's that big of a concern, they should have shortened their seasons. 16 episodes isn't a good thing when 10 of them are snoozers. Why not just have 10 episodes like say Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, shows on the same network?
Yep. As each season progressed, our heroes got dumber than the walkers, one IQ point at a time. And the fundamental nonsense of a post-apocalyptic world with no resources was finally overplayed for me.
I am not sure I will pick up any of the CW shows next season. With Arrow gone, all that's left is vaguely hero-scented soaps and teen angstydrama. Even the craziness of Legends is down to a B-team of actors who can't quite carry the stories.
It's not easy to give up on a show you have some time invested in. My wife did it with Prison Break. I don't know how many times one of them had to cut his own hand off and then sew it back on before she gave up on it, but she finally did.
Many people in our family touted Money Heist as a great show. I managed to hang in through two seasons but I finally just stopped watching
Spoiler
I concluded pretty quickly that they didn't give a rat's ass about anybody and the Robin Hood routine was just an act
and left it to my wife, who soldiered on through the end. I suspect she'll watch more if they make more.
I'm currently plugging through Season 3 of Killing Eve. The first two seasons were really fun and interesting and unusual. There's still some great performances, and I like the tone and the music cues, but the story is going nowhere--the writers are dragging out the cat and mouse thing to no good end.
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I torture myself. 
