TV seasons that shouldn't have existed

I just flipped on a rerun of That 70s Show only to find it was from the final season. I broke my whiskey glass in my hand, then stabbed my thigh to remember happiness. The final season of That 70s Show might be unmatched, but what other shows had a clear demarcation where they overstayed their welcomes?

Scrubs' last season, with a mostly new cast, was almost as bad and perhaps even less necessary considering how well Season 8 wrapped things up. The Season 8 finale was called "My Finale." Then they made a ninth.

The Office would have been better off ending with Michael Scott's departure, though even that season was pretty weak.

The Simpsons has gone on at least a decade too long, but I'm not sure where I would have cut it off and it's kind of nice that it's still around, even though I almost never watch it these days.

Three's Company never was good but should have been put down gently when Suzanne Somers left. Priscilla Barnes is dream-girl status, though, so I guess I really want to burn the Cindy Snow episodes.

Almost every show that starts with its main characters in high school failed in making the jump to college.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (an exception to that rule) and Seinfeld are examples of shows that ran perfect series finales two seasons before they finished up, but there was a lot of worthwhile viewing in those final four seasons. I think we're better off with them than without.

Spin City adjusted well to losing its lead and half its cast. I know others will disagree, but I liked Charlie Sheen on the show. He wasn't Michael J. Fox, but he wasn't shaky, either.

 

According. to. Jim. All of it.

 

Pun intended or no pun intended?

 

Heroes, Season 3.
Season 1 was awesome. Great story, nice cliffhangers every week ... and then they shit the bed with the last 20 minutes of the season finale.
OK. Bad as that was, maybe they could salvage it with Season 2. Get another cool villain and ... wait, what? Sylar is still alive? And now he's trying to reform instead of prying apart people's skulls with telekinesis? And we have another "end of the world" vision of the future? Oh boy.
After that, it probably should've been put down. Instead, we got superpowered carnies. And another "end of the world" vision of the future. Amazingly, it was still a tick better than Season 2. Doesn't mean it should've existed.

 

Season 3 of Heroes was soooo painful. I watched the whole thing for some reason.

The final season of That 70s show was bad. Actually, the show seemed to go downhill when Donna became a blonde.

30 Rock is laboring toward the end and How I Met Your Mother should have ended a season or so ago. Now they're just dragging things out, and I find myself almost unwilling to watch. If it were an hourlong show, I would definitely think about taking it off the DVR.

Oh and the Office should have ended with Michael Scott's departure.

 

So you would cut out Season 3 but leave Season 4? I never watched Heroes. Would that fuck up the continuity?

 

The final two seasons were so bad that I doubt it would matter.

 

Got my seasons confused. Thought it only lasted three. Season 4 never should've happened. It's late. May God have mercy on my soul.

 

Every "Skins" series beyond the first two. Even the second one was bad with Tony walking around in a funk instead of his usual manipulative bastard self, but with the original cast gone and the show focusing on Effy after that it was downright terrible.
"West Wing" season 5. Started with the Glenallen Walken presidency and ended with Donna goes to Palastine. The whole thing was somber and lacked the punch of the earlier seasons. Things picked back up with the campaign seasons after that.
"Quantum Leap" season 5. They go from Sam jumping into ordinary people to jumping into Lee Harvey Oswald, Marlyn Monroe's body guard and Dr. Ruth.
And totally agree that the gold standard for a TV season that should not have existed is "Scrubs" season 9. They wanted to get rid of the original cast but everyone kept coming back for guest spots. The new cast was annoying and purely unlikeable. Plus if they had just stopped at season 8 they would have had one of the best series finales ever.

 

When they started announcing ER was going off the air, my honest reaction was "that show is still on?" When you have shows like ER or Law and Order you can pretty easily interchange cast because stars leaving makes the show more believable because it would actually happen in real life that people come and go. I just think at some point ER and even Law and Order were just going on for the sake of it and at some point you're not really telling a new story, it is just the same drama different day. ER probably needed to end at least three years before it did and the same with Law and Order. Someone is going to say ER was just a night time soap, but really it still needed to end sooner than it did because the story was just tired.

 

The final 15 episodes of Season 2 of Twin Peaks.

Of course ABC should have let Lynch drag out the whodunit for as long as he wanted. Maybe even never revealing the murderer.

 

The X-Files last season or two was a hot mess.