Shows That Overstayed Their Welcome.

[Mark Giardina]

Smallville- Ten Years on the CW. This show started out as being an interesting, and different, concept of the origin of Superman from his teenage years. However the show should have ended after five (5) years. Talk about squeezing blood from a turnip. After a while one wanted to buy Clark Kent a one-way ticket back to Krypton.

Happy Days- What started out as a nostalgia-type of a show dealing with life in the 1950s ended up focusing on just Henry Winkler’s character of “The Fonz.”

Gunsmoke- 20+ years of Marshal Matt Dillon beating up the bad guys but never having the guts to ask Miss Kitty out.

Seinfeld- Personally I never understood why people thought this show was that funny, but it stayed on the air for a number of years. Was it too many years? I will let you folks decide.

Please feel free to add more to the list.

 

[KeithE4]

The Simpsons should have been canceled 10 years ago at least.

 

[vjm]

M*A*S*H* - It took them 11 years to cover a 3 year war. Also Alan Alda's achingly '70s sililoquies and sensibilities (that he peppered the show with as he got more and more control) got really old and almost out of place in the Reagan era "Morning in America" '80s.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

Seinfeld- Personally I never understood why people thought this show was that funny, but it stayed on the air for a number of years. Was it too many years? I will let you folks decide.

Seinfeld and principal writing cohort Larry David ingeniously made everyday situations, banal, criminal and otherwise, look funny. And give the supporting cast their due; their brilliant on-screen chemistry put a hilarious spin on everyday stuff, like peeing in a healthclub shower, serial killing, the mugging of an elderly lady's loaf of freshly baked marble rye bread, and poking fun at a vulnerably overweight citizen as he's robbed by a streetside thug. I myself could have watched Seinfeld for 10 more years.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

M*A*S*H* - It took them 11 years to cover a 3 year war. Also Alan Alda's achingly '70s sililoquies and sensibilities (that he peppered the show with as he got more and more control) got really old and almost out of place in the Reagan era "Morning in America" '80s.

I too tired of M*A*S*H for a time, though I now watch it in re-runs every chance I get. Even while the show was still in production, I preferred watching the syndicated reruns, probably due to the over-development of the current run's main characters. Hawkeye's endless grinding of the ideological ax got old and seemed unlikely during a protracted "police action". B.J.'s syrupy pining for Peg back in Pine Valley got boring. Abandoning Klinger's hysterical cross-dressing and AWOL misadventures rendered him irrelevant. Finally, as Margaret's character developed, she simply lost her spark.

 

[ShawnHill1]

With Happy Days, I could agree that it should ended once Ron Howard left. You get into seasons eight and nine, the focus was shifted more toward Joanie and Chachi (which of course eventually gave them their own series), season ten focused back on more Fonzie. Don't know about many others, but I thought the final season was pretty good (albeit a bit more on the dramatic side in certain episodes), and the focus was more on both Fonzie and the Cunninghams again.

On a side note, I've always thought that once Richie and Ralph Malph left, Postie Weber arguably became the most useless character in television history--he and the Fonz weren't exactly best friends, and he no longer had Ralph (or Richie) to play off of.

Adding another show to the category, I would say that Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has started to out-live its usefulness. I don't mind the new character additions (Danny Pino [Nick Amaro] and Kelli Giddish [Amanda Rollins]), but once Chris Meloni left, I think the show lost arguably its strongest character in Elliot Stabler.

 

[WMC2006]

ER
Two and a Half Men
Dallas (the original, not the current TNT reboot)
Knots Landing
Falcon Crest
Laverne & Shirley

 

[onairb]

M*A*S*H* - It took them 11 years to cover a 3 year war. Also Alan Alda's achingly '70s sililoquies and sensibilities (that he peppered the show with as he got more and more control) got really old and almost out of place in the Reagan era "Morning in America" '80s.

I too tired of M*A*S*H for a time, though I now watch it in re-runs every chance I get. Even while the show was still in production, I preferred watching the syndicated reruns, probably due to the over-development of the current run's main characters. Hawkeye's endless grinding of the ideological ax got old and seemed unlikely during a protracted "police action". B.J.'s syrupy pining for Peg back in Pine Valley got boring. Abandoning Klinger's hysterical cross-dressing and AWOL misadventures rendered him irrelevant. Finally, as Margaret's character developed, she simply lost her spark.

Although I enjoyed a handful of episodes from the later seasons, the absolute latest they should have ended the show was 1979. Once Radar left home(which coincided with Klinger 'going straight'), the zaniness was gone, outside of the running gag of animosity between Major Winchester and Rizzo. Definitely agree about all the whining/longing for home, which made it seem too much like Vietnam.

 

[BD Sullivan]

Seinfeld should have packed it in after Larry David left in 1996. Instead, it went two more years.

All in the Family should have stopped after the sixth season. The final three years virtually became an excuse for Carroll O'Connor to mug for the camera in every scene, with the final season (post Rob Reiner-Sally Struthers) totally unwatchable.

 

[eddiepritchett]

American idol five years ago
In the heat of the night after 1992
Doug when left nickelodeon
Spongebob
The Walton's
The Cosby show
Dukes of hazard when boe and duke left

 

[landtuna]

I can't remember a single modern show with the sole exception of Big Bang Theory that I didn't lose interest in well before it ended. Some shows like Seinfeld, Friends and How I Met My Mother I never developed an interest in to begin with. When someone who is a real TV addict posts a long list of shows on these boards it is always amazing to me how many I seldom or never watched.

 

[nomadcowatbk]

Seinfeld- Personally I never understood why people thought this show was that funny, but it stayed on the air for a number of years. Was it too many years? I will let you folks decide.

Seinfeld ended when they ran out of ideas, few shows have done that

 

[nomadcowatbk]

Family Matters should have ended when it left ABC
The original BH 90210 went a few seasons too long, there were no Walsh's left at the end

 

[cd637299]

Any votes for The Beverly Hillbillies? Three or four LOL seasons, but boy did those later ones drag on. I especially detested the final seasons where they tried to make Drysdale so evil. The Clampetts were already adjusted, one could say.

Hillbillies & Mork & Mindy are those fish-out-of-water sitcoms where IMO we got the joke early on, but "milking it" just won't work.

cd

 

[visaman]

B.J.'s syrupy pining for Peg back in Pine Valley got boring.

"I go downstairs, and Peg pours me a damn cup of coffee and I drink it!"

It must have been heavenly being married to BJ. :

 

[Corky Marlowe]

All in the Family should have stopped after the sixth season

The beginning of the end for that show may have been when Nixon resigned.

 

[vjm]

All in the Family should have stopped after the sixth season

The beginning of the end for that show may have been when Nixon resigned.

Once Jimmy Carter got elected, they tried a little role reversal, with Meathead defending the President and Archie railing against him.

Once they saw that that wouldn't fly (Stivic's character is a "smartest guy in the room" contrarian, not a defender of the establishment), they toned down the political bickering, and focused more on Archie buying the bar and Stephanie coming in.

 

[vjm]

Dukes of hazard when boe and duke left

That wasn't so much overstaying a welcome, as much as insulting the viewer's intellegence.

John "Bo" Schnieder and Tom "Luke" Wopat essentially went on strike in a contract dispute.

They wanted a bigger chunk of the merchandising pie, as "Dukes" lunchboxes, action figures, posters, etc were flying off the shelves back then.

Once that was a no-go, CBS decided that "you know what...we'll just grab a blond haired guy and a dark haired guy off the street, say they're long-lost cousins (Coy & Vance), and nobody will know the difference".

This idea was a major flop and lasted a year. Eventually Schnieder and Wopat came back ($ talks...), we had the one epic team up of Bo & Luke with Coy & Vance when the originals first came back, and then the dopplegangers faded into the abyss, never to be seen or heard from again.

Like they never even existed.

 

[FredLeonard]

CSI - All of them
Criminal Minds
House
The Office
Castle
Perry Mason

Getting close: The Mentalist

You know a show has passed its expiration date when you can predict what's going to happen.
For example: House. Guy/gal suddenly has something wrong. Goes to hospital. They try three different things - number three almost kills him/her. Then House has a brilliant insight and this one works exactly at :55.
Another example: Criminal Minds. A bunch of people are killed/kidnapped/raped/tortured/injured before the episode begins. One last person is taken at the beginning of the episode. We see them and their family. The profilers go into action as we see the innocent victim in distress. Of course, this one they save in the - ta-da - nick of time.

Another sign is excessive shark jumping and/or cast changes.

 

[Preacherdude]

The Office was one season too long for me. My family and I love the show and watch its reruns all the time. It's an aquired taste and was a show definately not for everyone.

Season eight was terrible! James Spader was beyond terrible and the storylines were horrendous. They would have done better to do what they did in season 9 during season 8 and not try to make the show something different. When Steve Correll left, one more season to wrap up characters and stroylines would have been perfect. That's what season 9 amounted to and it was brilliant.