#5. Night Court. This was a slapstick comedy full of laughs. The show set in a courtroom and revolved around the craziness of that setting as bizarre things seemed to happen on a regular basis. Somewhere along the 7th season, the writers changed the focus from the setting to the characters. Gone suddenly were the zany jokes and visual gags, replaced with episodes rich with character development. Yawn! The episodes from the last season or two are so boring, it's painful to watch. The final scene of the final episode had Bull being taken away by a couple aliens and to not one laugh at all. A horrible way for a great show to end.
#4. Will & Grace. This show had a simple premise, a man and woman who would make the perfect couple except he happened to be gay. So instead Will and Grace were close friends, both single and living in New York. In the cast were Will's best friend Jack and Grace's friend/employee Karen. The first few years the show was smart and fresh, well written and very funny. Then around the 5th season the creators decided to marry Grace to a man named Leo. This would have been a great way to wrap the series, but it happened mid-way through. The show spiraled downward after this. All of a sudden the premise was different, becoming a show about a gay man who is friends with a married woman. Not quite the same. The writers tried to undo what they had done, but it was too late. What was worst, the writing started to get kind of stale and the characters, especially Karen and Jack, became cardboard cutouts of themselves. The scripts got darker and the endless stunt casting was annoying. This series struggled to its final episode, which was a convoluted script and totally forgettable.
#3. My Name is Earl. There is a rule in sitcoms, don't drastically change your premise or you'll lose your audience. The premise of this show was simple; Earl was a horrible person who did many bad things. After he wins the lottery he is hit by a car, and learns about karma. He then decides to make up for all his mistakes by making a list of them all and working on each item one at a time. Great premise, and then in the third season the writers decided to send Earl to prison. The fourth season began with him in jail, and by the time he got out a few episodes later the audience had left the show. The show tried to get back to the premise with the list, but the audience was gone and it got cancelled, and we never found out what happened with that list.
#2. Mad About You. This show was about a married couple very much in love, simple as that. Sort of like Seinfeld, this show tried to be about the little things that married people go through that other shows don't get into. The first three seasons were pretty good, not great but good. The writing was decent; the shows were funny, and the situations relatable. Then they decided to do something different for the 4th season. They set up an arc where Paul and Jamie started to drift apart and eventually almost cheat on each other. The season finale was a one hour episode where they worked through this with a very dramatic discussion. They decide they love each other, but this comes after some very dark moments with the two of them very much at odds. This was supposed to be about a couple in love, right? Well the show was never the same after this, even when they brought a little baby in. The last two seasons also suffered with bad scripts which were just plain dumb. They did a whole episode about a magic quarter. Seriously. There was another episode about a machine which could predict the future. Ok, sure. NBC kept the show on a year longer than it should have because it needed something after Seinfeld left, but the truth was they should have let it end. The final episode was, believe it or not, very good but for the most part this show just go awful. I have the first three seasons on DVD and as far as I am concerned, the show ended after that.
#1. Roseanne. How could this not be number 1? Roseanne was a great show about a struggling middle class, blue collar family. Set in the midwest the stories showed real problems. The parents both had to work, and the home was usually a sloppy mess. Sure you could pick at things here and there but the show was about as real as you can get. They had running storylines, regular recurring characters, and a very good team of writers. The show was about struggling with life and the endless complications. Everything was going fine until the end of the 7th season or so they decided to make Dan have a heart attack. This was the beginning of a terrible end. The next season after Dan and Roseanne have a huge fight, they wind up winning the lottery. The show suddenly becomes a show about a rich family. That wouldn't be so bad, except the scripts just got so silly. One even had Steven Segal in an action spoof. Then they decided to have Dan have an affair, really? Fans left this show in droves. The series finale revealed the whole thing was just a story Roseanne had written, Dan had actually died and I still haven’t figured out if it was just the last season that was the story or the whole series. It didn’t matter, it was too late to make an incredibly bad year better and this show deserved much better.
It is just terrible when show’s have this problem. I don’t know what happens, but the quality just disappears and it is clear the writers have run out of ideas. I only did five but I could go on and on. Special mention has to be Murphy Brown, whose last year was so terrible. It was as if the actors forgot how to play the characters or something. I will be doing a follow up article about when shows try to save a dying show by adding unnecessary cast members. This works very few times, but that’s a subject for another time.
So, what shows do you
think I missed? Which would you put on a list like this?
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