TV shows are notorious for not knowing when to end, but to me the topic begins and ends with Roseanne.

 

The first 5 -6 seasons were some of the best TV ever made, but as the series went on, Roseanne started to use the show as her own personal therapy session. She drove everyone away behind the scenes to the point where she was pretty much the only one left other than the guys running the cameras.

 

The show should have ended after the 8th season, but Roseanne decided to come back for what has to be the most masturbatory season of TV ever. People remember it as the one where the Conners won the lottery, but what made it really bad is that almost every episode was Roseanne and Jackie wackily engaging with the rich folks. John Goodman was sick of the bullshit at this point and it's almost as if Roseanne was taking her anger at him out on the show as suddenly Dan was going from recovering from a heart attack to having an affair, which went against everything the show was about.

 

The last episode (and the big reveal at the end) pissed off a lot of people, but I actually liked it since it made sense in the context of the show and it explained why the last season had everyone acting completely different than we saw the previous 8 years.

 

Anyone else have an example of a great show that had a completely horrible end?

Bad endings aren't the only thing that piss me off.

 

I loved the first couple of seasons of Smallville. Then it turned into a teen angst soap opera with stupidity out the wazoo.

 

I hate when a show starts out promising and whoever it is ruins it by injecting what they think will bring more viewers, as if we're idiots drooling in front of the TV who only want sex and stupidity.

 

Edit: And agree with you completely about Roseanne.

 

The Jeffersons went through a similar problem. They started as black rebels who made it in the system, and at the end they were the same as everyone else.

Roseanne is indeed the perfect example. I've mentioned this before, but I have to add the Drew Carey Show top to the list. I was a huge fan of the show (I even used it as a sample show in a college project in 1999 about the media's affect on women) Then in the same vein as Roseanne, Drew turned the show into his own personal therapy session. The show worked originally because it was about a regular guy trying to make it through the shit work day while dealing with his wacky friends and absurd surroundings. Then Drew's ego exploded and he made the show all about him making out with big titted blondes and trying to get laid all the time. No one bought it. No one. Just like nobody wanted to see Roseanne rich no one wanted to see Drew with women way out of his league. Drew's excuse (just like Roseanne) was the show was about his life and thus his new success with the ladies should have been included in the show. It was a slap in the face to all the loyal fans and the show rightly died without a whimper and with a horrible time slot. Both Drew and Roseanne deserved their fates.

 

*and Sek, you are right, the way Roseanne treated John Goodman in the final season was pathetic and petty. After years of building up Dan as a good man they needlessly turned him into the bad guy who betrayed Roseanne afterall

You know, I didn't mind when they won the lottery on Roseanne. I saw it as the family finally getting rewarded by karma for all the shit they went through. What killed the show for me was how Roseanne's real life traumas started popping up on the show. The episode where her and Jackie confront their molesting father (the same week the real Roseanne accused her father of the same thing) was the shark jumping moment for me.

MASH after about 1978. The show was just painful for the last 5 seasons but I will give them credit in that they managed to make the final episode really good. But I think MASH is the perfect example of one person getting too much creative control.

I generally agree but the first time I saw the one where Hawkeye works backwards until we finally see what caused him to mentally snap (ie: how the baby that was crying was kept quiet so they wouldn't get found out), I was floored.

I think Roseanne fell apart when Becky left the show. The whole vibe was different after that as it got more and more mean spirited. Plus around that time none of the characters outside the family were very good. Plus it seemed like every non-Conner was a homosexual by the last season. Real creative there.

 

I don't know what the hell happened to Drew Carey's show. It seemed to turn into some proving ground for him to show that he could actually date attractive women or something. Plus all of the gimmick episodes got really tiring.

Roseanne was groundbreaking in many ways and was great at pushing the envelope. The metamorphosis of Darlene Connor is still one of the most brilliant things to ever take place on a sitcom. But yeah, they focused so much on trying too hard to be a show with a message that they sort of forgot what that message was supposed to be.

Considering the first episode involved Roseanne having to talk to Darlene's teacher because she was barking in class and the last episode centered around Darlene bringing her baby home (or not, depending on how you interpret the ending) I'd agree with Loss 100%.

No one probably shares this opinion but I don't think Cheers was ever the same after Coach and Shelly Long were both gone. Woody's act got tiring really quickly with me.

 

Buffy's another good example of a great series that just limped through the last couple of seasons.

The thing with Cheers was that after Long left the show was void of any long storyline arcs. Each episode took place within a vacuum with nothing mattering the next week. The last few seasons there was nothing really happening and the show was just randon happenings. Although I did much prefer Kirstie Alley to Shelly Long

From what I've read, the whole "Roseanne getting rich" storyline was done because she wanted to be able to wear nice clothes on her show. Seriously.

The Conners winning the lottery was it for me. I didn't watch the show while it was originally airing, but in syndication, that's where the show lost a lot of its luster. Up until that point, I could find some good in just about every episode, but that entire season just doesn't feel right. They got too serious, which is something I absolutely hate with sitcoms. They had a fair amount of them during the series' run, but once they overtook that final season, it was like, "Okay, I thought I was watching this to laugh."

 

I never really missed Becky, since she was unbearably bratty, even though that was her role. I'd even go out on the limb by saying that the seasons where David's living with the family up until the final season are favorites.

 

No one probably shares this opinion but I don't think Cheers was ever the same after Coach and Shelly Long were both gone. Woody's act got tiring really quickly with me.

You're right on. Cheers is one of those shows I more or less was exposed to through DVD. Watching the first three seasons, I grew to love Coach. When it was time to move on to Season Four, I almost didn't want to. I had seen many Woody episodes, but he's no Coach. No one could've been. The fourth season is probably the weakest of the earlier seasons, and that's mostly because Coach is gone and Woody doesn't fit. He became a better character later on, but he could never fill those shoes.

 

Diane got on my nerves too often, which again, was her role. But I'll agree that things felt different after she left. Just about every episode she was in during his five seasons with the show involved her and Sam's romance in some capacity, so it was a rough adjustment to suddenly have to find a new focal point for the series.

Maybe it just me but I felt that Coach's role in Cheers was extremely overrated to me.

Blasphemy. He was so charmingly dumb, but in a subtle fashion that could've been missed often if the viewer wasn't paying attention.

The X-Files.

 

I win.