Sometimes you just lose intestest, sometimes the show goes bad. And sometimes you stop for no sane reason at all. My bad reasons are:

CSI: When the original team split up I wasn't that upset. I just felt that I didn't care anymore. I haven't watched an episode since. I watched it for the mysteries, not the office politics.

Naturo: I do like the show. I like Satsuke, Sakura and all the other characters. Except Naruto himself. I still care about the show and ask my friends for a summary, but I can't stand watching it because then I have to see Naruto again. If Naruto was killed and/or horribly maimed I would watch the scene over and over again. It's crazy because Naruto honestly doesn't deserve that level of hate.

Lost: I stopped watching pretty early. I thought it was good, I just couldn't stand the chance that it would turn out stupid after all the interesting foreshadowing. Maybe I will buy the DVDs one day if if does have a good ending.

CSI-Miami. I only gave it a chance because I enjoyed the original so much, but watching Horatio Caine being so bloody self righteous and such a know it all, just totally put me off. The episode in which he pointed out to the pathologist that the body she was examining was actually alive, that was just the last straw.

I nearly stopped watching CSI last summer (RTE is always about a year behind) when there was that whole firing/rehiring fiasco. Definitely if GE hadn't been hired back I wouldn't have continued watching, not even the remaining episodes he was in.

I'm also going to stop watching Carnivale. There's still most of season 2 to air over here, but I just don't see the point now that I know it's cancelled.

I stopped watching:

Scrubs because Elliot and JD broke up although I loved everything else about the show.

Half & Half because the mom with the 24-year-old daughter gave birth to another kid.

King of Queens on a regular basis because they moved to Wednesdays.

I really did try to give post-Sorkin West Wing a chance. But Josh shouting at architecture was a lightbulb moment for me. I never went back, and I've never regretted it.

Medium: because of Patricia's teeth.

The paragraph below was part of a post I made last night to the "Strange Reasons for Liking A Show" thread. This part of that post really belongs here, but I see that this thread didn't come into existance until shortly after I posted it in the other thread (coincidence? or yet further confirmation that it really is All About Me?)

Cops. I started watching the one-two punch of Cops and America's Most Wanted because they were the only thing on Saturday night in the early 90s and I didn't have cable at the time. I don't recall when or why I stopped watching, but I never even try to catch them now.

I watched a couple of early episodes of "The Practice" and then stopped. Not because it was bad - I hear it didn't get really bad for some time - and not even because I thought no one could be as sold on Dylan MacDermott as he seemed to be sold on himself - but because ABC had just cancelled "Murder One," one of my all-time favorite programs, and were throwing a lot of weight into getting the buzz going for this other, more conventional courtroom drama, which went on to win great ratings and bushels of Emmy Awards and all kinds of acclaim. And I was disgusted. It was sort of a defiant gesture of mourning for "Murder One".

Strange enough for you all?

Actually, it's not too far off from the reason that I didn't even try to watch Firefly when it was originally airing. I was so pissed at the direction that Buffy was going in at the time, that I boycotted Firefly on the principle that Joss Whedon should have been concentrating on what he already had going.

Then, when Firefly got cancelled, and the series got released on DVD, I bought it, fell in love with it, and felt kind of guilty about the whole thing.

So, no, not that strange.

Oh...Topic?

I stopped watching Lost because I registered for a Wednesday night class from 8-10:30. I tried taping it to watch later, but after falling three weeks behind in watching the tapes, I realized that I just wasn't sufficiently motivated to bother anymore.

Well, not so much stopped watching, but more refused to watch a show on TV. This would be Battlestar Galactica. After SciFi Channel axed two shows I loved dearly: The Invisible Man and Farscape, I went on strike from the network. When I heard all the great buzz BSG was getting, I decided to give it a try by downloading the episodes and watching them on my computer. I adore the show, I'm completely hooked and come July when the new season starts, I'll be downloading those episodes as well. (I tend to hold a grudge, can you tell? LOL)

I suppose at some point I'll grow up and just start TiVoing it, but I'm not there yet. I mean, they replaced Farscape with freaking Tremors the Series. The levels of wrong inherent in that decision just stun me.

I got halfway through the pilot for Alias and was trying to figure out if I liked it or not. Found myself thinking "if they kill off the fiance" I will be irritated enough to change the channel and never watch the show again.

They did, and I haven't seen the show since.

I decided not to tune in for S5 of Angel the day they announced that Spike was joining the cast.

Don't get me wrong, I think James Marsters is a very talented actor. From what I've heard, I think there's a lot to like about him as a human being, too. I was just so sick of 'it's all about Spike' syndrome in the Jossverse that I couldn't bear watching the character take over a second show.

Ironically enough, if they'd just freaking given him a spinoff of his own, I would have at least tried it out. I just sort of felt that, y'know, Angel should be about Angel and Buffy should be about Buffy, and if everyone wanted to watch the Spike show, someone should talk to James Marsters about doing his own series, rather than using the character to undercut the titular heroes of other shows.

Word squared. Although I stuck it out longer than you did, xii, I'm officially done now. I might watch November sweeps for the elections--like it'll be any contest who wins between Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda.

I think it's a John Wells' taint. I had to stop watching ER not only when it became all about Abby but also when nonsense in the unsafest ER in the country became too much to bear (helicopters, anyone?). OSHA would've shut that place down a long time ago. Wells' stinking up Third Watch was in the same vein but I did keep up with that show to the bitter end.

I quit watching Will & Grace a few years ago when Jack became so stupid that it was too painful to watch. And as much as I loved snarky Karen in the first few seasons, she got to be way too over the top.

And, finally, I gave up on Law & Order: SVU after the first season when Ice-T was hired. I've no idea whether or not he's a good actor but hiring someone who recorded a ditty called "Cop Killer" to play a detective turned my police dispatcher's stomach.

I gave up on Law and Order and pretty much other law related shows once I started law school. I'm not sure whether it was because there was a serious decline in the programming four years ago, or whether I was sick of law pervading every facet of my life, or whether I simply foresaw the mass domination of all things L&O and CSI. Or, you know, it could have been Elisabeth Rohm. I wouldn't put it past her.

I think we've got a theme of 'boycott Show A on behalf of Show B" thing going here. For me, it was Malcolm in the Middle for the sole solitary reason that it was the show that more or less replaced Futurama. I was that pissed- no matter what show it was that took Futurama's place, it was dead to me from the get-go.

Actually, the way they handled it, I think you might have ended up getting kind of a kick out of Spike on Angel. I had absolutely no experience with the Buffyverse before I started catching TNT's Angel reruns (shown in broadcast order), picking up the story sometime in the third or fourth season, so when this "Spike" guy showed up at the start of the 5th season I had absolutely no idea what his deal was except that, from what I could gather from the references to events back in Sunnydale, he had served as kind of a 2nd rate replacement for Angel's character after Angel was spun off to his own show. So what the hell he was now doing on Angel I had no idea and never really did figure out, but one thing I actually liked about the situation was that the other characters themselves seemed every bit as bewildered as to what this guy was doing in their midst as I was, and even more annoyed at his presence than it seems you would have been. Particularly in his first half dozen or so episodes where he's in the form of some kind of ghost that cannot physically touch or move anything and is therefore absolutely useless in a fight or any other situation, characters would repeatedly turn to him when he insisted on tagging along on their adventures and say "Just why are you here?" I was actually a bit disappointed once he got coporialized and could start contributing to the storylines, because I was rather enjoying the running gag of him being the most aggressively useless TV character since South Park's Kenny.

Dallas premiered when I was a freshman in high school and my friends and I tuned in because we thought it was going to be a cowboy show. After realizing that it was, in reality, a nighttime soap opera, I didn't watch a single episode (not even the one where they revealed who shot J.R.) until the very last one where J.R. met the devil and got to see what life would have been like without him. Still, I knew who everyone was, what each person's situation was, etc. I feel you don't really need to watch a show when you can just get all the info via osmosis.

Word.

And that is why I cannot watch Family Guy, because if any show deserves to come back, it's Futurama.

Well, that and I don't think it's that funny.

But yeah, I don't watch Malcom in the Middle because I blame it (and Fox) for making Futurama go away...

I never watched Buffy when it originally ran because it was so popular I was sick of hearing about it. For a cult show, it was friggin' everywhere!

I now wish I had because I'm in the middle of Season six right now with the BF, and I'd kill to talk about them in a thread. *sighs*

Alias season one - because John Hannah guest starred. I cannot bear him. It took a lot of persuading to get me to give it another go. Considering how much I loved season 2, I am actually a little bitter that John Hannah nearly deprived me of it. Because my hatred of him is large. And yet, when he was on Carnivale, it didn't bother me; the producers saw him as a shifty no-good, rather than the intense do-gooder he normally plays, and I was happy.

ETA: Twin Peaks. When Agent Cooper laughed at Annie's bloody penguin joke.

I packed in Buffy when Tara was killed off in the 6th season. I know that there were precious few happy endings on Buffy and plenty of characters were killed off during its run but Tara’s death really pissed me off. I respect the fact that Tara was merely a supporting character and the writers used the death as a catalyst to kick off a storyline that was bubbling under for quite a while but I was annoyed that such a sweet character and romance was killed of as a plot device. Plus the show had become terrible and vaguely unpleasant so packing it in was easy enough. But I’m still slightly pissed about that unhappy ending.

Ew. I did not know that. Now I'm going to find it really hard to watch him... and up to now I kinda liked him in the part.

I stopped watchingThe A-Team because of the direction it took when Robert Vaughn turned up. The A-Team, reporting to someone? C'mon, folks, it just don't work that way.

And I think I just stopped watching House last night... thank you, Sela Ward.

When I was 10 or 11, I went to my grandmother's house at the beginning of summer vacation. She was really into the soap Santa Barbara and I watched it with her every day. I don't know the characters' names, but this guy had been kidnapped by a mysterious woman in red, who had him tied up and blindfolded. I was riveted, because this was the same time when I was starting to get curious about sex and was reading my mom's romance novels and snooping in my dad's drawers for porn. The plotline just seemed so sexy and cool. Anyway, the plotline dragged on and on for the whole summer, then it was time to go back to school and I couldn't watch it anymore. Does anyone know what I'm talking about or if the guy was ever rescued?

I boycot Family Guy for that 'boycott Show A on behalf of Show B' thing. Everytime my friends talk about the show, I always say something snooty along the lines of "I don't really like Family Guy. I think Futurama is so much funnier."

I was a Buffy fan, but when I missed a few eps, I lost interest because I was already all into Angel.

I stopped watching Gundam Seed because throughout the entire series, I feared that Kira would end up with that singing-pink-coordinator (not being mean here, I just can't remember her name), and when he woke up on her bed after being injured in a big Gundam fight scene, I turned off the TV (didn't even finish the episode, I think). Which sucks because I know the series is really good and I have to finish it.



Had the same reaction. Never watched Tremors 'cause they had the ugliest looking promotional spots.

How I wish I had stopped watching Buffy then, too. It only went downhill.

I've watched Family Guy a few times, and it has all the elements I like in a show, but for some reason I absolutely hate it. I can't get into the characters, I don't care about their situations, and yet, if I were to look at the individual elements, the clever references, the absurb situations, it's all stuff I typically like in a show. I can't explain it, but this show just never was a hit with me.

I've also never liked the Honeymooners, classic television show or not. If I wanted to see a working class couple arguing all the time, I'd have spent more time with my parents. Nothing about the Cramdens was ever remotely interesting to me.

Heh. The Honeymooners used to depress the hell out of me.

It's CANCELLED? Cancelled?!?!

Is this because she's a lesbian?

Ditto. That and the godawful movie it was based on soured me on it from the get-go. And then everybody was slavering over it, and I just got really turned off.

For me it's just a difference in sense of humors. My sisters who watch Family Guy describe it as "stupid-humor." Like, it's so stupid that you pause for a second after a line is delivered and then just have to laugh. Futurama for me had a more clever script, which appealed to me. Again, it's sense of humor preference, I think.

I watched 7th Heaven at the beginning, but then I got so annoyed of all their family problems. But it's because my boyfriend is a minister's son, and I thought the Camdens were the worst example of a minister's family. Their kids were worse than most normal families.

Medium because I find their household so fricking depressing. It seems they are always lethargic and in their pajamas. It makes me want to go to sleep for days.

And Survivor for one legitimate reason and one stupid one. Legit: I could not stand to hear one more sanctimonious, self-righteous idiot talk about how someone else didn't "deserve" to win. Thank you Ami for pushing me over the edge. Stupid: Jeff Probst (who I've heard rumors is gay) starts dating a former contestant who is half his age. Now he creeps me out and I can't watch. Why do people (myself included) vilify Tom Cruise for this same behavior despite the fact that his and Katie Holmes age difference is less and Tom looks a lot younger than Probst does considering they are roughly the same age?

I refuse to watch Firefly because of the fact that Gail Berman(or whatever her name is) cancelled Dark Angel 24 hours after it was RENEWED just for that show. Which ended up getting cancelled anyway. I am STILL bitter about this even though it was like three-four years ago.

I refuse to watch Joan of Arcadia because Wonderfalls did it so much better and funnier. It is cancelled now as well.

I refuse to watch Sci-Fi anymore after they took away Lexx and Farscape. Now all they play is Battlestar Galactica and a bazillion Stargates.

I used to be the biggest X-Files fan ever. Then one morning about a month before the movie came out I woke up and hated the show. I couldn't stand it any longer. Just watching a nanosecond of it, made me sick. I erased all my tapes, hid my books and took down my big "the truth is out there" poster. I haven't seen a single minute of the show since.

I refused to watch The O.C. because it replaced my beloved Keen Eddie. I love a good soap, but I loved Keen Eddie more. Even when I heard about all the HoYay, I still refused. (But then I heard there was going to be a bi character and, being bi myself, I broke down and watched it. Now I love it. But I'm still bitter about Keen Eddie!)

Me, too. I stopped watching because of how inaccurate it could be about the law.

I can't watch The Apprentice because of Donald's hair. It makes my blood pressure rise. Seriously.

I refused to watch the early seasons of Law and Order, even though it was getting good reviews, because NBC was always promoting it as "RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!!!" and I thought it would be a completely different type of show than how it turned out. I forget when or why I started watching it, though it was after Orbach and Waterston were on, but once I did, it became one of my favorites and I regretted missing the earlier seasons.

I refused to watch Roswell because it took Charmed's time slot, and Charmed was moved to Sunday. It's not like Charmed was cancelled or anything. In my defense, I was like 12 when it happened.

Oooh that reminds me


I refused to watch Smallville when the WB cancelled Roswell. I mean they cancelled a show about an alien to add... a show about an alien?

And I won't watch Blind Justice because it comes on in NYPD Blue's time slot, even though NYPD Blue was ending anyway. For me, any show in that formerly special time slot is bound to disappoint.

I quit watching Carnivale with one episode left of the first series because I realized they weren't going to finish the storyline at all. Come on, they can't tie up ONE FREAKIN' LOOSE END in 13 weeks? If I sound bitter, it still pisses me off that I wasted my time with this show.

I know it's a slow series, but HBO is famous for having a year or two between seasons. Fuck that. And I never went back.

From the other side of the coin, has anyone had any Strange Reasons for Picking Up a Show? For instance, I've always heard about Red Dwarf, it's a Sci-Fi show and sounded completely uninteresting to me. But I finally read a synopsis of the show and I'm interested in seeing it if only to see what The Cat will be like.


ETA: It's cancelled. Sweet! Sorry for the fans, though.

I hear Blind Justice just got the axe, due to extreme crapitude. Poor Ron Eldard. He just can't catch a break.

I stopped watching Joan of Arcadia because the Duff sisters were going to guest star.

I refuse to watch Desperate Housewives because it is doing so much better than Lost. I always hate shows that get better rating than my shows do.

(We seem to hit the same wavelengths sometimes). I didn't know that Dark Angel had a renewal announcement, then was cancelled! Good thing I didn't know that back then! I'm sure fans threw a fit when they heard that.

I'm a huge Stargate fan, but I think it is pretty silly to have 5 hours of it on Monday nights. At my house, if you're able to sit through all 5 hours, then you're a true Stargate geek.

I think I might have refused to watch Smallville for the same reason, but I don't remember. I think so.

I refuse to watch any kind of reality TV shows because I am altogether against this type of programming, and too many good shows have died because of this. Voyeurism should be outlawed!

I posted something to this effect on another thread:

I refused to watch the 7th season of Charmed after they killed off Chris because he was killed off for emotional pull for season finale dramatics, and the character was popular and the actor didn't even want to leave the show! . . . but I did end up watching towards the end of the season anyway.

Maybe this thread should be titled "I refuse to watch this show because . . ." "_"

This is so me, with regards to Veronica Mars, One Tree Hill, Everwood, and Desperate Housewives. I'm such an information nerd (I read the Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide cover to cover, regardless of whether the articles are about shows/movies/etc I like or not, just because I know that if EW or TVG is talking about something, it's good), plus my friends are all way into the soapy thing. All you have to do is read the Tivo's synopses for a various show before it airs and the recaplet the day after (if applicable), and boom! You too can be a Watercooler Poseur!

As for why I truly never started watching any of those shows (really, I've never seen an episode of any of the above), it varies. For Veronica Mars and One Tree Hill, it was just too difficult to do in the booked Tuesdays-at-9 slot. (I have a Tivo on one TV and an un-pimped TV in the other room, so this season I taped TAR, watched House in the other room, and tried [and failed] to watch Scrubs during commercials.) For Everwood, my friend is addicted and wanted me to watch the whole first season on DVD before I started watching new episodes, and I'm too lazy for that. And for Desperate Housewives, I taped the first 5 episodes or so, but I never watched them, so they were deleted. By that time, I figured that since I was beginning to OD on Desperate Housewives gossip and whatnot without even watching the show, then I'd be too annoyed and irritated to hear the media raves plus listen to watercooler gossip PLUS actually spend an hour a week watching it.

Anyway, I've gotten pretty good at coasting by. I've learned that you can never really use too many "I love Ephram, but he's an ass!" or "I totally can't believe they haven't revealed why Mary Alice killed herself yet!" in a conversation.

Exactly. And then there's American Dad...

I stopped watching Desperate Housewives when they won a Comedy Golden Globe. Not like you need to watch the show itself, anyway. Every entertainment show on the face of the Earth practically gives a play-by-play every Monday.

Affairs will make me stop watching a show. I expect it in a daytime soap, but if Will had done anything with Lucy in the now defunct Joan of Arcadia, I would've stopped watching. I refuse to watch a show that glorifies extramarital affairs.

I stopped watching Veronica Mars for one normal reason and one maybe strange reason.

Normal?I was bored out of my mind in the small time I watched it.

Not so normal? I became sick of people telling me how I should be considering it the best television show ever. This is also the reason why I'll be watching House reruns throughout the summer and not giving the show another chance.

Because I'm curious, which VM episodes did you watch, DumbBrunette?

It was back when it had Shawn Ashmore's twin brother (playing Troy, IIRC) in it.

I've done that with many shows! It took reruns for me to love Buffy and The Simpsons, and learn that Friends, X-Files, and Family Guy were pretty good.

Back on topic...when Married With Children first aired, I thought it was a satire. I stopped watching when I realized I was giving the show way too much credit.

Hypnotoad, I felt exactly the same abbout Married With Children.

I thought it was a clever counterpoint to the nicely-nicely world of the usual family US sitcom. I soon realised it was just dumb.

I gave up Survivor after they had the audience give away another million. It wasn't even who they gave it to, though that was painful enough in itself, but that they felt the need to do so. I couldn't watch after that.