Yahoo Lifestyle People Are Sharing 29 TV Shows They Started But Couldn't Finish, And Yikes, I Agree With Soooo Many Of These
We've all experienced the anticipation and excitement of starting a new television show, eagerly immersing ourselves in the storylines and characters.
The initial excitement can fade as we progress through the episodes or seasons, especially when major characters die, the plot becomes convoluted, or the show loses its charm.
It's frustrating when trying to finish a TV show becomes a test of patience and commitment, and the enjoyment has vanished.
Many viewers share this experience and these Redditors chimed in on which shows they couldn't finish:
1.Shameless
"I stopped somewhere around mid-Season 7. To me, the writing noticeably declined around Seasons 5-6. It felt like the plot just kept going in circles and circles, and each character was getting more and more insufferable to watch—mostly Deb and Lip. The whole plot with Svetlana, Kev, and V was just awful to me. The first four seasons, however, did have me hooked."
2.Maid
"Maid. The stress made my chest too tight."
"I stopped watching when it was clear she was trying to get with that one guy while cleaning the rich lady's house. Like. I was just SO frustrated that after all the work she'd done, she was gonna fuck it up for herself. I don't know what happened, I don't know if it indeed did happen how it was being foreshadowed, but it pissed me off so much I dropped the show mid-episode."
"My friend calls it violence porn. She's not wrong."
"I just couldn’t bear for Elizabeth Moss to stare into the camera for one more second."
"I quit when the stitches scene happened during Season 1. I can stand slasher films and most horror, but as a woman, that was just too much for me. The awfulness of it transcended so many levels. I was already depressed AF watching it, but that made me nope out."
"I really liked the show, but I realized at some point that it just kept getting more and more depressing and was really messing with my psyche. I think I made it to Season 4, but it's been a while."
5.The Americans
"Agreed. This is the one that I will never finish. I started watching it during its original run and quit. Several years later, I tried it again, thinking I had quit because my life was in upheaval at that time and remembering I loved the characters. I got to Season 4, Episode 4, 'Chloramphenicol,' and saw Nina die again and rage quit the show a second time. I had forgotten that that happened and was so upset."
"I watched a couple of episodes and couldn't place why I couldn't go further, but yeah, this thread made me realize why. The SA plotline was too graphic and seemed needless to me, too. (plus, I don't know, it didn't seem well-handled after). It was freaking triggering, to be honest. And...I don't like the lead characters at all."
"An (amazingly good) anime friend convinced me to watch. I dove in based on his praise with no clue what I was gonna watch. I still have some episodes left, but damn. The show is depressing AF. I had to take a break, and I don't know when I'll go back to it."
"I stopped watching for a simpler reason: I didn't like that they changed the Titans to CGI instead of the 2D animation they'd had for most of the show. It might sound shallow, but every time they were on screen, it completely took me out of it. Too distracting to continue."
"I just couldn’t take the constant violence — usually sexual violence against women. I liked the show, especially Reid, but it made me anxious."
"Also, the intros made me feel constant apprehension about doing mundane things. Like, just chatting with my husband and doing dishes might mean we'd all be killed soon."
8.The Walking Dead
"I stopped The Walking Dead in the same spot I stopped the comics. When they killed Glenn."
"Yep. Same episode, I reckon. But it wasn't that, it was because it became the same in circles storyline as previous seasons. No progress. I knew it was written to extend forever. And I didn't like that."
9.Black Mirror
"Black Mirror. I watched three or four episodes and was just done. I can only take so much soul-crushing before I tap out."
"I googled to find the Black Mirror episodes with positive endings. Then I watched only those (it didn’t take long). It’s a really great show this way."
10.Arrow
"I gave it all of my patience, but when Felicity started freaking out over some family issues a few days after nuking a city — was when I just couldn't anymore."
"I remember watching a scene where multiple good guys were fighting multiple bad guys at night. It was so hard to tell who was who, and they all had the exact same fight style. That's when I realized it wasn't for me anymore. In their superhero shows, CW has a tendency to make everyone around the main character become a superhero as well or, at the very least, know their secret. It totally drains the fun out of the character and the show."
"I got to Season 3 and just said, 'Leave those kids alone.'
"My big problem with Stranger Things is that there is too large of a gap between seasons. Part of me doesn't care that the next season is arriving soon when it's been so long since I saw the previous season."
12.The Flash
"Every villain was faster than him, always ten steps ahead of him. His friends became useless. The rules of speed changed. First, he couldn’t wear normal clothing because the friction of the speed set them on fire. In later seasons, he can run in normal clothes. His girlfriend/wife started to become more of the focus than Barry. Also, the fan base of Supergirl, with their weird fixation about Supergirl and Lex Luthors sister being lovers, was twisted. They tried getting some actresses and actors fired because of the crossover events, and other people had dialogue with Kara and Lana."
13.The 100
"I didn’t even make it past Season 1. All the main characters had so many 'they should be dead' moments that none of it had any stakes. In addition, many characters (specifically Clarke’s mom) seem to know things they shouldn’t have given the information available to advance the plot. I had to just give up eventually."
"I tried watching it three separate times, and each time, I had to stop. It was just a bunch of people making the worst decisions possible every step of the way. There wasn’t any real story to it. It was just drama for the sake of drama. It was like the writers just sat around asking each other what stupid things the characters could do in each episode. They had a bunch of interesting characters but just kept killing them off or making them useless in some other way. And every time some interesting plot line starts, they immediately trash it to switch to a new plot line."
14.Gotham
"I can't remember how far I got, but at some point, Gordon was always so angry. All the time. Then, he started using a gruff voice. It was not his normal voice anymore, and I wasn't sure if he was trying to sound meaner. I don't know. It got very repetitive, and I couldn't handle Gordon anymore."
"My problem with Gotham was that it's fine to set up a universe entirely different rules than ours, but it has to be internally consistent. Gotham just started making no damn sense because the rules changed every few episodes. Things don't have to be plausible for our universe, but when they're not even plausible for the fictional universe you've laid out, it becomes unwatchable."
15.Heroes
"Heroes. Great promise. Crashed quickly."
"This is commonly mentioned whenever the show is brought up, but the show really didn't suffer more than any other at the time, and they had two seasons (plus a reboot) to right the ship and never did. The show just had a great first season, and they didn't have the follow-through to keep it going (whether that was because of network interference or their own issues), but you could already see the cracks forming in the second season prior to the strike."
16.Prison Break
"Prison Break. The first season was fire. The second season was ok, but then it just kinda kept going for no reason?"
"I think they should've split the first season in half and made two seasons out of it. For a show called Prison Break, it wasn't about a prison break for very long."
17.The Book of Boba Fett
"I didn’t even make it through the first episode. I grew up with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, which had amazing stories about the characters from the original trilogy, among many more. This included Boba Fett, who was an amazing badass in all of the stories. Whatever they were trying to do in that show, they failed to make Boba Fett seem like a badass bounty hunter. They turned him into just a weak, common gangster. Plus, the Gamorreans looked like shit."
18.Breaking Bad
"People are going to hate me for this, but Breaking Bad. It's one of my husband's favorite shows, and we got all the way to the third episode of the last season, and I just couldn't do it anymore. The acting is phenomenal; the cinematography is some of the best. But I hated literally everyone; I've never liked movies/shows about drug use, and it was so damn depressing. He really wanted me to like it, so I tried, but he eventually just got annoyed that he had to push me to watch an episode. Just was not my thing."
19.How I Met Your Father
"Went in wanting to love it. I loved How I Met Your Mother. But I couldn't take it. It was so bad. They don't seem to understand what a cutaway is for. They said a comment, made a reference to some other time something like that happened, cut to that moment, and jumped back to the initial scene. That's it. No joke in the flashback. Nothing to subvert expectations or put a twist on things. Nothing. You put a flashback in to show something that needs to be shown, a punchline to a setup, clarification on what was said, etc. There was none of that. I don't care that they had Cobie Smulders on the show for an episode. It was garbage, and I forced myself to watch more to give it a chance, but it got worse in episode two. Dropped it five minutes in."
20.This Is Us
"Enjoyed the acting and the show, but it was just too emotionally taxing every episode."
"I think I stopped after two or three seasons because it was (to me) designed to make your tear glands function. I just couldn't take it anymore and quit watching when it got to the Jack episode."
21.Beef
"I thought it was great, but it was stressful and depressing to watch. I hope to finish it in the future, but I had to put it aside for now."
22.Bojack Horseman
"I couldn't finish Bojack Horseman. I loved the first season, but by the end of the third, it just got too depressing. I checked out after a few episodes into the fourth, if I recall correctly."
"I dropped it halfway through the final season because I was scared the finale would be depressing or upsetting like the season finales usually are."
23.The Bear
"The Bear. I’ve worked front of house in restaurants for over ten years, and the anxiety that show gives me just reminds me how stressful my job is, even though it’s mostly back of house stuff; my heart rate was through the roof when I was watching it."
24.Grey's Anatomy
"Grey's Anatomy. Once they killed off baby Grey and Sloan, I was done. That was stressful to see. I can’t believe it’s still going."
"I started watching it (I had never seen it before) and was so into it until the finale of Season 2. Then I got spoiled about Dr. O’Malley, and then basically watched every finale onwards and laughed at how over the top it all was. Almost everyone dying or getting pregnant or both…way too over the top."
25.Ozark
"Stopped mid-second season. I don’t understand how people enjoyed this show. Things just kept on getting worse and worse for everyone. Anytime something good happened, something crazy would happen to fuck it up even worse than before. I don’t care that it was really well acted, and I still love Jason Bateman and the rest of the cast, but it was just a joyless anxiety-producing hour every episode."
26.Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
"Every episode was just her making a total fool of herself, like a slow-motion train wreck. I made it almost to the end of the first season because the actress was great, and the songs were hilarious. But then there was this one episode where she's on a party bus with her ex and some friends; they're all stuck in traffic, and she does a humiliating stripper pole routine and then can't get away from the awkwardness because of the traffic. I don't think I even finished the episode. I kept up with the songs, though."
27.The Fall
"The Fall. Gave me major anxiety. Gave up after four episodes."
"I struggled with that, but it’s because it was the first crime drama I’d watched where I knew the areas. All the American/London-based ones are grand. One set where I live really caused me anxiety."
28.You
"That show would have been a perfect one-season mini-series. Everything after season one required a huge suspension of disbelief for me."
"Yeah, it changed from a believable story about a stalker to romanticizing a killer and having a weird twist every episode. It was interesting to see how the woman he was stalking was now deranged. I thought Season 3 could be awesome. And then it was just awful, and Season 4 felt like a separate storyline altogether."
29.Nip Tuck
"Nip Tuck. The show gets crazy dark part way through. I loved it until then. There was one part where the stressful drama seemed over, and an episode ended with everyone sitting down to a nice meal together, so I decided that’s where the show ends for me."
H/T: /r/television and /r/AskReddit
Are there any shows you couldn't finish? Let me know in the comments.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
