Had such an interesting premise of a rogue genius inventor sneaking in sentience of consciousness in his pet android project. Gemma Chan being in it made it a easier watch too.

But then they kill off major characters in later seasons for stupid reasons and then bring up the concept of a hybrid fetus....and the whole synth messiah god like arc was asinine. As much as it pains me, I'm glad that it was cancelled and we never saw that.... Plus

Tap for spoiler

the show could not go on without Gemma. RIP Mia.

It's been practically forgotten about

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 60 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Prison Break.

Season one is breaking out of prison. So far so good.

Season two is a manhunt. That's fair, it's the aftermath.

Season three is breaking out of prison.. again! But this time in Panama. Technically that is the show, so alright.

Season four is a secret shadow organization who can cure all diseases but don't.

Also there is a post-show film that adds another prison break for some reason. Also I'm learning the show was revived for a fifth season, I can't say what that's about.

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[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 59 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

I say this regretfully: Westworld.

Look, honestly I was into it up until the last episode. I knew the story was twisting and turning a bit too much but I kept watching and very much enjoyed the last season.

I say that it lost sight of its original premise because yes, technically it did. But that doesn’t mean the content wasn’t still great — this is a perfect example of losing your audience by not following the original narrative. I sometimes think the show would’ve been more financially successful had they dragged out the first season into several but I wouldn’t have wanted them to actually do that.

[–] kromem@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Can't disagree more. I do think the clear conflicts between HBO and the executive producers (there's entire scenes in S4 dedicated to a meta-FU to the corporate demand for telling the violence story and not the maze in field story) led to a more disjointed later seasons than planned.

But rewatching S1 it's clear that the twist at the end of S4 was planned from the very start, which is just wild, and probably the biggest temporal misdirection in the history of film and TV — fitting from Jonathan Nolan, but still unexpected.

And then if you go and see the original Westworld film, the degree to which they were already starting off with such a different take can be even more appreciated. It goes from a film about a robot rebellion where the robots can talk but literally no one ever asks why it's happening or even talks to the robot at all to a series of "if you can't tell the difference does it matter?"

The whole point

The original narrative IS the narrative about it already being a simulation with the 'guests' also already simulated. It's just that it doesn't appear that way at first because it's a gradual reveal across multiple planned seasons that's got its own smaller first season set of reveals along the way. So when you realize the twist in the first season you think "oh, now I'm caught up with the events" and when you see Bernard is a machine of an earlier human you think "oh, this is the exception and not the rule." But there are details in the first season that can only be explained by the events revealed in the later seasons.

S2 has terrible pacing and I do think there are various issues with how S3-S4 progresses in certain arcs, but the broad plot was very clearly planned from the start in hindsight, but HBO had it out for them (look at how quickly after the cancellation the series wasn't even available on HBO's streaming properties), and unfortunately they didn't get the S5 to reveal just how much had been layered in earlier on.

TLDR

TL;DR: You were always supposed to have been watching the civilization level fidelity test, not original events playing out.

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[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 44 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Dr. Who.

When started, it was a show to teach kids about history.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 44 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Sherlock unfortunately. S1-2 are some of the best TV I've ever watched. 3 was okay, and then 4 was completely off the rails, with each episode being about some zany conspiracy. Granted it can't take all the credit, Doyle did the same.

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[–] terraborra@lemmy.nz 43 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Happy Days when the Fonz jumped a shark on waterskis.

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[–] IEatDaFeesh@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The Walking Dead. It just became a generic human vs human thing after a while. Then Negan, and then back to boring TV

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago

The Expanse (books, never finished the show) went really hard on this. It was difficult for me to finish because it was all just people being dumb for more than 100k pages with aliens thrown in for no reason.

[–] krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

When it was still new I watched the first season then quickly got bored of the second. Around episode 3. I said to myself "I'm going to start the last episode of this season and if they're still on this fucking farm then I am never fucking watching it again"

And it was so.

NO idea why everyone else seemed to feel differently about it.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 30 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Rosanne, the 90's sitcom starring Rosanne Barr and John Goodman. One of the many "living room set with a couch in the middle" family sitcoms, this one about an Illinois blue collar family, the Connors, and their life and times trying to make ends meet. Eight seasons of this premise making acclaimed TV, and then in the ninth season, they win the lottery, go on all these outlandish adventures, Dan cheats on Rosanne, etc. The series finale reveals the whole show is a story being told by Rosanne Barr, and that the last season was mostly bullshit, they hadn't won the lottery, Dan had died of his heart attack in the previous season, and the show ended on a "wtf was all that?" kind of note.

I think I'll also mention Lassie, which is just kinda weird. Non-Americans might not even know what I'm talking about. It's a show about an unusually intelligent rough collie named Lassie. Most folks who are familiar with it know it by its first incarnation, where Lassie is a farm dog who spends her days with the farm boy named Little Timmy. Little Timmy goes on precocious little adventures and often gets into trouble, and Lassie has to help, sometimes by fetching objects but often by fetching the adults to help. And everyone pretends that they can understand Lassie's barking. Here is a stereotypical exchange from the show:

MOM is in kitchen. LASSIE enters

Lassie: Bark. Bark. Woof.

Mom: What is it girl?

Lassie: Bark. Bark.

Mom: Timmy fell down a well?! Where?"

Lassie: Woof. Bark bark.

Mom: On Old Mister Knickerficker's ranch? Well let's go!

Note: You know how Darth Vader didn't say "Luke, I am your father" or Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty?" Yeah, Timmy never fell down a well. He fell off cliffs, into rivers and lakes, down mine shafts and into quicksand, but never into a well.

The thing is, after several seasons, Lassie just...became a forest ranger's dog. And other than "show about a smart, fluffy dog" it had basically nothing in common with it's original run. And then for it's last few seasons, it became an anthology series where Lassie roamed around on her own having random adventures of the week.

[–] alekwithak@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Roseanne really went off the rails more than her show did.

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[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Simpsons. They were really against celebrityism and pop culture in the beginning, then they went in the complete opposite and started worshiping celebrities. Ugh. New simpsons is dead to me.

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[–] rising_man@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Lost

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[–] Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Sliders lost mostly their original cast, and plot of new wacky alternative realities and got obsessed with running from and fighting the Kromaggs.

[–] alekwithak@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

I will die on the hill that this is the single show from the 90s that is most deserving of a reboot/reimagining or even a continuation would be satisfying. Though if they made it back home these days they'd still think it was a parallel Earth.

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[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

Weeds

[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Agents of Shield.

S1 and 2 Sort of a normal seasons - agents dealing with powered people, the fall of Shield S3 Space travel for a bit, more Inhumans S4 Ghost Rider, ghosts and stuck in a computer dystopian nightmare S5 Time travel S6 Space travel S7 More time travel

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[–] salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 24 points 1 week ago (9 children)

The Attack on Titan finale left me scratching my head

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[–] rozodru@piefed.social 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Family Matters

Show went from a wholesome sitcom about a family in Chicago to whacky borderline scifi. It was a spin-off of Perfect Strangers and just started going off the rails like around the 4th season when they retconned the existance of the one daughter Judy. Then by the end it just became the Steve Urkel show.

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

“24” Just got more and more absurd and soap operatic. Also how much can one man go through?

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[–] nicky7@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There is a phrase for that, it's called "Jumping the Shark".

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[–] FrankDeath@infosec.pub 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Arrested Development

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