What's a "red flag" in a TV show that tells you it's about to go downhill?
What's a "red flag" in a TV show that tells you it's about to go downhill?
88 comments
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Having the Baby.
The budding love story is a go to for writers. Everyone loves it, and makes you feel emotions when they finally get together. Problem is, it has a natural path.
2 to 3 seasons to get together. 1 season of new bliss, 1 season of ups and downs, ending with a marriage proposal. 1 season of engagement ending in wedding. 1 season of new marriage stuff. Now what?
Married couples are boring. So what do we do now? Now it's time for the baby.
And babies are horrible on TV. People watch TV to escape reality, not hear a screaming child. So the dream couple has a baby and it's so tiring and so much work, but suddenly the show starts focusing on other characters, and then suddenly you know it's over.
The office was famous for this one. Everyone loves Jim and Pam, until the wedding, then who cares. They tried to force those feelings again with Andy and Erin, but you just can't.
Parks and rec luckily took a different route with Andy and April, but you can tell they were teetering on the edge, and in the final season everyone had kids anyway.
HIMYM had a worse approach because it wasn't that Ted was on the path, but rather Lily and Marshall already were and so kids came in earlier, and again change the entire show.
The list goes on, it is an official trope now
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A similar red flag, introducing a new, younger "cute" kid character because the previous cute kids aged out of the category.
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For some reason the Cosby show was the first thing to mind there. Move out of the way Rudy!
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I think Modern Family was the exception to this, at least with Mitchell & Cam. Gloria getting pregnant just had vibes of Married with Children when Peggy got pregnant and it felt like the start of the end.
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It worked with Modern Family because the show's entire premise was about Families and when that's the show's premise then the reverse is true, Families without children are boring lol
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Married with Children’s pregnancy story arc was driven by the Katey Sagal’s real life pregnancy. She unfortunately had a miscarriage after it had been written into the show, so the writers decided to bail on it by making it all a dream. It comes across as sloppy writing, but it was probably the most compassionate way to handle it.
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Parenting portrayal in HIMYM was natalist propaganda, Lily and Marshall's kid was maintenance free and they continued to live their old life.
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I'm not sure if that's a red flag as much as it's just a symptom of a show having gone for a while. Like if it shows on the air for a number of years then naturally couples are going to have to start moving forward with their lives so a baby's rather par for the course. However at the same time the longer show goes on the more likely it is to start to decline. I'm thinking this is more correlation than causation.
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When a character that has fully and officially died or been wrote off, returns in some deus ex machina style lazy way
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Often times for me if is when they clearly wrote a show to have 2 main characters to be together, and they make them get close as if they are going to finally get there in episode 6 (where I should stop watching) and then it doesn't happen until season 3 (when I'm fucking upset I bothered watching this shit because now I wanted them to never get together)
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Joke's on you, The Promised Neverland went downhill WAY before that point
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Celebrity appearances.
Not to say the show goes downhill because of it. But I feel as if it's often used as a crutch to attract more viewers.
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*screams in Ed sheeran on GOT"
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"We want to appeal to a wider audience that's not the typical X fan".
It's usually code for "stakeholders/execs want infinite growth, and we are too burnt out/creatively bankrupt to fight back. So, enjoy the change to another cookie cutter slop content".
Some shows even start out there already. Massive red flag.
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I would say that most shows start out there already these days. There's a whole bunch of boxes that have to be ticked off, instead of just creating an organic storyline with realistic and natural groups of people.
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"We are proud that not a single person in the production team has ever seen anything from this beloved IP we are adapting."
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When netflix picks it up and adds new seasons (using untalented writers instead of the ones that made the show good)
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When one or more of the original main character actors leave the show. They'll either introduce new characters to replace the originals or refocus the show on some of the existing, less-important ones. Sometimes a show can make it work, and occasionally you end up with something better, but it usually indicates the show has one, maybe two seasons of life left.
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Fonzarelli jumping over a shark while water skiing in a leather jacket.
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That's why some people will say "that show waterskied in a leather jacket " to mean that it's passed it's due date.
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The shark jumping episode of Happy Days was season 5 episode 3. The series went on for 11 seasons, meaning there were more episodes after jumping the shark then there were before.
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Alternative timelines
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Fringe disagrees
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Though there it really was a core component, so obviously itllt work
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And The Man In The High Castle. Or is that alternative universe?
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time travel in general, for me... unless the show is specifically about time travel.
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unless the show is specifically about time travel.
Even then... I mean, what has good chances to be OK is when the show is a pure serial with a defined story with a start and an end (so basically a looong movie cut in 40 minutes pieces), in a universe where the conditions of the time travel are clearly defined and limited.
When it is a series-serial mix (like >90% of TV shows theses days), with extra seasons which may or may not be ordered, you can be sure the writers will trip up, as they have to invent new things, and some of those things will break the conditions and the limits defined earlier and then it won't make sense anymore.
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Fucking La Brea
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It’s become a joke between my partner and I at this point, so many shows fall into this pit
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Rick and Morty Disagrees
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Starting to answer backstory questions no one really wanted to know. For example, I knew Seinfeld was running out the clock as soon as they gave Kramer a first name.
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when oliver shows up
seriously, one that really bothers me was Psych. my all-time fav buddy comedy. when the primary premise of the show is no longer on display, its time to wrap it up.
as the series wore on they relied less and less on 'shawns gift', and the magic was gone. they moved away from made the show great.. a guy succeeding with a unique talent despite himself. a comedic-ally driven contemporary sherlock holmes trope.
the subsequent movies doubled down on not using his talents and so they are even worse than the final years of the show.
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Ah yes. The Oliver/Poochie character.
ETA: Or Scrappie Fucking Doo
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Season 3 of a show that wasn’t originally planned to be 3+ seasons is usually around where it starts to drop off. There are exceptions, but I’ve seen several shows where S1 is fantastic, S2 is good, S3 is okay at best, and S4+ is utter trash.
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Clip Show! Nothing says "We're out of ideas" like a rehash of the currently available greatest hits.
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Community had clips from "previous episodes" that never existed in their bottle episode.
Most of the time I hate clip shows, but that time was okay.
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Clip shows are usually about “we didn’t adequately budget and need to make an episode using only one set and one day of shooting.”
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Many years ago, before things like Youtube or even VCRs, clip shows were actually pretty popular (well, assuming they were decently put together). It was really the only way, other than catching a rerun at some odd hour, to see some of the show's best and most memorable moments again, and like a "Greatest Hits" album people liked them even if there really wasn't much of anything actually new in them.
Nowadays of course they are pretty much obsolete.
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Maybe Moe gets a cellphone?
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Original writer/creator/actor leaves the show. There can be a lot of reasons why they leave, and sometimes it's a really good reason, but the show almost always suffers.
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When they do the black and white episode that is from like the 1940s
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I wish they did like in the 1940s... Instead, current directors cannot shoot proper B&W and just rely on hackneyed gimmicks (I mean stuff like using the overly contrasted shade of a Venetian blind, smoke going through a ray of light, ...). There is always too much white and too much black, which kills the range in between, unlike old movies and TV shows which are made of shades of grey where everything can be seen clearly; settings are not adapted either; anyway they have no idea of what they are shooting, they simply shoot in colour and then remove colours in post-processing like they do usually when they apply their stupid colour filter (blue-brown = Scandinavian police drama, lovat green = Germany, yellow = Mediterranean, blue = techno-thriller, etc.). Any low-rated chain-produced family entertainment TV series from the 50s and 60s, filmed by a random director from back then, exhibits a better B&W picture than those modern arty attempts.
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Likely related:
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Flashbacks.
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Romance between two characters that seems to come out of nowhere because the main characters have already gotten together.
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More than 4 seasons.
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6 seasons and a movie though
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Nah, The Simpsons was good for 9 or 10 seasons.
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A character explaining that justice is following your gut rather than the law while being some sort part of justice system.
I stopped many show because of that.
That is also why I loved what B99 did so much.-
Stupid law stopping us from searching his house! Ugh a warrant? So stupid and useless, right people watching?; we should get rid of those stupid amendments!
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"my friend the cop is an honest guy! He only murdered a guy because he was pushed after all these drugs and corruption troubles into being blackmail. The whole squat should cover for him. That's the right thing to do." And so many horrible lines...
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When the writers start to lean too hard on character shticks.
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I don't usually watch bad TV but one thing I do notice is that if a show doesn't have a showrunner, or has almost as many writers as it does episodes, it won't end well.
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Altered Carbon suffered greatly because of this. Some episodes are outstanding, and the show overall was good, but because there are a bunch of different writers and directors, there's an inconsistency that is off-putting. It really showed through the second half of the second season, after his sister showed up. A previously pretty interesting story became super cringe and repetitive.
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I wish I was able to avoid watching bad TV. I almost exclusivally watch older show to avoid bad surprises.
Would you mind sharing your definition, so I can identify bad TV better ?-
To me, "bad TV" is a show with any combination of bad acting or bad writing, TBH. I also tend to avoid shows that haven't completed their runs, because a lot of shows get cancelled before they get a chance to conclude properly. I honestly just check the IMDb rating and the trailer and if the rating is above 7.0 or so then it's probably not bad. Unless the fanbase is huge, sometimes the score is inflated.
Sometimes I will find shows by looking at which programs got Emmys over the past few years but that's not the most efficient way to find new shows IMHO
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The narrator asks you to tell your friends to watch the show
they didnt
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When there’s a big shakeup in writers.
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Unnecessary cameos by guest stars that completely pull you out of the narrative. Bonus points if it's Ed Sheeran.
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It's on Syfy.
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The Expanse begs to differ. (Disclaimer, I own Dinocroc vs Supergator on DVD)
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The SciFi (before the rebranding) Dune miniseries are really good. They're my favorite versions of Dune so far, and they did Dune Messiah and Children of Dune too. Those two are both part of the "Children of Dune" miniseries.
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When the actors have so much Botox they can’t move their faces. Oh sorry, that happens the second the movie/show starts.
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When a show focuses on women in season 1 and in season 2 they add a white male character as a love interest. Examples: Supergirl, Once Upon A Time, Yellowjackets.
Similarly, when a shows focuses on women in season 1 and they add a whole bunch of male characters in season 2 that they give a ton of screen-time to. Extreme example: The Wilds
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