With the news that Castle will continue (sans co-lead Stana Katic) and that Game of Thrones is hurtling toward its end, we were reminded about the fickle nature of TV show lifespans, with some lasting forever and some lasting for a too brief period. Because of that, we decided to ask the staff which long-adored show from the past hung on a little too long.
Scrubs
People apparently think there’s a ninth season of Scrubs out there. That obviously can’t be true, because the eighth season finale was so well put together that nothing needed to come after it. Fan favorite characters came back for an emotional farewell and “The Book of Love” made millions want to punch their hearts out as we watched the cast live out a future we all dreamed of. –Keith Reid-Cleveland
Roseanne
I have a vague remembrance of not being allowed to watch Roseanne when it first began airing in the fall of 1988. I would have been nine-years-old at the time, and the show was considered suggestive for its era, so watching it was off limits for me in the earlier years. But after my parents finally gave in at around the third season or so – and after catching up on the first two seasons in syndication – I eventually came to learn that the show wasn’t indecent at all, and was actually quite outstanding.
From the show’s first eight seasons, Roseanne dealt with typical Midwestern blue-collar family issues, and in my opinion, did so as accurately as has ever been portrayed by Hollywood. Some of the themes would hit extremely close to home for fans of the show: struggles to pay bills; being upset at losing a job that you hated to begin with; domestic violence; teen sex and underage drinking; relationship struggles; and LGBT issues.
Looking back, the way Roseanne handled each of those themes both gracefully and hilariously – with the exception of the “Roseanne Kiss” episode, which seems extremely dated 20 years later – is simply unmatched by any other show in history.
And then the final season happened. My goodness, where do we even start? We’ll let Uproxx’s own Josh Kurp explain:
Season nine [was] a bizarre middle finger to convention that had the Conners…winning the Illinois State Lottery. The prize: $108 million. It made no sense at the time, and didn’t for the next 22 episodes, until the series finale. In case you’ve forgotten: the Conners becoming millionaires? Never happened. Everything we witnessed was Roseanne coping with the death of her husband, Dan, who we all thought survived his heart attack from a season prior. Also, Jackie’s gay and DJ turned into a serial killer, probably.
Some of the lowlights of Season 9 included Roseanne attending The Jerry Springer Show (as a guest), Roseanne and Jackie modeling for Playboy, Jackie becoming engaged to a prince (played by Jim Varney), and Roseanne fighting terrorists on a train. Also, the set was re-designed with hideous furniture and appliances. Aside from the main character’s names, nothing felt even close to resembling the show we all loved .
Of course, the final episode included a voice-over explaining that the entire lottery thing was all a dream, and nothing that had occurred throughout the entire season actually happened. But it was still a huge kick in the teeth to the people who had been so loyal to the Conner family for eight straight years. –Brian SharpThe X-Files
Before FOX, creator Chris Carter and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson decided to grace audiences with additional (and not so great) episodes of The X-Files, the popular series did the same during its original run with the eighth and ninth seasons. With Mulder on the run and Scully on the periphery, FBI special agents John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish) were brought in to continue Carter’s supposedly good work. It didn’t work, especially since the season seven finale, “Requiem,” had originally been written to serve as the series finale. Not only did the episode serve as an excellent bookend to the show — especially since it brought everything full circle back to Oregon — but it also finally gave Mulder what he’d always wanted: contact. –Andrew Husband
The Wire
Okay, hear me out. In The Wire‘s fifth season, which was shorter than the rest, the biggest problem is that there’s an unshakeable sense that the whole thing is being rushed. It returns focus on McNulty (Dominic West), who, after happily sitting out the fourth season as a patrolman, goes completely off the rails faking a murder investigation, and his arrogance in doing so does away with any of the goodwill he’d worked to earn from his fellow cops (and the audience).
As the fourth season chronicled the lives a group of school kids and how the education system factors into the problems of the Baltimore drug trade, the fifth tries to get us to care about the politics behind the inner workings of the Baltimore Sun newspaper, and it just flat-out doesn’t resonate. Not to mention showrunner David Simon’s not at all subtle vitriol toward his former employer, which was severe to the point that it nearly compromised the story.
Finally, while no season of The Wire ever really tied itself up with a bow, the fourth season ended at a reasonably happy place for most of the major characters (except Bubbles), particularly Omar, who had left Baltimore for a new life in Mexico. Simon has said that Omar’s fate was “beyond petition,” and while Omar does return and ultimately meet his fate, so many additional characters were faced with a grim, violent end (RIP Butchie) that seemed to border on unnecessary. –Christian Long
Mad Men
Mad Men was, to me, the perfect show with impossibly clever dialogue and the ability to draw all emotions out a viewer thanks to the sterling cast and the daring storytelling. I liked both halves of the final season. I don’t think Mad Men ever wasted a breath or a moment of our attention. I’m actually content with where the show ended things, providing an assumed circular conclusion to Don’s journey from creative mastermind to cog to burnout and back to mastermind.
So, if everything is so hunky dory, why am I posting this on this list about shows that should have ended sooner? The second to last episode. Don blurts out his deeply held wartime secret while getting drunk at a random VFW with the manager of the motel he’s staying at before he gets accused of stealing donations and, more or less, run out of town. On his way, he gives a young grifter a ride and then a golden opportunity to take over a new life and pursue a new direction with Don’s car as he sits at the bus stop. Where is he going? What will he do? Who will he become? Again, the finale does a good job, but I would have preffered the mystery. – Jason Tabrys
So, which TV show do you think overstayed its welcome?
