Where Modern TV Series Have Jumped The Shark

[Cassandra]

S.W.A.T. (2017- )

 

Jim Street's hair.

 

The original S.W.A.T. was an entertaining Aaron Spelling TV show, a spin off The Rookies.  One of the characters was Jim Street, handsome and heroic played by Robert Urich who would go on to star in about a dozen TV shows along with various guest starring roles, movies, and mini-series.

 

The character was played by Colin Farrell in the 2004 Motion Picture, so you know he was important to the plot.

 

The current incarnation, besides looking like he's either in his fifties or has meth for breakfast, has a hair style that can only be explained if his parents were garden gnomes.  It looks like he's trying to pledge a fraternity at a Midwestern Agricultural college.

 

 

 

[death tribble]

The reboot of the series Charlie's Angels lasted only 7 episodes. If they had made all three cops to begin with like the original then maybe it would have lasted.

[Cassandra]

Agents of SHIELD (2013- )

 

Killing off Lucy Lawless in One Episode

 

The first season of Agents of SHIELD started out with a lot of goodwill.  Agent Coulson was a popular character and his death at the hands of Loki in the Avengers was just the thing to rally the heroes just before the Battle of New York.  So when he was brought back from the dead to lead a new team of agents hopes were high.

 

The first few mission had some human and some references to Marvel comic book characters and history.  They were kind of dull and forced, and the romance between Fitz-Simmons could be seen coming from Alpha Centauri.  And the mystery about Coulson's coming back from the dead, and the main villain the Clairvoyant took too long.

 

Then due to the events of Captain America: Winter Soldier, SHIELD was split apart, and one of the team members was found to be a traitor, which sadly didn't make him the least bit more interesting.  Coulson got made at May because she was keeping a secret, and the U.S. Government got involved in the form of walking hard boiled Easter Egg Glenn Talbot.  The traitor was replaced with Tripp, a living link to Captain America's Howling Commandos.

 

And we finally got a proper villain in the form of the late Bill Paxton.  He delivered such interest and energy that the earlier stumbles of the beginning were forgotten.  Skye proves to the the Ace in the Hole, May gets her revenge, and the only bad spot was the lost of Paxton for future episodes.  Even Nick Fury showed up to pass the torch.

 

Then season two game.  First Agent Carter and the Howling Commandos showed up in a flashback about a mysterious device.  The device shows up again along with Lucy "Xena" Lawless.  Epic battles, fun dialogue, interesting mysterious seemed on the horizon only to be torpedoed by the writers who decided that killing off a legend would be a good thing. 

 

This first brutal and unnecessary death started a string of blood letting that had Tripp killed when he was turned to stone, one of the cast members losing her arms, a scientist wrists slit by his robot girlfriend, and a powerful young female warrior introduced just long enough to get her throat slit.

 

But at least their givign nightmares to the writers at American Horror Stories.

[Cassandra]

3 minutes ago, death tribble said:

The reboot of the series Charlie's Angels lasted only 7 episodes. If they had made all three cops to begin with like the original then maybe it would have lasted.

 

That would have helped, but if it was more like the original series and less like the movies that would have helped a lot.  Robert Wagner was suppose to be the voice of Charlie, but when he read the script he passed and we got Victor Garber.

 

I expect the coming movie to be a disaster as well.

[Bazza]

Arrow season 1

Hi my name is Oliver Queen. I am a billionaire playboy who was cheating on my girlfriend with her sister when out partying with my father on a yacht in the South China Sea. We were all nearly murdered by my mum and my parents elite friends however the main target was my dad not me or my fling. You see my parents and their elite friends orchestrated a criminal conspiracy to raze the lower socioeconomic suburbs of my city for profit. Later, drifting in the life boat my dad got a conscience and told me to right his sins then committed suicide in front of me and left me stranded. I drifted onto a island and tried to survive for five years, everybody back home presumed me dead. I became a monster, military man, trained in special forces, just to survive. Later on I came back to my city to honour my dad’s request and bring an extreme form of “justice” as a vigilante called Arrow — i.e. Batman cross dressing as Robin Hood. This is where my story picks up. 

 

Arrow season 2

- Slade Wilson, AWOL from ASIS. ASIS is never shown to find out why or check up on him. 

- Ivo forcing Ollie to choose between Sara or Shado being killed execution style. 

- Slade Wilson a person who should understand Ollie’s predicament, yet blames him anyway? Then repeating Ivo’s scenario with Moria & Thea? That’s when Arrow jumped the shark.

 

Arrow has a "man of steel" problem. They forgotten what a hero is.

[Bazza]

1 hour ago, Cassandra said:

Agents of SHIELD (2013- )

 

Killing off Lucy Lawless in One Episode

 

 

Really?  I still haven’t gotten over the unnecessary killing of Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows) in season 1. 

 

A fair point is that the  show was flawed from the beginning because it didn’t have any input from Kevin Feige. That makes it ‘MCU apocrypha’. Basically “MCU Extended Universe” (to use Star Wars jargon). 

[death tribble]

Dr Who the reboot (2005-)

Casting Matt Smith as the Doctor. Matt was too young for the role and lacks a certain something that the Dr has to possess, gravitas. Then we have River Song who is a Mary Sue. That is when it jumped the shark. We also have the Weeping Angels turning up in numbers which they do not need to do. One is bad enough. And casting James Cordon in one story was bad enough but bringing him back running around with a cybermat was just stupid.

[Cygnia]

2 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Dr Who the reboot (2005-)

Casting Matt Smith as the Doctor. Matt was too young for the role and lacks a certain something that the Dr has to possess, gravitas. Then we have River Song who is a Mary Sue. That is when it jumped the shark. We also have the Weeping Angels turning up in numbers which they do not need to do. One is bad enough. And casting James Cordon in one story was bad enough but bringing him back running around with a cybermat was just stupid.

I blame Steven Moffat for all this.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Elementary (2012)

The very first episode, where they pretended it was Sherlock Holmes moved to modern day, but got nearly every single aspect of the stories, the characters, and the setting as wrong as possible, often in deliberately insulting ways.

 

If it had just been some kind of detective series that felt like Sherlock, it would have been okay.

[Pattern Ghost]

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

i.e. Batman cross dressing as Robin Hood

 

Batman has never been a casual killer.

[Cancer]

Network execs, who don't know how to write (because execs never know how to do anything except give themselves money), think writing is unimportant because if it was important they'd do it.  And when writing is unimportant, if there is supposed to be any sort of story, the resulting product sucks.  This is why the only shows networks can do adequately are writing-free by their nature: home videos, game shows, competitive entertainment (best singer, dancer, etc), and screw-your-buddy reality shows.

[Greywind]

Supernatural starting season 6 and the general "so, what are we going to do this season?" The first 5 seasons under Kripke were unified by his vision. Each season had a point to it leading to the next season until the s5 ending.

[Scott Ruggels]

Game of Thrones, Season 7, and then Season 8.

 Compressed ending on what should have been a 10 year series.  Weiss & Bennioff, rushed it, and wrote out of character actions to "wrap things up, soon." so that they can move on to work on their Star Wars movies instead.  a Rather good article appeared in Scientific American, on how the writing change, and the type of story became Psychological, rather than "Sociological", which it had been in earlier seasons.  Sure, GRRM probably passed to them an outline of how the story would be ending, but it was ruched, and in My opinion, botched, and now serves as a shining example, that endings are incredibly important to a good, sound, story.

[Christopher R Taylor]

They almost all go bad, because they keep going beyond when they have a story.  Britain's concept is better: they do a show when they have a story ready.  Then that series is done, until they come up with another story.  Still crash and burn sometimes (Sherlock cratered bad) but usually its a much better result.

[Bazza]

3 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Batman has never been a casual killer.

 

But Robin Hood did. The Batman allusion, not an explicit straightjacket. That said, it was as much as Star City substituting for Gotham & Arrow substituting for Batman, without being Batman. The tone, style and noirish elements of Arrow call to mind Batman, at least to me. So with Arrow finishing up, CW has replaced Arrow with another Batman clone in Batwoman.

 

Flash, Supergirl and Legends are more lighthearted, and colourful that remind me of Silver Age, (Legends May be Bronze Age). Arrow feels like Golden Age mixed with pulping hard-boiled crime fiction. 

[dmjalund]

HEROES Season 2 where they redefined peoples powers

[Pattern Ghost]

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

Arrow substituting for Batman

 

Gotcha. Yeah, he's the CW Batman stand in. They even stole a ton of Batman villains for him.

[Bazza]

7 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Gotcha. Yeah, he's the CW Batman stand in. They even stole a ton of Batman villains for him.

 

Yep. Wonder what Batwoman will do without the League of Shadows & Ra’s. By the same token, Flash is as much an Arrowverse stand in for Superman. 

[Pattern Ghost]

1 minute ago, Bazza said:

By the same token, Flash is as much an Arrowverse stand in for Superman. 

 

Technically, they have a Superman, and a Supergirl, just on an alternate Earth. I wonder if they'll be squishing them together in the next crossover, though.

[Bazza]

47 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Technically, they have a Superman, and a Supergirl, just on an alternate Earth. I wonder if they'll be squishing them together in the next crossover, though.

 

You mean, have Supergirl on Earth 1? 

[Pattern Ghost]

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

You mean, have Supergirl on Earth 1? 

 

Well, they're doing Crisis on Infinite Earths, so I'm thinking that could involve smushing some of their Earths together. (I think Black Lightning will remain its own thing.)

[Greywind]

I told Stephen Amell a few years ago on his FB page that Batman wanted his villains back. Not really their fault, tho. Green Arrow's rogues gallery sucks compared to 99.9999% of the rest of DC's heroes.

[death tribble]

Heroes jumped the shark every time they nerfed Peter

[Cassandra]

22 hours ago, Bazza said:

 

Really?  I still haven’t gotten over the unnecessary killing of Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows) in season 1. 

 

A fair point is that the  show was flawed from the beginning because it didn’t have any input from Kevin Feige. That makes it ‘MCU apocrypha’. Basically “MCU Extended Universe” (to use Star Wars jargon). 

 

I do miss Saffron Burrows and actually hoped that Grant was pulling a scam.  It was at least somewhat logical if regrettable killing, unlike the bloodletting that same later.

[Spence]

22 hours ago, Bazza said:

Arrow has a "man of steel" problem. They forgotten what a hero is.

 

Not just Arrow. 

Modern comics as a whole have essentially forgotten what a Hero is.

These days they are so busy trying to "gimmick" their way into popularity rather than telling a convincing heroic story.

 

Well, I'll leave it there, no use for a rant...

 

20 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Batman has never been a casual killer.

 

Original Batman (1939 pulp) showed little or no remorse for killing or maiming criminals, bad guys caught in the act and violent were routinely dispatched. 

 

And I remember he actually carried and used 45's for a while.