Over the years, I've watched TV. Not some tv, but rather all of it. I just like to know what's out there. In that process, I've unfortunately watched a number of boring and terrible shows. I thought it might be fun to have a thread where people nominate their worst shows of all time. I'm mostly leaving out reality tv shows, since basically all of them would qualify for this list.
In no particular order, here's a list of some of the shows that I thought were a complete waste of time. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, since I'm listing the most forgettable shows.
NCIS - who knew that the military was so prone to crime? Uninteresting people go on what seems like an infinite number of template adventures chasing down leads related to military misconduct. Yawn.
Stargate SG1 - Who knew that a 2 1/2 star movie needed 10 years of followup material starring Mcguyver. The series took us to hundreds of alien planets, every single one of which looked exactly like the forest located behind the film studio. Obviously all soldiers from the future wear used army surplus gear. There was an episode once where they hired a CG animator, that was a 2 parter.
Shameless - I grew up in a bad area, so the dim witted chronicles of dirt poor sociopaths was dull and grimy. Alcoholics are boring people, no matter how often they scream and punch each other.
CSI x - this goes for all the myriad CSI series. In what appeared to be a franchise written by people that thought crimes were solved via the donning of ray ban sunglasses, a crack team of c list actors investigated repetitive crimes using a single nonsensical technique - zooming into low grade security camera footage of blurry license plates, and then yelling "enhance that". At this point in each episode, the plate number would magically depixilate, revealing the identity of the perpetrator, at which point one of the c listers would exclaim "we got em". One of the numerous spinoffs starred Gary Sinise, apparently because David Caruso was too charming and relatable.
Dr Who - A childhood favorite of mine, in the days before my brain was completely formed, I discovered later in life that the entire show revolved around a guy stopping various large scale armies with a penlight, and witty remarks. Some episodes by certain writers were good, but by and large, the show's insistence on repeatedly having the doctor bring literal armies to a halt by explaining to them that they probably didn't want to invade anyway seemed more than a bit contrived.
Arrow - Another show that had to bend every plotline to fit a contrived main theme, a guy with a bow and arrow takes on armies of armed gunmen with banana clips and attack helicopters. In the background, a seemingly unending soap opera rolled on for a decade.
Alias - It didn't start out as the worst show ever, but after a short while, the plots fell victim to increasingly contrived plotlines. By the end of it, it turned out that every member of the main star's extended family was in fact a key player in an international conspiracy. Skip to season 5 to see her cousin's uncle's sister by marrige manipulating the KGB into a shadow war with the CIA, run by her long lost brother or something. Apparently there were only about 15 people involved in geopolitics, each one blood related to the protagonist.
Mad About You - Paul Rieser and Helen Hunt spent years dominating filler time in daytime network content slots. Their tepid milquetoast adventures included politely complaining about things, and having minor difficulties living in the city.
Emmerdale - This show has been running for 50 years, and nothing has happened on it yet. I think one of the cousins got married to one of the neighbors once. I can't remember which was which.
Flash Gordon - This is why you don't make shows with no money, no known actors, and no talented writers. You just end up with a guy in a jacket walking to one location after another. It was a pretty good quality jacket, and it looked like there were several people in charge of keeping it clean. Otherwise it may have been a series of identical jackets, not sure.
Luther - While Idris Elba can be talented in some other franchises, Luther was a stupid show. A cost cutter clone of silence of the lambs, an independent police detective flirts with his psychopathic nemesis while solving average cases across a variety of backdrops, ranging from overcast days in great Briton, to rainy afternoons in London. I think the finale could have been improved if the sun came out in the last episode, so that at least one surprising thing could have happened in the entire series.
Ancient Aliens - Do you like science, but feel like everyone involved suffers from having a 80+ IQ? Ancient Aliens stepped up to deliver hundreds of episodes where the bottom 10% of your high school class answers life's greatest questions, utilizing a mixture of blurry bigfoot vhs tapes, and clumsy drawings of Mayan mythology. A great relief for people that found "Mcguyver" too intellectual, with it's functional 4th grade chemistry, and crude understanding of physics concepts such as displacement and leverage. One can only lament the untimely demise of the Bogdanoff brothers, since they would have unquestionably joined the cast at some point otherwise.
Keeping up with the Kardashians - A show that dared to ask the question, "what if we gave the stupidest people in America 2% of the GNP" The answer? About 15 years later they had designed some earrings or something. I think one of them used to run down the street really fast.
The Bold and the Beautiful - Soap operas are all the same, but this one seemed even more the same than usual. Extremely repetitive and dull, it featured people with eyepatches discussing interpersonal matters while drinking.
Literally everything on the CW network - Writing a teen drama series is like shooting fish in a barrel, and the results are equally uninteresting. Some were better than others of course, but in general, these shows are so formulaic that you can often guess an episode's entire plot within the first few minutes.
Anybody have a show that they think was a complete waste?
In no particular order, here's a list of some of the shows that I thought were a complete waste of time. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, since I'm listing the most forgettable shows.
NCIS - who knew that the military was so prone to crime? Uninteresting people go on what seems like an infinite number of template adventures chasing down leads related to military misconduct. Yawn.
Stargate SG1 - Who knew that a 2 1/2 star movie needed 10 years of followup material starring Mcguyver. The series took us to hundreds of alien planets, every single one of which looked exactly like the forest located behind the film studio. Obviously all soldiers from the future wear used army surplus gear. There was an episode once where they hired a CG animator, that was a 2 parter.
Shameless - I grew up in a bad area, so the dim witted chronicles of dirt poor sociopaths was dull and grimy. Alcoholics are boring people, no matter how often they scream and punch each other.
CSI x - this goes for all the myriad CSI series. In what appeared to be a franchise written by people that thought crimes were solved via the donning of ray ban sunglasses, a crack team of c list actors investigated repetitive crimes using a single nonsensical technique - zooming into low grade security camera footage of blurry license plates, and then yelling "enhance that". At this point in each episode, the plate number would magically depixilate, revealing the identity of the perpetrator, at which point one of the c listers would exclaim "we got em". One of the numerous spinoffs starred Gary Sinise, apparently because David Caruso was too charming and relatable.
Dr Who - A childhood favorite of mine, in the days before my brain was completely formed, I discovered later in life that the entire show revolved around a guy stopping various large scale armies with a penlight, and witty remarks. Some episodes by certain writers were good, but by and large, the show's insistence on repeatedly having the doctor bring literal armies to a halt by explaining to them that they probably didn't want to invade anyway seemed more than a bit contrived.
Arrow - Another show that had to bend every plotline to fit a contrived main theme, a guy with a bow and arrow takes on armies of armed gunmen with banana clips and attack helicopters. In the background, a seemingly unending soap opera rolled on for a decade.
Alias - It didn't start out as the worst show ever, but after a short while, the plots fell victim to increasingly contrived plotlines. By the end of it, it turned out that every member of the main star's extended family was in fact a key player in an international conspiracy. Skip to season 5 to see her cousin's uncle's sister by marrige manipulating the KGB into a shadow war with the CIA, run by her long lost brother or something. Apparently there were only about 15 people involved in geopolitics, each one blood related to the protagonist.
Mad About You - Paul Rieser and Helen Hunt spent years dominating filler time in daytime network content slots. Their tepid milquetoast adventures included politely complaining about things, and having minor difficulties living in the city.
Emmerdale - This show has been running for 50 years, and nothing has happened on it yet. I think one of the cousins got married to one of the neighbors once. I can't remember which was which.
Flash Gordon - This is why you don't make shows with no money, no known actors, and no talented writers. You just end up with a guy in a jacket walking to one location after another. It was a pretty good quality jacket, and it looked like there were several people in charge of keeping it clean. Otherwise it may have been a series of identical jackets, not sure.
Luther - While Idris Elba can be talented in some other franchises, Luther was a stupid show. A cost cutter clone of silence of the lambs, an independent police detective flirts with his psychopathic nemesis while solving average cases across a variety of backdrops, ranging from overcast days in great Briton, to rainy afternoons in London. I think the finale could have been improved if the sun came out in the last episode, so that at least one surprising thing could have happened in the entire series.
Ancient Aliens - Do you like science, but feel like everyone involved suffers from having a 80+ IQ? Ancient Aliens stepped up to deliver hundreds of episodes where the bottom 10% of your high school class answers life's greatest questions, utilizing a mixture of blurry bigfoot vhs tapes, and clumsy drawings of Mayan mythology. A great relief for people that found "Mcguyver" too intellectual, with it's functional 4th grade chemistry, and crude understanding of physics concepts such as displacement and leverage. One can only lament the untimely demise of the Bogdanoff brothers, since they would have unquestionably joined the cast at some point otherwise.
Keeping up with the Kardashians - A show that dared to ask the question, "what if we gave the stupidest people in America 2% of the GNP" The answer? About 15 years later they had designed some earrings or something. I think one of them used to run down the street really fast.
The Bold and the Beautiful - Soap operas are all the same, but this one seemed even more the same than usual. Extremely repetitive and dull, it featured people with eyepatches discussing interpersonal matters while drinking.
Literally everything on the CW network - Writing a teen drama series is like shooting fish in a barrel, and the results are equally uninteresting. Some were better than others of course, but in general, these shows are so formulaic that you can often guess an episode's entire plot within the first few minutes.
Anybody have a show that they think was a complete waste?