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Ever have a moment where you are watching a show series/movie franchise or reading a book series and it just hits you that you no longer enjoy it? Like it loses everything that initially pulled you in, for whatever reason. Maybe a change in show runner and the product just has a different feel, the show gets repetitive/stale or gets too far fetched, a character death, etc, etc.

I feel like most long running TV shows limp to a finish rather than end gracefully/naturally.

And no offense to anyone who still enjoys/enjoyed the products I list. Tastes and tolerances are very personal, so not trying to poop on something you love.

Movies:

Matrix Reloaded. All of the Zion stuff killed this franchise for me, as well as stuff just stopped making sense to me. I think I have zero hype for the rumored return to the Matrix universe. It actually came up in a conversation at work and got me thinking about the idea for this thread.

Star Wars Prequels. I remember watching all of these and just thinking that Star Wars lost whatever magic that held me for nearly all of my childhood. Kind of forced myself to watch the latest trilogy, though didn’t bother with Rise, just watched a bunch of spoiler reviews to the point where I feel like I’ve watched it twice. The Mandalorian brought me back a bit, but it was mainly just The Kid.

Honorable mention: Pretty much every horror franchise. Horror movies are notoriously lucrative, but there is only so many times you can go to the well.

TV:

Walking Dead: I watched up until the episodes shortly before where Hershel was killed by the governor. I had been falling out of love with the show before that, with the boring season in the farmhouse, but I think what made me slam the door was when the Governor got a 2-3 episode arc solely focused on him. Just seemed like a jarring break in pace and felt forced and it never really grabbed me after that.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 2. This show immediately dropped what was so compelling about the first season and and the shows overall premise. It went from being a sort of Hamlet in a motorcycle gang, to a run of the mill villain of the season show. For 6 more seasons...

Game of Thrones. Seemed to falter after it caught up with the books and never recovered.

Books:

Horus Heresy. I read them all on release but I’m not even sure where I gave up. I think the one where they take Vulkans corpse back to Nocturne? I always tell myself to get back into it, but I don’t know where to get back in. With that said, loving the Siege of Terra books and that will probably seal the deal on my journey into the Heresy once its finished. If there is a Scouring series, I’ll only dip into it unless they give it a Siege/Beast type set amount of books release window.

Game of Thrones: The wait between novels is a huge killer, and the last two that I read, Feast for Crows and Dance of Dragons just felt like slogs, particularly Feast. Coincidentally right when the show had a quality drop and it started to cut every corner that it could. Not hyped for the franchise at all at this point.

What say you?

Movie franchise? I gave up on the X-Men movies with 3.

TV franchise? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, I'd say the jump from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go.

Books? If comic books count, I gave up on the Ultraverse after Marvel ran roughshod all over it.

40k - 6th edition when my blood angels army got tabled by a demons army without killing a single model. Then the week afterwards, when my Angels did almost the same thing to a Space Wolves army.

Horus Heresy - The Unremembered Empire. All the hype, then I realised that like 5 minutes worth of plot development happened and almost everyone ended up in the same position at the end of the book as they were at the start of the book.

Superman Comics - Bendis, 'Nuff said really. Tomasi was perfect.

The Witcher, Netflix series.

Possibly prematurely, but the Bard character just rubbed me up the wrong way, so I bailed.

I have a lot of trouble following long running sitcoms to the end. They just get tedious. See the office (us), parks and rec, etc. i've come to believe that four seasons is an ideal maximum, that's more than enough time to tell a story.

Around four seasons is usually when i give up on a show, at least.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Witcher, Netflix series.

Possibly prematurely, but the Bard character just rubbed me up the wrong way, so I bailed.

how dare you, in a miserable gakky world full of miserable gakky people you need the odd ray of sunshine, I just the loved his reaction when Geralt changed his mind cos Ynne in the Dragon Hunt episode

anyhoo

New 52 Constantine, there's a ton of magic users you could have bent into a wannabe Strange why you mess with my Johnny, the nu-vertigo take seems to be back on track

West World, middle(ish) of season 2, might of been due to it being rushed out following season 1 being popular but it just flailed

X-men Apoc; if ever there was ever a 'do it to hold the rights' cluster fup its this and our Sansa is possibly the worst actor ever

Thor:Ragnorok, its not a bad movie, but its where the MCU peaked, War/Endgame has closure but are otherwise a bit mehh

We gave up on Vikings about 7 episodes in the season 5.

Honestly, the writing was on the wall after season 4, but we tried to give it a chance, but the show really ramped up the contrivances and nonsense to "11."

GoT books, around the third one, for various reasons.

Dual Survival (tv) when they dumped Cody. He at least had some good info.
Big Bang Theory after the first season.

I agree on the Horror/slasher films. Most of them just ran too long as a series.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Witcher, Netflix series.

Possibly prematurely, but the Bard character just rubbed me up the wrong way, so I bailed.

how dare you, in a miserable gakky world full of miserable gakky people you need the odd ray of sunshine, I just the loved his reaction when Geralt changed his mind cos Ynne in the Dragon Hunt episode

Just found him a bit, well, Poochie,

I've made mulitiple attempts to watch the X-files, which follows similar arc of "uneven but often familar early seasons, excellent middle seasons... uh oh!"

Somewehere between the movie, the production moving to LA, and Duchovney leaving I always dip out. It doesn't help that I know the alien conspiracy is never brought to a satisfying conclusion. I've seen one or two later episodes that were recommended, and they're fine, but I really feel that as long as you get past season one, the X-files is a perfect show to hop off whenever you're done.

B5, Legend of the Rangers.

Nope. Nopenopenopenope.

Dr Who, a couple episodes into Capaldi's run, though the last stretch of Matt Smith's run didn't do the show any favors.

Thinking about it, Angels Take Manhattan was probably the real breaking point- way, way too many plot holes and false angst based on seeing the actors off, rather than the characters or story.

Tried to come back for the new doctor, but the stupid teeth aliens and the preaching just... made it not worthwhile.

I also stopped DR. Who at Capaldi and feel no reason to come back. Nothing against Capaldi, but the scripts didn't seem like they had much to say.

Supernatural I stopped when Dean came back from Hell for the first time.... it just became too much at that point.

Punisher after S1. Never went back for Season 2.

Most recently, I think Ozark season 3 just broke me as well, after thinking about it. I finished it a few days ago and its really good, its just... it keeps piling up the hits and there has been little to no resolution. Just getting deeper and deeper and really pushing my tolerance for how much longer I can keep up or stay invested.

For example:



Enjoy the show, but its kind of exhausting.

Book 5 of the Wheel of Time series. It went from being an exciting story to a word vomit cash grab. The books stopped being compelling and instead became a big waste of time. They went form advancing stories to 1,000 page slogs. Each novel ended up having only three things happen: resolve the cliff hanger from the last book, introduce one thing that advances the series' overarching story line, end with a cliff hanger. Which is not a lot for 1,000 pages. I powered through them out of of principle, but it felt like I was being exploited. Thankfully Sanderson saved the end.

I guess there were five things per novel if you count Rand being whiny and Nynave (don't remember how to spell it, not giving any more of my life to this series to look it up) pulling her hair.

I think the trailer for TROS has mostly had me checkout from Star Wars. I couldn't even get into the Mandalorian much (which is sad cause it's great) because I just couldn't bring myself to be invested in a 20+ year butchered franchise that occasionally produces a gem maybe once every ten years. And it's amazing to me that the trailer alone was enough to make me quit.

I also gave up on Worm (a long web novel series) after the first few chapters of its sequel. I just couldn't bring myself to soldier through the author finding new ways to pump up the Godzilla threshold constantly, with no real respite or moments of true warmth from the otherwise excellent characters who do little more than get subjected to new methods of suffering. Still love Worm though.

Frankly though, asinine government conspiracies and melodramatic BS are frequently enough to make me quit something. It's too common right now and its always the same, and I just can't bring myself to bother keeping invested once these become the only thing a show has going on.

I checked out of nBSG after the New Caprica rescue/reset button. The show was just miserable, and it had never been more obvious that the mystery boxes were empty.

Buffy became miseryporn (I’m stealing that phrase) somewhere is season 6. It lost everything that made the show charming.

The Simpsons lost me early in the season where Homer went to New York, and then Armin Tanzanian was the coup de grace.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I checked out of nBSG after the New Caprica rescue/reset button. The show was just miserable, and it had never been more obvious that the mystery boxes were empty.

Buffy became miseryporn (I’m stealing that phrase) somewhere is season 6. It lost everything that made the show charming.

The Simpsons lost me early in the season where Homer went to New York, and then Armin Tanzanian was the coup de grace.

You're right about nBSG. I stuck with it through the episode where they started singing All Along the Watchtower. But the New Caprica episode was definitely the start of the end.

In nBSG’s defence? The writer’s strike played havoc with it.

I still rate the whole effort as good entertainment despite it, although the last few episodes take a few watchings to properly grasp. Though I totally understand and respect that’s a tall order for others

I rarely truly give up on something, but there are often moments where I go from ravenously consuming everything to taking a huge step back and focus on something else. A few big ones that spring to mind:

Pokemon: Played the series really hardcore but lost my copy of Diamond and Gen 5 didn't draw me back in. Played Gen 6 but once Go was released I was far happier with its passive collection then the IV grind of the base games.

Star Wars: Another example of something where my love for it never really went anywhere, but I gave up on the novels after the Vong were introduced.

Loot: I used to love going for secret special weapons and the like, yet when that went mainstream in the MMO heyday I was already out. Culprit was FFX, where the super weapons had ridiculous requirements and getting them ruined the gameplay with the ability to one shot the final boss. Luckily it meant the allure of the RNG based drop systems had no appeal for me when they landed in full force years later.

Walking Dead lost me quite a ways back. There were like 7 meaningful minutes per episode and the slog wore me out shortly after the prison.

Marvel on Netflix lost me in the Defenders/Luke Cage 2/Jessica Jones 2 era. After those slogs I just couldn't sit through Daredevil 3 or Punisher.

I gave up on Family Guy after Peter found Jesus at the record shop. It was just such a bland, remarkably inoffensive story. Every once in a while I catch a good episode, but rarely feel like I've missed anything. Oddly I still watch the Simpsons.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I checked out of nBSG after the New Caprica rescue/reset button. The show was just miserable, and it had never been more obvious that the mystery boxes were empty.

I never really got into it (and as cheesy as it is, the original was far superior in terms of characters, story and basic #@$ camera work). The people were terrible human beings with sophomoric high school melodrama relationships.

Basically the same reason I never got into game of thrones, though that was less the relationships and more that the characters I have no reason to care about die, and are replaced by other people I have no reason to care about. As a schtick goes, that isn't much.

Buffy became miseryporn (I’m stealing that phrase) somewhere is season 6. It lost everything that made the show charming.

Buffy should have ended (or generated another spinoff), at the end of Glory arc. But Whedon needed to keep Jossing his dead horses, despite running out of things to say.

lifeafter wrote:Book 5 of the Wheel of Time series.

Was that the one where the women* are stuck in a carriage for a full thousand pages just sniping at each other? That's where I checked out.

*Or rather woman, since every single female character in WoT was a raging nag most of the time with no other notable characteristics (beyond surface features like braid, princess, dresses-as-boy, amazon). Jordan really should have stuck to writing Conan novels.

The Last Jedi (and the subsequent reaction of Disney, the director, etc.) killed Star Wars cold dead for me.

Oh man;

Movies;
-I don't think I've ever watched a movie series where I've hopped off the train because I'm normally not on one even if it's a series. Maybe the Fast & Furious main series since Walker's passed.

TV;

Walking Dead right essentially when they killed Carl. The show had been faltering for me but the irl stuff with the actor moving everything around to stay with the show and then them bouncing him hit a sour note (see also the hilltop lady getting paid short compared to costars).

Fear the Walking Dead was season...3? When I'm only left with the daughter and Sands out of the original group and with a lot of unsatisfying send offs over 2 years.

Vikings end of S4 start of S5. Got old.

Almost any long running sitcom not called the Office, Community, or Parks & Rec.

CW's DC Universe. I like a fair bit of the shows and the characters. It just got to be to much content in a year. We're talking like 150ish hours a year of TV content.

Books;

WoT just like the others here. Probably around the same spot.

Terry Goodkind's series that I think is still going. When they took entire books off to follow non-characters.

GoT because Martin is trash. First 3 are brilliant, or were when I started reading them 20 YEARS AGO! Gave benefit of a doubt for feast of crows and swore never again.

Horus Heresy was far, far to drawn out and didn't focus enough on the important things that made it good.

The Warded Man series. Each book was a back dive into a characters origin story. Which would have been fine except we hit book 5 and were doing it with new characters while the series was supposed to end in book 6.

Hmm, i rarely just give up on shows, the only one i gave up on i came back and finished because i loved it(MLP)
Dr. Who. Kinda Stopped through Capaldis run, despite him being my favorite doctor. I loved the angry old man.
Agents of Shield: after the second to last season, where they killed of a character only to imply he is coming back next season was rough, it not being part of MCU really anymore killed it too.
gave up on Netflix MCU after Iron Fist and Luke Cage where confirmed no more seasons kinda soured me on S3 of other shows, not getting to see how decent storylines might play out pissed me off.
I guess i gave up on Halo? when 5 came out i had an Ps4 not an Xbox and i kinda didnt care to play halo.
Star Wars movies after TLJ: kinda made me just not care. but i watched all the others.
Oh Yeah, Big Bang Theory. I just kinda.....stopped. I was never one to say it was like blackface for nerds or mysoginistic like other(Hey guys, BTW, just because people in the show are mysoginistic, doesnt mean the show is Kay? All those guys get taken to town for their gakky attitudes) I just stopped watching it.
I never really actively stop watching something, i just kinda.........never get into the new season.

Movies?

Star Wars - This franchise once consumed my life. My inner 10 year old is still obsessed with it, but at this point, nothing about it excites anymore. I haven't even seen the newest flick. I just no longer have an interest. I still love Star Wars, the Mandalorian was great, but the movies? I endured the prequels and basically pretended they didn't exist, but at this point, with Luke and Han and Leia and Vader gone, what's there to watch?

TV Shows?

Walking Dead: I just...stoppped caring at some point, making it a point to watch was never a priority, right around the time the Governor pops up.

Battlestar Galactica: The last episode, that ending just obliterated any interest I had in the franchise after that.

Dexter: That last season...oh boy.

Vikings: Trailed off S4/S5 as above.

GoT: In hindsight, the longer it went on the less well it did, S7 and 8 in particular. "Beyond the Wall" in particular was...narratively incoherent.


Video Games?

Mass Effect - I'm still not over what they did to that franchise with the ending to 3. That was the last video game I ever pre ordered, never again. Had zero desire to play Andromeda after that, and the ending even spoils replays of 1 & 2.

Command & Conquer: I'm still a huge fan of this franchise, just not anything they did to it after C&C3.

In defence of Dr Who, by a massive Whovian.

The show has always been highly mutable, with different takes by different writers across different Doctors (sometimes the same Doctor).

I’m one to take the rough with the smooth. And overall, I’d argue there’s far more ropey Who than there is Good Who.

So I’ve learned to take what I can, and simply enjoy enjoying what I like, and not worry overly about what I didn’t. There’s always a new story in the offing, and who can tell how the bones will lie in that one!

 Vaktathi wrote:
Dexter: That last season...oh boy.

I think I gave that one up with the season that had Colin Hanks and Edward James Olmos as the villains. Kept in touch with the show through review sites and blogs, but definitely glad I gave it up when I did.

Arrested Development when they tried to revive it on Netflix. That first season where the actors couldn't all be together, and they just hopped on different storylines was awful. I still haven't watched the most recent season, and can hardly bear to rewatch the old.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In defence of Dr Who, by a massive Whovian.

The show has always been highly mutable, with different takes by different writers across different Doctors (sometimes the same Doctor).

I’m one to take the rough with the smooth. And overall, I’d argue there’s far more ropey Who than there is Good Who.

So I’ve learned to take what I can, and simply enjoy enjoying what I like, and not worry overly about what I didn’t. There’s always a new story in the offing, and who can tell how the bones will lie in that one!

IMO, Moffat really ruined to show with his take on the Doctor. Where the Doctor was essentially a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl that came into peoples lives and made it better by their antics, and then when they tried to be serious it felt disingenious.
Capaldi was a nice breath of fresh air

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Oh Yeah, Big Bang Theory. I just kinda.....stopped. I was never one to say it was like blackface for nerds or mysoginistic like other(Hey guys, BTW, just because people in the show are mysoginistic, doesnt mean the show is Kay? All those guys get taken to town for their gakky attitudes) I just stopped watching it.
I never really actively stop watching something, i just kinda.........never get into the new season.

I had this two, three seasons before the end; they are on endless repeat over here and I still really enjoy the first five or so seasons, because they had a bunch of jokes that you had to have a basic understanding of physics/geek culture to understand and there were a number of goofy conversations that I have had in real life with my friends. But at some point any of the actual science / geek jokes got removed and it just became a generic US sitcom, but with nerds. Also they really played up Sheldon being obnoxious, rather than just weird/disconnected and I there enough people who annoy me in real life without having to deal with that in my entertainment.

A different interpretation; Formula 1. I used to love watching the races with my dad all through my childhood and I kept watching it after I left home and we used to talk about it. Then about 10-12 years ago I just found that I was sitting down on a Sunday afternoon and just falling asleep in front of the TV and I started to question why I was effectively sacrificing an entire day of my weekend (cause you can’t really fit much around it) for something that I obviously had no interest in watching. So I just stopped.