This week is a tough one for me because it’s about TV shows that had a great first season only to go Meh for their second season. I have no real clue, to be honest, if I picked the right tv shows but I did my best. Wandering through the Shelves chose a doozy, for me anyway. It will be fun to see what other people have chosen.
1. SPACE 1999- 1975-1977
This was a TV show I watched when Star Trek wasn’t on and nothing else. I always thought Martin Landau hit bottom with this British ( I think it’s British) tv show co-starring with his wife, Barbara Bain and David Morse as scientists on the moon base Alpha. There is an explosion which sends the moon off into the Peter Pan Netherland of outer space. It seems, from what I remember, they meet different aliens plus are always trying to get home, kind of like Gilligan’s Island. The second season came and they brought in Catherine Schell as a beautiful alien who can become any animal to help out these castaways of outer space. This didn’t help and the show was cancelled.
2. LIE TO ME-2009-2011
I really liked this show that stars Tim Roth as a scientist who has a business with people who are experts in reading body language to find out who is lying and who isn’t etc.., I love watching people and have always been told I’m uncanny in figuring out people. I take that as a high compliment as I have made some big mistakes. Anyhoo, I really enjoyed the first season but the second season was moved around, by the network, so I had a hard time to locate it but, when I found it, I felt they changed it up. They would make a field day today with all the crap out there today.
3. DESIGNATED SURVIVOR-2016-2019
Kiefer Sutherland stars as a low level politician held in some bunker never thinking he would be leading the country when…blammo!! The President, Vice- Pres and everyone else is bombed out of existence. He now must lead the country. I thought it was quite interesting and enjoyed how he has to learn the hard way with the love and support of his wife but soon it became a confusing, paranoid intrigue where everyone he loves is killed and he can’t trust anyone …I gave up before the first season ended.
Can you think of any TV shows that fit this theme or are you baffled like me?
Never even heard of any of your choices. And I really can't think of any show that went bad after one season and survived. But I can think of at least one that was very good and then just deteriorated after a few seasons and is ending this spring. That would be The Blacklist. I know of two others who stopped watching after a few seasons, too.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good pick, Denise. I agree that The Blacklist started out great, but fell off in later seasons, causing Mrs. Shady and I to abandon the series. Ryan Eggold was fun to watch, but he wound up leaving for New Amsterdam.
DeleteHi, Birgit!
ReplyDeleteIn 1959, I got a kick out of Martin Landau trying to end Cary Grant in Hitchcock's spy thriller N x NW. I also regularly watched Martin and wife Barbara Bain in the hit TV series Mission Impossible, but I didn't watch when they teamed up again as stars of the Brit-Italian sci-fi series Space 1999.
Mrs. Shady and I took an early interest in Lie To Me and hoped it would last. Tim Roth was quirky and intense and the series had potential. It got old real fast and got the ax.
We also watched Designated Survivor all the way through to the series finale. I liked the series, and didn't think the quality dropped off as much as you apparent did. In the wake of the series' cancellation, two of the female characters have landed on their feet.
Emily Rhodes and Isabel Pardo are destined to achieve even greater fame as DJs on the new Shady's Place radio series The 1600 Club: Meet the Supremes of Pennsylvania Avenue.
I have often noticed a decline in the overall quality of a TV series between seasons one and two. Sometimes the main characters look and act differently from one season to the next. That's stupid, because most viewers who become invested in the characters in season one, tune in season two expecting familiar, not new and different. Typically, high quality becomes unsustainable when the series creator slash executive producer turns writing and production of the show over to less talented, less passionate people. At this hour of the morning, I am having difficulty naming other examples. How about Scorpion? In 2014, the procedural series about a ragtag team of crime solving geniuses became a surprise hit for CBS in its first season. However, by season 4, it was one of the least watched series on television.
Thanks for the morning entertainment, dear friend BB. Please give my buddy Harley some huggins and smoochins and enjoy the rest of your week and weekend!
I liked Lie to Me more than you and DS was good but i just hate when they kill off nice people or make them secretly evil. I never did watch Scorpion and don't even remember it.
DeleteI agree with you that it just seems TV shows seem the same. How many CSI or Law & Order shows do we need orrenakes of great original shows?
I haven't seen any of your picks this week! I didn't realize Keifer went back to TV after 24. Shows how much I pay attention to him.
ReplyDeleteYou made me laugh with this comment...hahaaa
DeleteI absolutely loved lie to me it was super…nor seen the other two…just watching the bone collector at the moment and it’s scaring me…..take care xxx
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the Bone Collector was a TV Show. That would be cool to watch
DeleteI have vague memories of Space 1999. Its production values were pretty rough but I liked both Barbara Bain and Martin Landau so I would watch it occasionally but not enough to know if it fell off in quality in its second year.
ReplyDeleteI loved Lie to Me and don't remember it becoming compelling until the third season.
I never watched your third pick.
I watch so few new programs and I seem to be a show's doom when I do try out new ones. If I really like them (My So-Called Life, Forever, Firefly, The Tick etc.) they rarely last past their first season. :-(
The only one that comes to mind is House of Cards with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, though the second season wasn't terrible but the first was so bangin' it set a near impossible bar to meet. I also thought of the great 80's undercover spy show Wiseguy but it doesn't really fit since it fell off in its third season after two brilliant seasons.
I thoughtbi was the only one who loved The Tick. I like the cartoon but also really liked this show. Firefly was also really good. I liked Wiseguy quite a bit but they kept changing the times and I couldn't find it...typical when the executroids want to kill a show.
DeleteYup, this would be a tough pick. Not familiar with Lie to Me. Hope you're having a good one.
ReplyDeleteSandra sandracox.blogspot.com
Hi Sandra...you are like me, I'm now anonymous and don't know how to get myself signed in with my new iPad. Thus is on my phone.
DeleteI got nuttin' for this topic. I watch very little TV to begin with, and the shows I like a lot, I watch all of the episodes. And they are all OLD shows, from the '50s through '80s.
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple shows, however, that I liked when I was a kid but revisited them as an adult and found them way too formulaic. Right off the top of my head I'm thinking of 'Columbo', 'Kung Fu', and 'Route 66'.
~ D-FensDogG
Yeah..it was hard for me this week. I love Columbo and Kung Fu but never watched Route 66
DeleteI watched both Lie to Me and Designated Survivor all the way through both series, until DS went to Netflix or whatever cable channel it went that I didn't get.
ReplyDeleteMy picks: Prison Break, Revenge, How To Get Away With Murder, and Saving Grace, which I stopped watching after the 5th episode.
I forgot Bull. It was great the first year, then went off the rails the second year. I quit watching when it got to the third year. Not sure why it lasted four years, which is beyond me.
DeleteYou have quite a few! I saw a few episodes of Revenge but never got into it and never wanted to see How To Get Away... I never liked the lead from Bull...I just always wanted to smack that guy.
DeleteI've not only never seen any of your picks, I haven't even heard of them. Like you I'm really stumped with this one as I don't keep up with many TV shows through the first let alone the second season.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'll have to look at what others have said since I don't have much here. Maybe I'll throw out Twin Peaks but I don't really remember much about it so I don't really recall if I became let down when the show went on. And I don't know if it just went off the air or I just stopped watching before it did.
For new shows I'll throw out La Brea which my wife and I have been watching since the beginning. It was a fun premise but it keeps on getting dumber and dumber. I think that is the way of most shows that run their course.
Lee
Yes, some shows can get dumber..remember 6 Million Dollar Man which was good but then went to Sasquatch land which just was dumb as F#%!. What about the classic jump the shark episode from. Happy Days?
DeleteI am sooooooo with you on Space:1999 vs Star Trek. But, I find it mildly amusing that 1999 once seemed so far into the future. At least Star Trek had the decency to be in the 23rd century.
ReplyDeleteHahaaaa. Yes 1999 was a whole 25 years or so...oy vey
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