Palamon
Silence is Purple
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What shows do you think experienced "seasonal rot" and what season?
TV Seasonal Rot
- Thread starter Palamon
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Family Guy (Season 7-present)
SpongeBob SquarePants (Season 6-present)
The Fairly OddParents (Season 6-10)
These three shows have to be the prime examples of what happens when the network refuses to let go of their most popular shows (most would also argue The Simpsons deserves a spot here, but I feel that it's still watchable on average).
SpongeBob SquarePants (Season 6-present)
The Fairly OddParents (Season 6-10)
These three shows have to be the prime examples of what happens when the network refuses to let go of their most popular shows (most would also argue The Simpsons deserves a spot here, but I feel that it's still watchable on average).
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Quite a few spring to mind for me immediately:
- Supernatural definitely has this in places - season seven in particular was absolutely *dreadful*, the Leviathans added nothing to the plot and it felt like the worst kind of anime filler arc. I suppose it was inevitable that such a long-running franchise would experience this in places, but the seventh season in particular almost made me drop the entire show.
- Every season of Arrow after the third is arguably a case of this as well, although the Arrowverse was always all over the place when it came to quality, and you'd get good seasons in with the bad across all the shows. But Arrow had the most consistent downward trend in my opinion...although The Flash has been extremely difficult to sit through recently, and the final season of Supergirl didn't seem to know where it really wanted to go. Legends of Tomorrow was consistently brilliant, and Batwoman was just never worth talking about.
- Stargate SG-1 seasons six, nine, and ten are all good (bad?) examples of seasonal rot as well. Jonas was never a particularly good substitute for Daniel, and whilst I have nothing against Ben Browder or Beau Bridges, they're hardly adequate replacements for Richard Dean Anderson or Don S. Davis, and with every major plot thread except for Baal being tied up at the end of season eight, the Ori were a pretty mediocre filler that could have used a couple more seasons to be fleshed out.
- Season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They really dropped the ball with this one. I'd also argue season six when taken as a whole, although I will admit there are several very good episodes sprinkled in amongst the rot. Season four is universally terrible, though.
- Maybe season four of Angel? The whole thing with Cordelia and Connor...if you've seen it, you know.
- The Virtual World sub-arc and Waking the Dragons in Yu-Gi-Oh! are two of the worst offenders I can think of on the anime side of things. Shelving Battle City entirely for some painful filler backstory for Kaiba focusing around a completely non-threatening group of villains that had already been dealt with prior was a bad decision, and Waking the Dragons was just...bad. Looking at Yu-Gi-Oh! as a franchise rather than individual series I would also consider the entirety of GX and Zexal to be seasonal rot, as well as the third season of 5Ds.
- I'll probably get shit for this from someone, but...the Buu Saga in Dragonball Z. Some major character regression going on here - for Vegeta in particular - and some awful missteps in how Buu was handled as an antagonist, and the major fights in the arc. It also started the painful trend of pointless power-ups with Super Saiyan 3, which Dragonball Super would continue by having Super Saiyan God last for all of five minutes before Blue became the default transformation. Also the Universal Survival Saga in Dragonball Super, which just threw a bunch of characters together in a ring and let them fight it out. I know the Dragonball franchise isn't really known for its character development outside of a few specific characters, but there were just too many new faces from across the different universes introduced, and no time to have them as anything other than faceless NPCs for the protagonists to knock over.
- The Black & White era of the Pokemon anime, which featured a lot of tournaments and not much else, and culminated in Ash's worst league loss. I know a lot of people might say that the Sun & Moon era is worse, but at least that tried a different approach to storytelling and gave Ash his first major league victory, even if it did have a few too many characters to do them all justice. The Unova seasons were universally terrible.
- The fifth season of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Fast Forward. That was painful to sit through and was another case of having nowhere to go after tying up all the major story arcs in the previous season.
- Everything MCU after Endgame. I'd argue that a lot of pre-Endgame films and TV series would fall under this category as well - and if you consider Agents of SHIELD as canon, everything after the second season - but there's been a definite, noticeable lack of focus and understanding of how to write compelling content since Endgame tied everything up.
- Even though I am one of those rare people who didn't outright despise the ending, I will say that the later seasons of Game of Thrones were a noticeable decline in quality, as things became far less detailed and generally more rushed as they ran out of books to adapt.
- Numerous Power Rangers seasons. Turbo stands out in particular for swapping out the cast halfway through and being of generally poorer quality when compared to Zeo, and leagues behind In Space. From there...well, Lost Galaxy sticks out for being poorly paced, and Operation Overdrive and Mystic Force were both abysmal. Saban winning back the rights after RPM almost destroyed the franchise with the Samurai, Ninja Steel, and Megaforce seasons. I'm not sure if its the acting or the writing, but seasonal rot is a very common recurring trend in Power Rangers.
- Prison Break's final season. This is what happens when you don't let things just close out naturally.
- Smallville's fourth and eighth seasons, which brought us a painful plotline about witch possession and magical stones and a painful change in the status quo which took two seasons to salvage respectively. They could never have closed out Smallville with season seven's cliffhanger, but they could have handled the aftermath a lot better in season eight, and it never felt quite right afterwards. Shunting in Doomsday as the main villain and quietly burying him and killing off Jimmy Olsen - who was then revealed to not be Jimmy Olsen so they could stick to the Superman mythos - didn't help matters either.
- Season seven of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. What the hell happened with Dukat?
- Supernatural definitely has this in places - season seven in particular was absolutely *dreadful*, the Leviathans added nothing to the plot and it felt like the worst kind of anime filler arc. I suppose it was inevitable that such a long-running franchise would experience this in places, but the seventh season in particular almost made me drop the entire show.
- Every season of Arrow after the third is arguably a case of this as well, although the Arrowverse was always all over the place when it came to quality, and you'd get good seasons in with the bad across all the shows. But Arrow had the most consistent downward trend in my opinion...although The Flash has been extremely difficult to sit through recently, and the final season of Supergirl didn't seem to know where it really wanted to go. Legends of Tomorrow was consistently brilliant, and Batwoman was just never worth talking about.
- Stargate SG-1 seasons six, nine, and ten are all good (bad?) examples of seasonal rot as well. Jonas was never a particularly good substitute for Daniel, and whilst I have nothing against Ben Browder or Beau Bridges, they're hardly adequate replacements for Richard Dean Anderson or Don S. Davis, and with every major plot thread except for Baal being tied up at the end of season eight, the Ori were a pretty mediocre filler that could have used a couple more seasons to be fleshed out.
- Season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They really dropped the ball with this one. I'd also argue season six when taken as a whole, although I will admit there are several very good episodes sprinkled in amongst the rot. Season four is universally terrible, though.
- Maybe season four of Angel? The whole thing with Cordelia and Connor...if you've seen it, you know.
- The Virtual World sub-arc and Waking the Dragons in Yu-Gi-Oh! are two of the worst offenders I can think of on the anime side of things. Shelving Battle City entirely for some painful filler backstory for Kaiba focusing around a completely non-threatening group of villains that had already been dealt with prior was a bad decision, and Waking the Dragons was just...bad. Looking at Yu-Gi-Oh! as a franchise rather than individual series I would also consider the entirety of GX and Zexal to be seasonal rot, as well as the third season of 5Ds.
- I'll probably get shit for this from someone, but...the Buu Saga in Dragonball Z. Some major character regression going on here - for Vegeta in particular - and some awful missteps in how Buu was handled as an antagonist, and the major fights in the arc. It also started the painful trend of pointless power-ups with Super Saiyan 3, which Dragonball Super would continue by having Super Saiyan God last for all of five minutes before Blue became the default transformation. Also the Universal Survival Saga in Dragonball Super, which just threw a bunch of characters together in a ring and let them fight it out. I know the Dragonball franchise isn't really known for its character development outside of a few specific characters, but there were just too many new faces from across the different universes introduced, and no time to have them as anything other than faceless NPCs for the protagonists to knock over.
- The Black & White era of the Pokemon anime, which featured a lot of tournaments and not much else, and culminated in Ash's worst league loss. I know a lot of people might say that the Sun & Moon era is worse, but at least that tried a different approach to storytelling and gave Ash his first major league victory, even if it did have a few too many characters to do them all justice. The Unova seasons were universally terrible.
- The fifth season of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Fast Forward. That was painful to sit through and was another case of having nowhere to go after tying up all the major story arcs in the previous season.
- Everything MCU after Endgame. I'd argue that a lot of pre-Endgame films and TV series would fall under this category as well - and if you consider Agents of SHIELD as canon, everything after the second season - but there's been a definite, noticeable lack of focus and understanding of how to write compelling content since Endgame tied everything up.
- Even though I am one of those rare people who didn't outright despise the ending, I will say that the later seasons of Game of Thrones were a noticeable decline in quality, as things became far less detailed and generally more rushed as they ran out of books to adapt.
- Numerous Power Rangers seasons. Turbo stands out in particular for swapping out the cast halfway through and being of generally poorer quality when compared to Zeo, and leagues behind In Space. From there...well, Lost Galaxy sticks out for being poorly paced, and Operation Overdrive and Mystic Force were both abysmal. Saban winning back the rights after RPM almost destroyed the franchise with the Samurai, Ninja Steel, and Megaforce seasons. I'm not sure if its the acting or the writing, but seasonal rot is a very common recurring trend in Power Rangers.
- Prison Break's final season. This is what happens when you don't let things just close out naturally.
- Smallville's fourth and eighth seasons, which brought us a painful plotline about witch possession and magical stones and a painful change in the status quo which took two seasons to salvage respectively. They could never have closed out Smallville with season seven's cliffhanger, but they could have handled the aftermath a lot better in season eight, and it never felt quite right afterwards. Shunting in Doomsday as the main villain and quietly burying him and killing off Jimmy Olsen - who was then revealed to not be Jimmy Olsen so they could stick to the Superman mythos - didn't help matters either.
- Season seven of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. What the hell happened with Dukat?
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South Park is still going strong too last time I checked.