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    'The Little Engine That Shouldn't Have, But Managed

    This is a spin off from my other thread: 'The Little Engine That Could, But Didnt'. That one covers shows that were good but never made it past the first season (see thread for more details) (Id put in a link if I knew how).

    This one deals with shows that were very very bad from their first season, but somehow managed to get past their rightful home, the chopping board, and stumbled into their second season or, perhaps, beyond.

    So, I now ask you for:
    Shows which continued on, after their 1st season, but really shouldn' have, in your opinion.

    Ill understand if you dont want to answer this particular question because it may offend some people and get you into some fights. But Id appreciate it if you'd share your opinions on the matter, even if its just defending a show from someone else. . If not, you might want to drop around to 'The Little Engine That Could, But Didnt' to tell us your views over there.

    Thanks
    Godspeed, Don.

    #2
    Im gonna be brave and dive headlong in.

    My answer to my own question would have to be Mutant X. I didnt like that show from day one, it was corny, a blatent copy of good old X-Men and had about a hundred other things wrong with it which I wont go into. Well, actually, I will.
    It was far too passionate, whenever a bad guy kissed one of his little sex slaves it was like a revelation in love. They used to almost eat eachother, they were kissing so intensely.
    I can remember in one episode, Shalamar (sp?) managed to have sex, with her pants on. A bad guy came bursting in and she stood up, with pants on. The only conclusion I can get is that they werent having sex, but she sure was sweaty and tired, what else could she be doing to make her like that with her pants on? I know the obvious other answer, but, with her pants on?
    Anyway, I cant remember the many other things that were terrible with it. But dont you worry theyll come to me.
    Now I realise that many people arent gonna like what I just said and I think it may be against the forum rules (is there something in there about show bashing. It might just be actor bashing). But Id prefer not to get into an fight about it and even if you do start attacking me and my ideas, Ill just ignore you so dont bother. But please, state your views on the matter, try to make a case for MX, if you can, which I doubt. And of course, critisise other programs, if you want and if it's allowed.
    Godspeed, Don.

    Comment


      #3
      Are we talking strictly about shows that shouldn't have gone past their first season, or shows which, in general, wore out their welcome and bulled ahead anyway?

      I'll agree that Mutant X never should have lasted past its original run. The fact that it keeps getting renewed continues to surprise me even though I know audiences these days will swallow just about anything.

      This is a harder category because I tend to ignore things I don't like so if stupid shows keep getting renewed, I don't always know about it.

      For shows which were good for a while but continued past their expiration date...

      X-Files should have ended at S5.
      Millennium should have ended at S2.
      Andromeda should definitely have been over by now. Much as I love Harper (and Rhade is easy on the eyes), the show itself is utter crap now and it wasn't that hot from the start.
      Farscape should have skipped its last season.
      Lone Gunmen and Harsh Realm should never have aired at all.
      Scare Tactics and Mad Mad House are two more shows that should never have aired.
      Not only should Tripping the Rift never have aired, but everyone remotely connected to getting it on the air should be thrashed soundly for bringing it to life.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by ShadowMaat
        Are we talking strictly about shows that shouldn't have gone past their first season, or shows which, in general, wore out their welcome and bulled ahead anyway?

        I'll agree that Mutant X never should have lasted past its original run. The fact that it keeps getting renewed continues to surprise me even though I know audiences these days will swallow just about anything.

        This is a harder category because I tend to ignore things I don't like so if stupid shows keep getting renewed, I don't always know about it.

        For shows which were good for a while but continued past their expiration date...

        X-Files should have ended at S5.
        Millennium should have ended at S2.
        Andromeda should definitely have been over by now. Much as I love Harper (and Rhade is easy on the eyes), the show itself is utter crap now and it wasn't that hot from the start.
        Farscape should have skipped its last season.
        Lone Gunmen and Harsh Realm should never have aired at all.
        Scare Tactics and Mad Mad House are two more shows that should never have aired.
        Not only should Tripping the Rift never have aired, but everyone remotely connected to getting it on the air should be thrashed soundly for bringing it to life.
        X-Files-mmm, yeah. I gotta agree. It got old!
        I don't even know what Millenium is, but considering you're comment, that's a good thing.
        Never into Andromeda, I watched about two episodes, decided it was crap and never watched it again.
        Was Farscape any good? Was it popular? I never even heard of it before news about Farscape: Whaever-the-mini-series-is-called came out. So, I watched an episode on Sci-fi and told myself it's over, there's no point in watching it.
        Lone Gunmen? Harsh Realm? Tripping the Rift? Mad Mad House? Am I just REALLY out of touch or is there a good reason Ive never even heard of all these shows.
        Scare Tactics. Finally, one that Ive watched. But, I have to say, utter crap! Serves Shannen Doherty right for leaving Charmed.

        Do whatever you want in this thread, shows that have worn out thaeir welcome, shows you couldn't stand from Day One, shows which continue to be renewed even tho their crap *cou-Mautant X-ghs*. Hell, you can even put down shows which are annoyingly good, despite bad acting, story-lines, special effects, and you have no idea what makes them so enthralling.
        Godspeed, Don.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Thoth
          Was Farscape any good? Was it popular? I never even heard of it before news about Farscape: Whaever-the-mini-series-is-called came out. So, I watched an episode on Sci-fi and told myself it's over, there's no point in watching it.
          It was very popular in a cult status sort of way. It was a classic space opera piece, but it still managed to be pretty entertaining. I was a casual viewer rather than an avid fan, but the last season was, IMO, so godawful over-the-top with cheesiness, overly-contrived stories, ridiculous characters and pathetic love stories that I gave up watching. I have no interest in the miniseries.



          Lone Gunmen? Harsh Realm?
          Both from self-proclaimed god Chris Carter. The Lone Gunmen was an attempted spinoff of X-Files, but it took some cool, occasional-appearance characters and made them into full-time buffoons. It would be like Felger getting his own show. I watched the first ep or two but found myself cringing most of the time. It was so bad I was actually embarrassed for the actors and I was relieved when it finally got cancelled.

          Harsh Realm was a good idea gone bad. It was based on a comic book series which was actually very nifty- a detective is hired to go into a virtual world/pocket universe to rescue a "missing" girl and encouters all kinds of wacky adventures along the way. The series was a bit different, though, and (naturally in a Chris Carter piece) involved hokey government conspiracies and other pompous nonsense. That's what I saw in the first few eps, anyway. I decided it was crap and stopped watching, but I know some people really liked it.




          Tripping the Rift? Mad Mad House? Am I just REALLY out of touch or is there a good reason Ive never even heard of all these shows.
          Both SCIFI original series. Tripping the Rift is softcore porn in cartoon form and Mad Mad House is a "scifi" version of something like Big Brother... only it makes Big Brother look GOOD! A bunch of freaks and "normals" go off to live in some house and have to interact in each others lives and rituals- including drinking blood (one is a vampire) and bathing in chicken parts (one is a voodoo priestess). It was sick and embarrassing all the way around and only served to enforce ridiculous sterotypes and see if they could out-gross themselves from week to week.

          Comment


            #6
            Are we only talking about sci-fi here? or is that just because that's what most of us watch?

            I don't follow a lot of television, so most of the time I learn about shows through news or other media and think, "They made a show about that???!!!"

            Not that I know what I'm talking about, but:

            - Ditto what Shadow said about Scare Tactics, Mad Mad House and Tripping the Rift. Triple what she said about TtR, in fact. Off with their heads! Utter crap.

            - For that matter, just about any reality show. Exceptions I can think of would be the cinema verité-style Airline, which I believe is in its second season (I'm not watching it regularly, but when I catch it it's fun). Airline, however, is a different kind of "reality show" than, say, "Survivor". It's more like a documentary.

            - I read somewhere that they're working on a second season of The Restaurant. This is a bad idea. A bad, bad idea. That show tried to be cinema verité - cameras running, just do your thing - but in reality it was staged and ego-pumping crap.

            - Can someone please tell me what Friends was all about?

            - Do soap operas - real soap operas, not space operas - count?

            - Tremors probably doesn't count since it appears to have not made it past the 1st season (thank goodness). They have, however, done a "followup" tv movie. It was on last night. I didn't watch it. Something about pre-backstory and "Ohmygawd, poor Michael Gross!"
            Urgo: I wanna live, I wanna experience the universe and I wanna eat pie!
            O'Neill: Who doesn't?
            - Urgo, Stargate: SG-1, Episode 3.16

            "Let's be real here. It should be fun. We're not saving lives, we're entertaining them."
            - RDA, Stargate SG-1: The Lowdown



            some assembly required, batteries not included, action figures sold seperately
            once done, cannot be undone...
            brought to you by Anthro Girl, Grand Pooh-Bah of the SFA

            Comment


              #7
              As an avid fan of Farscape, I can agree with what Shadow says: most of the fourth season was no good. The focus of the series shifted a bit and the story just went downhill. Not sure if I'm even going to watch the miniseries when it airs. Farscape would have been much much better if Chriton had not suddenly become a know-it-all wormhole guy. If the knowledge had come to him slower or from another source it would have been better. Of course, that's just my opinion.

              Tremors the Series was cancelled. Wasn't too bad, if you can believe in giant worms. But seriously, how can you do a series about giant worms each week? The movies were a lot better than the series, but still... GIANT WORMS? Didn't catch all of the new tv movie, but it seems to be an attempt to continue the franchise using as few of the people and characters previously involved as possible. The only true value to any of it is as simple as Let's-Watch-And-See-How-They-Kill-The-Giant-Worms-This-Time.

              Here's a few more to consider:
              Crossing Over: never should have been aired. At the least not aired as reality on the SciFi Channel.
              Charmed: Wished it never existed.
              The opinions of KorbenDirewolf do not necessrily represent the opinions of other male U.S. residents between the ages of 18 and 25.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by ShadowMaat
                Both from self-proclaimed god Chris Carter. The Lone Gunmen was an attempted spinoff of X-Files, but it took some cool, occasional-appearance characters and made them into full-time buffoons. It would be like Felger getting his own show. I watched the first ep or two but found myself cringing most of the time. It was so bad I was actually embarrassed for the actors and I was relieved when it finally got cancelled.
                HAHAHA. That's hilarious, I agree. Now, I liked the early seasons of the X-Files... but Chris Carter had like 3 downers for shows in a row (if you count Millennium, which had core devotees but really struggled to hang on), and that was just really, really sad. I felt even sadder that the Lone Gunmen had that dumb death sequence -- it was kind of like they knew how sad and pathetic they'd become in the last few years and just wanted to poison themselves all to death. Holy moly, they didn't have to ALL stay with that dude behind the doors. Nice "heroics", boys, and a real smear on your legacy. Wait, what legacy? Characters like that are best in occasional doses like dessert, but whole meals will KILL ya... or at least give you a real bad case of indigestion

                My little bro detest Tripping the Rift because of its animation style and the "stripper-bot" or whatever that thing is. I can see why. It's nice to see it fought like an underdog to get recognition on the Sci-Fi channel, but I wonder how long that will last.

                Crossing Over should have had a show AFTER it that debunked it. That John Edwards is full of hokum. Now, I'm open to the possibilities of psychic phenomena, but you won't find them in such a bunk fellow exploiting the 9/11 tragedy and talking to someone named... J-j-j-j... Jack... John... James?!? James Randi and Penn & Teller can easily make mincemeat out of him. There are too many phonies out there, and that waters things down and makes it hard to find any irrefutable proof of things which we now consider "ESP" and the like. Shame, shame. Science fiction? No, not even "soft sci-fi". Quacky scammery is more like it, and worth a couple of cheap laughs at best. But no more!

                I didn't really like Mutant X, except for that girl with the cool hair. Lauren Lee Smith is the actress... cool hair like I said! The theme song was wicked too, complete with the same drum loop as Rob Zombie's "Dragula" (one of the remixes). But the rest was really... Misleading with a capital M.
                Lord TorleYu-wong Chong Techno - create a "Window of Opportunity"

                get hooked, click here to listen to "The_Autistic_World_of_Torley.mp3" | dialup version
                more @ torley's techno music and anti-techno music blog

                Comment


                  #9
                  Okay...somebody might shoot me, but I gotta say it:

                  LEXX

                  There. I said it. I feel much better now.
                  Urgo: I wanna live, I wanna experience the universe and I wanna eat pie!
                  O'Neill: Who doesn't?
                  - Urgo, Stargate: SG-1, Episode 3.16

                  "Let's be real here. It should be fun. We're not saving lives, we're entertaining them."
                  - RDA, Stargate SG-1: The Lowdown



                  some assembly required, batteries not included, action figures sold seperately
                  once done, cannot be undone...
                  brought to you by Anthro Girl, Grand Pooh-Bah of the SFA

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Amen, Anthro. I'm right there with ya.

                    Actually, LOTS of stuff on SCIFI should never have aired...

                    Quantum Leap was a great series, but the finale- or more specifically, that horrible little "tag" they put on the end- was absolutely one of the Most. Horrible. Things. Ever. He never goes home?! WTF kind of ending is that?? WAY too finalistic for my tastes. Pissed me off for days.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      The Quantam Leap finale still bugs me to this day whenever I think about it so thanks so much for bringing it up. I'm very much a happy ending person. What can I say? I'm boring. I like everything to be all tied up with neat little bows and no questions. With the possible exception of the Angel finale which a lot of people hated but that I find oddly fitting.

                      Tripping the Rift will stay on the air as long as there are teenage boys. I mean South Park has been on forever. Although, I have to say, that I actually enjoy South Park. It's rude, gross and politically incorrect but the funny thing is that there is usually a meaningful social commentary buried under all of the fart jokes which makes it even funnier to me.

                      It was, is, and always will be GREEN

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by ShadowMaat
                        Amen, Anthro. I'm right there with ya.

                        Actually, LOTS of stuff on SCIFI should never have aired...
                        I think I saw the first four episodes (tv mini) of Lexx on The Movie Channel. I accidently caught the first episode of the tv mini-series and then had to watch the other three just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Barry Bostwick? Tim Curry? Rutger Hauer? Malcolm McDowell?! Oy! Life just can't be that bad, guys!

                        It wasn't until two years ago that I realized that the show had, indeed, gone on and it was airing on SciFi.
                        Urgo: I wanna live, I wanna experience the universe and I wanna eat pie!
                        O'Neill: Who doesn't?
                        - Urgo, Stargate: SG-1, Episode 3.16

                        "Let's be real here. It should be fun. We're not saving lives, we're entertaining them."
                        - RDA, Stargate SG-1: The Lowdown



                        some assembly required, batteries not included, action figures sold seperately
                        once done, cannot be undone...
                        brought to you by Anthro Girl, Grand Pooh-Bah of the SFA

                        Comment


                          #13
                          South Park does have social commentary, like other good precedessors like Simpsons. I found myself desensitized to South Park very quickly though, although it's good Parker & Stone & Co. are aware that a sandwich isn't just two slices of bread...

                          There are currently WAY too many Flash animation series on the web which depend on superviolence and obscenity (interpret that however you will) like Happy Tree Friends and its many derivatives, which I liked at first for its twisted take on cute animal stories, but got old really quickly. There's only so many times you can shock someone that way with a cute squirrel getting her brains bashed out before you go "meh" in search of your next cheap thrill.

                          In the long term, things like that don't breed much fan loyalty as opposed to Homestar Runner, which is a great product with many wonderful stories to tell and lots of merchandi$ing too!

                          Need I mention Sci-Fi Channel's Original Movies?
                          Lord TorleYu-wong Chong Techno - create a "Window of Opportunity"

                          get hooked, click here to listen to "The_Autistic_World_of_Torley.mp3" | dialup version
                          more @ torley's techno music and anti-techno music blog

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by Torley
                            Need I mention Sci-Fi Channel's Original Movies?
                            Ohhh, I dunno.... yeah, they're pretty bad story-wise, but if it hadn't been for Boa vs. Python I might never have realized the true buffness of David Hewlett.

                            Then there's the fact that Corin is due to appear in one or more SCIFI films... At least SOMEONE likes him...

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by ShadowMaat
                              Then there's the fact that Corin is due to appear in one or more SCIFI films... At least SOMEONE likes him...
                              He is? What did I miss? That's cool...except that they're SciFi movies.

                              A lot of times it seems like they roll one out to compete with something in the theatres...almost exactly the same premise. I think they did that with the recent releases of Day After Tomorrow and ...shoot...something else I can't remember right now.

                              I did, however, rather like the "mutant killer fish on land" one with Gary Jones. How could you not?
                              Urgo: I wanna live, I wanna experience the universe and I wanna eat pie!
                              O'Neill: Who doesn't?
                              - Urgo, Stargate: SG-1, Episode 3.16

                              "Let's be real here. It should be fun. We're not saving lives, we're entertaining them."
                              - RDA, Stargate SG-1: The Lowdown



                              some assembly required, batteries not included, action figures sold seperately
                              once done, cannot be undone...
                              brought to you by Anthro Girl, Grand Pooh-Bah of the SFA

                              Comment

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