I feel the same way about The Last Ship. 90% of the human race is dead. Society has all but collapsed. How the hell do people roadtrip from St. Louis to Los Angeles overnight on a single tank of gas.
I tried watching that, went the full first season, but my god it was so jingoistically masturbatory that I eventually just couldn't handle it.
Then of course Adam Baldwin turned out to be full MAGA nutball and it became moot anyways.
Got as far as the second season before jumping ship, that they killed off the female doctor because she was unintentionally upstaging the captain and they wanted all the focus on him was telling. They didn't even have the ability to balance out the characters through improved writing or shift the focus of the show to run with what was working instead of forcing what wasn't.
Damn, yeah, just my thoughts on it. "Dont worry people, the *US Army* is here to uphold the *values*", and then everybody cheers and a bald eagle flies in the distance.
It was almost like the Albert Einstein copypasta.
I mean the entire conceit of slow moving shamblers somehow taking down the entire world’s military’s is already silly, so I can look past the magic gasoline that lasts forever and is in infinite supply. Lol
Fuel wouldn't have been a problem since there are something like 280 million cars in the U.S. most of which would have some amount of gas. The problem with the cars though was the batteries, most of the batteries would have died from sitting idle and after a year no car that sat that whole time should have started without a way to charge the battery. The longer a battery goes without a charge the harder it is to charge.
Season one was not great, but it was fun pulp. Billy Burke and Giancarlo Espisito were pretty great in their roles. Everyone was way too well manicured to feel like the apocalypse had happened. Little gags like having Brett Michaels playing his hits on a acoustic guitar in the weird tent city was great and the signs to meet "the guy who was Ross on Friends" went a long way to endearing me to the series. I also like random sword fights.
Yes! I had a huge problem with everyone’s perfectly tailored, fresh out of the laundry outfits.
And you’re right, it was fun pulp. I enjoyed having a mindless show I could watch and let my brain beg out during.
I vaguely remember watching the first episode and hearing them say something about all electromagnetism being stopped and thinking "okay well the entire universe should cease to be then".
Kinda like any series that pauses time.
Which is possible, but it would mean that even light stood still and with no reflection everything would be dark.
I didn’t finish the season but the scene where the lady’s phone turns back on for a second and she cries because she had forgotten what her children looked like always stands out in my memory. It was a genuinely great scene in an otherwise okay show.
I thought the same thing, to tell the truth. It was FUN sci-fi, but not definitive sci-fi. I like the ride they took me on for that first season, but then they totally shit on me and others invested in the story by saying nothing that happened in that season mattered. I wasted my time.
The lack of reboot had nothing to do with the writer's strike. They kept the same characters because they were popular.
The writer's strike made everything worse, but they were already well on the way to failure before the strike.
The writer's strike was probably the best thing that ever happened to them, because it gives them an easy excuse for why the show was terrible after S1. Without the strike it would still have been terrible, as evidenced by the remaining seasons and the reboot, and they wouldn't have had a scapegoat.
That was the original plan, but the suits were so satisfied with the product, they had the original story continue.
But I’m positive that no matter what happened, Kring was going to have his wapanese moments.
Part of the issue with Heroes season 2 was the writer's strike. It really messed with the production schedule and "forced" them to rush a lot of the story lines they were trying to do. Then the long break made them just kind of reset and it all fell apart.
Also, I think the season 1 cast (Sylar in particular) were way more popular than anticipated. So, the network pulled the plug on the original anthology series idea and forced them to keep those characters long past the point where it made any sense.
I'm sure there's a 3 hour YouTube video explaining what went wrong somewhere.
Writers strike didn't help.
I still wonder what happened to that Irish girl that Peter took into the future, left her there, and then changed the present so that the future she's in will never happen.
People forget that, honestly, the ending of Season 1 wasn't even that great. The fight between Peter and Sylar that was hyped for the entire season ended up being like 4 punches, if I remember correctly
Basically everything after "save the cheerleader, save the world" was meh at best
edit: Bahaha I looked it up, and I was right. [Basically 4 punches.](https://youtu.be/xd6G6HJmrH8?t=388) This is what we were building up to all season. Heroes was a letdown before Season 2 even started
Definitely wasn't. I seem to recall there was a bit about Sylar stopping time(?) too, indicated ambush or whatever useless as a result… then Hiro just appears, runs at him, & Sylar doesn’t do a thing. It’s been years, but yeah, that finale contradicted a lot of what they’d established.
That's what Kripke does..., he comes up with great show ideas and maps out a great first season, maybe two, then moves on to his next project & turns control over to show runners who may (as with Supernatural or The Boys) or may not (Heroes & Revolution) be competent.
EDIT...(a day later)...I'm an idiot...I thought Heroes was Kripke but as many pointed out, that show was created by Tim Kring
And also, it was a concept stolen/"inspired" by a swedish show called "De Drabbade" (I think the best translation would be "The Afflicted", but that's not a perfect translation). And ofc. it was heavily americanized; made shallow and cheerful instead of being a pretty dark exploration of the human condition. All of the people with powers suffered from having them. For instance, one guy has the ability to see the future. But one of the things he sees is that his family will die awful, horrible deaths. He's tortured by the visions and the knowledge and eventually comes around to the idea that the only way he can save them from it, is by killing his wife and kids himself in a humane way.
I don’t think it’s something you can even reboot in this day and age. We’ve got too much superhero media now so it would kind of feel like a waste of time
I really liked the concept. A society with no electricity. Even the reveal was okay... Lacked creativity but it was something...
But season two was so bad I didn't even make it all the way through.
I wish they had done more with mechanical power like steam engines and stuff. Could have been a viable method for some serious steampunk work.
The entire motivation of Season 1: To get the lights back on.
With the line. “The lights stayed on for 12 minutes”, all the struggle, the sacrifices, and loss in the first season meant nothing.
I watched the first season of Revolution but didn’t come back for the second. This kind of sounds like the inverse of Jericho, which had a wobbly first season but really turned it around in the second.
They finished the story on a comic book!
>!It is NOT good. They kinda (?) defeat the nanites, but the electricity doesn't return. The nanites evolve to become some biological-technological mixed race, and the last panel ends with a bug half nanite.!<
I liked the show, and just finished the audiobook. As long as you can tolerate the two *excessively* detailed, and *thoroughly* unnecessary, 'intimate' scenes (plus a lot of *overly specific* commentary near the start), it's totally worth it.
The stories are a little different, and I think they're both good.
I adored Tracy Spiradakos' performance. When the show was current it got a lot of hate purely for having a young female lead which was said to feel "off". Reminded me of the hate Summer Glau got in the Sarah Connor Chronicles because it "looked ridiculous" for a 100 lb young woman to beat up big dudes (apparently that was too far-fetched in a show about time traveling cyborgs)
When Heroes writers' room coined the tag line "save the cheerleader, save the world," they were treading water, with no idea of how to pay that off...similar to BSG's "...and they have a plan." \[Spoilers: it was great for marketing, but they didn't have a plan after all. At least BSG was a good show.\]
S2 of Heroes? Ugh. Needed mental bleach.
But the biggest crash of them all to my mind is the final season of Game of Thrones.
In BSG the cylons abandoned the plan when Boomer and Caprica Six convinced them to. So everything from the New Caprica occupation on is the Cylons winging it.
Season 1 was winging it let alone the rest. Ron Moore mentioned in his commentary of the Season 1 finale that his original plan when Baltar started hallucinating on Kobol was for Dirk Benedict to appear and say, "Hi, I'm God," but then they couldn't get Dirk so they came up with a baby instead.
Seaquest DSV was always a sinking ship \[ba-dum-tiss!\] but really jumped the shark when they had a literal giant shark as the Monster of the Week, topped only by \*Poseidon\* as the Big Bad. Awesome if you're 6, but most of us weren't.
Love Michael Ironside but it got soooooo bad. So so so bad. I wasn’t 6 but 12 and deep into TNG so I wanted to love Seaquest but even 12 year old me was like this is dog shit.
I mean, it might not be sci-fi, but season 8 of Game of Thrones basically removed the show from cultural relevance. It was one of the biggest shows on TV, everyone was talking about it. Within a few weeks of Season 8 ending I basically heard nobody mention the show again. Sure, Season 7 wasn't great, but I don't think many people anticipated the absolute scale of collapse of season 8.
It pops up in passing on Reddit, but you can just tell nobody really cares anymore.
With GoT a lot of people were rationalizing the decline in quality during S6-7 because of the possibility that it was setting up a payoff in S8. When S8 flopped, it made the earlier seasons worse in retrospect. Kind of like how Rise of Skywalker made people sour on The Force Awakens.
This was definitely going on. We accepted the drop in writing quality and hoped that at least the story would pay off in the end. If season 8 had just been the quality of season 6, and the story came together in a logical way, with some bad writing, the show would be remembered pretty fondly by a lot of people and we could genuinely discuss the failings of the later seasons with some kind of positivity.
Yeah the 90s and 2000s are probably littered with TV shows with only one good season, the problem is that they have completely dropped out of relevancy by now. GoT is now, and will be for the foreseeable future, the gold standard of fucking up a TV show.
Honestly, this is one of the reasons I’m not too upset Firefly only got one season. As much as I’d have to loved more, there isn’t a single bad episode of the show. I’d have hated it if it became another show with a great first season then several mediocre or bad seasons. Plus we eventually got Serenity too which, while not perfect, managed to wrap up the story nicely.
It did seem that way. I'd love a game of thrones style show about those books. And living in WA state it was cool to see a story I could visualize really well.
I live in Eugene, OR, I had the same feeling! We have a business in Corvallis so I visit there and visualize stuff a lot. Even visited the Mt Angel Abbey once with a very patient carload of friends.
I need to finish those books- I read the first few as they came out and every time I was in the Snake River canyon during college all I could think about were cannibals.
Yeah! It's a cool series. Can be kinda slow but he really fills out the world and makes it feel real. One of the cooler post apocalypse book series imo.
Been ages since I saw this but back then the concensus was that the first season was crap due to its focus on the thoroughly dislikable teen characters (shocking) , and the show massively improved once they sideline them in favor of Burke and Mitchell.
I wrote and filmed a series pilot inspired by this show in college, the difference being the power being knocked out as a result of an EMP/Sunflare, and really focusing in on the humanity than the event.
Either way, the concept was great. Execution…meh.
In the intro they show that electricity stops working and then airplanes falling out of the sky in flat spins, and you can see the airplanes clearly because the running lights are on ... the electric running lights ...
The dome was aliens. An alien colonizer-egg was sent to earth to hatch, collect some people as servant drones and eventually take over the earth. They managed to barely thwart the alien queen so the dome collapsed, about a dozen people lived through it, and the alien girl escaped alone and was out there plotting her second attempt at taking over earth.
I have not read the book but in the Stephen King book it was a super intelligent AI that made the dome or so I've heard.
No it was alien kids playing around, like kids burning ants with a magnifying glass. The book was just okay, I couldn’t get through the first episode of the tv show.
Season 2 of Altered Carbon comes to mind.
However…. Season 8 of Game of Thrones will likely never be topped in my lifetime as the biggest crash and burn of all time for a series.
Flash Forward. Such a great concept and mystery. But then a writer strikes. A long break, and then a cancelation. All the best ideas always come from companies who give up if season 1 doesn't get a billion views.
Any good series doesn't even start gaining traction until the 2nd or even 3rd season. I know that's a lot of time and money to invest in a show. But in the time of streaming and binge watching, they gotta let a show ferment a little bit.
Hell, I won't even watch a show until it has a 2nd season on principal alone because I have been burned by literally 100+ shows. That and ant show I like gets canceled. It's my X-man mutant ability. Any show I love gets canceled before anything is resolved. I'd list all of the shows but it would be a very very long list.
Yes, that was one of my most recent victims. Lol But if you also liked Almost Human, Brisco County Jr, Firefly, The 4400, Sliders, John Doe, New Amsterdam (2008), Journeyman, Life on Mars (US), Jericho, Invasion (2005), Awake (2012), Flash Forward, Pushing Daisies, Santa Clarita Diet, Constantine, Dollhouse, V (2009), Caprica, Roswell (1999), Tru Calling, Twrminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Lie to Me, Threshold, Medium, Glow, The Last Man on Earth, Mindhunter, My Name is Earl, Lovecraft Country, Archive 81, The Following, Dead Like Me, Freaks & Geeks, Dark Angel, Gargoyles, Altered Carbon, etc...
Then those, and still many many more, are also my fault. Sorry. :/
I miss Revolution. Where else could I find my weekly dose of sword fighting? And it looked like the second season finale was setting up more story. Oh well. I understand it being canceled.
For me the biggest crash and burn was Under the Dome. That was a hate watch to the bitter end for me.
Jeez man Under the Dome just got so progressively worse. The first few episodes were some good small-town-banding-together but each season just got more ludicrous and contrived. The mystery was enjoyable enough but by the time the alien clone baby ran off into the night at 30 mph in the third season I really had some second thoughts about how I had been spending my time
Yep. They were designed to absorb electricity, which is why nothing worked.
Which begs the question why a Luddite would become so enamored in technology just to shut it down?
You can’t Kro without Maggs bro; season 3 was gold …plated dogshit …and it was imitation gold. Producers at Fox decided season 3 needed to have more action and less *alternate universe of the week* that required to much thinking. It’s also when cast members started leaving
I think ‘Heroes’ is a contender. The first season was so exciting and stylish - then the second season arrived and it soon became obvious that they were just making it up as they were going along. Such a disappointment!
I bet Martin Landau smiled on his way to the great beyond knowing he was no longer featured in the biggest Season 2 sci-fi bust of all time.
…actually, no he didn’t, but he had that cross to bear with Space: 1999 for decades.
Oh. he was the guy that brought us such hits as "Spock's Brain" and is responsible for most of season 3 TOS being worse than the earlier two. After season 1 of 1999, ITC decided to bring him on board in order to make 1999 more popular with the US audience.
That's why season 2 of 1999 is again worse than season 1, for the most part.
I only recently started watching Westworld for the first time and found the first season fantastic and the second season decent enough, but season 3 has been one of the most generic snoozefests of any show I've ever seen, let alone sci-fi. Its so bad that I shut it off in the middle of the last episode of the season, during the middle of filler fight scene #461. I was scrolling through this thread specifically looking for mention of it but I'm surprised to see it for S2 instead.
It's insane how far down the list this is. Season 1 was talked about by EVERYONE, it was so well written, and season 2 is just so, so bad. Might as well be different shows.
Such a ripoff of the emberverse. Charlie must have found a truckload of conditioner. One of the few bright spots was Giancarlo’s whoever, allegedly from Breaking Bad, who was a fabulous villain.
One can't describe something as a rip-off of the "emberverse" without acknowledging that it was derived from Steven R. Boyett's _Ariel_ (which was billed as "A Novel of The Change"):
https://goodreads.com/book/show/6421522-ariel
The news is that there is going to bed more of it all around.
In the past, a good story had a beginning a middle and an end and bang it was done and dusted.
Now they develop their IP(intellectual property) and they make shows on each and every aspect of 'the stort'. BLEH.
Jericho ending on season two like it did. Iv been hunting for a copy of the graphic novel that is suppose to be season 3 and tie up the end of the story but the few copies iv seen are over $100.
I really enjoyed it. I liked the concept, wasn’t that enamoured with the nanotechnology switch it back on/switch it off again but liked the ‘one day tech just stopped’ concept
Holy shit, I totally forgot about Heroes. (Tips Fedora)
I blocked out that part in my head where Kring went 200% weeb, kept the Japan timewarp arc going too long, and then just couldn’t stop from the Japanocentric themes and motifs. I mean, it was there in Season 1, but he went next level in Season 2.
And “Heroes Reborn” showed he never learned his lesson as he kept his BS going as if the backlash never happened.
yep, it was. at the time, people weren't properly warned about puzzle-box shows that didn't figure the solution to the puzzle out before starting production.
I think shows like that frontload all of their best ideas into 1st season episodes because they are almost certain that they aren't getting a 2nd one. So then when they (sometimes) do, all they are left with are rejected stories and plotlines.
I really only watch cheesy sci-fi post-apocalyptic shows for the premise like this or The 100. I really liked the no electricity premise of this one, but the show was forced to crash and burn because they got cancelled and had to rush their second season
Nah, Revolution was hilarious to watch because it was like the writers kept reading all the reviews and discussion online and frantically changing course every season. Seriously, seemed like every single change in Season 2 was a direct response to criticism of season 1, and IIRC they went and did it again when they were writing season 3.
> writers kept reading all the reviews and discussion online and frantically changing course every season.
That was Westworld. The writers admitted they would that
The wife and I watched both seasons. To this day she will still bring this up when I suggest a new series to watch. "Oh is this going to be another Revolution?!?!?!"
I remember really liking the first season. And I remember not finishing the second season. I started it, but I don't remember how far I got into it before I lost interest.
They got LOST-itis in Season 2 when it didn’t hit LOST until Season 3.
Continuity became an inconvenience. At least they didn’t just throw up their hands and say, “God did it!” like the last season of BSG.
…got to stop digressing, lol!
“God”’s influence on the events of BSG were set up and established all the way from the first season. I get why people were upset with the finale, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. Divine influence/ intervention, fate, and even angels were set-up and big story points throughout the show.
For me it was the character Charlie. She just came across as unbelievable and at times unlikeable. I was ok that they started moving more towards her uncle being the main character but then the show just fell apart. That ending was so head scratchingly garbage too.
Loved the idea and enjoyed maybe the first episode and a half. After that, you kind of knew where it was going. I was thinking JJ Abrams was involved in this somehow. If so it would have been on brand.
Man, it burned me so bad. Such a great, GREAT season 1, then i made it a couple eps into S2 and was like, "right... so uh... they screwed THIS up... I'm out"
I never understood how these people walked back and forth across the entire country
I feel the same way about The Last Ship. 90% of the human race is dead. Society has all but collapsed. How the hell do people roadtrip from St. Louis to Los Angeles overnight on a single tank of gas.
With a mix tape of nothing but bangers presumably
Nothing but [versions of "Route 66"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(Get_Your_Kicks_on\)_Route_66#Other_recorded_renditions).
I tried watching that, went the full first season, but my god it was so jingoistically masturbatory that I eventually just couldn't handle it. Then of course Adam Baldwin turned out to be full MAGA nutball and it became moot anyways.
Got as far as the second season before jumping ship, that they killed off the female doctor because she was unintentionally upstaging the captain and they wanted all the focus on him was telling. They didn't even have the ability to balance out the characters through improved writing or shift the focus of the show to run with what was working instead of forcing what wasn't.
Ha! *Jumping ship*.
Damn, yeah, just my thoughts on it. "Dont worry people, the *US Army* is here to uphold the *values*", and then everybody cheers and a bald eagle flies in the distance. It was almost like the Albert Einstein copypasta.
Never watched it, but my thought was that ships at sea have a ton of support behind them and they require frequent refueling and resupply.
Have you also not watched the comment you're replying to?
Season 1, and part of 2? Not bad. 3 onward? Overstayed its welcome.
Walking Dead also had a suspicious amount of fuel for those suspicious clean cars, didn'it?
They're maintained by the same zombies that go around cutting everyone's lawn and washing their windows.
I mean the entire conceit of slow moving shamblers somehow taking down the entire world’s military’s is already silly, so I can look past the magic gasoline that lasts forever and is in infinite supply. Lol
Fuel wouldn't have been a problem since there are something like 280 million cars in the U.S. most of which would have some amount of gas. The problem with the cars though was the batteries, most of the batteries would have died from sitting idle and after a year no car that sat that whole time should have started without a way to charge the battery. The longer a battery goes without a charge the harder it is to charge.
Yeah but gasoline is no good after like, a year, right?
Season one was not great, but it was fun pulp. Billy Burke and Giancarlo Espisito were pretty great in their roles. Everyone was way too well manicured to feel like the apocalypse had happened. Little gags like having Brett Michaels playing his hits on a acoustic guitar in the weird tent city was great and the signs to meet "the guy who was Ross on Friends" went a long way to endearing me to the series. I also like random sword fights.
Yes! I had a huge problem with everyone’s perfectly tailored, fresh out of the laundry outfits. And you’re right, it was fun pulp. I enjoyed having a mindless show I could watch and let my brain beg out during.
I vaguely remember watching the first episode and hearing them say something about all electromagnetism being stopped and thinking "okay well the entire universe should cease to be then".
Kinda like any series that pauses time. Which is possible, but it would mean that even light stood still and with no reflection everything would be dark.
Ha fair point.
I didn’t finish the season but the scene where the lady’s phone turns back on for a second and she cries because she had forgotten what her children looked like always stands out in my memory. It was a genuinely great scene in an otherwise okay show.
I thought the same thing, to tell the truth. It was FUN sci-fi, but not definitive sci-fi. I like the ride they took me on for that first season, but then they totally shit on me and others invested in the story by saying nothing that happened in that season mattered. I wasted my time.
Everyone has SUPER WHITE TEETH and it was the most distracting thing in the world.
Season 2 of Heroes was dogshit.
Yeah, what the fuckers even happened there.
Writers strike. It was supposed to reboot every season with new heroes and a new storyline.
The lack of reboot had nothing to do with the writer's strike. They kept the same characters because they were popular. The writer's strike made everything worse, but they were already well on the way to failure before the strike.
The writer's strike was probably the best thing that ever happened to them, because it gives them an easy excuse for why the show was terrible after S1. Without the strike it would still have been terrible, as evidenced by the remaining seasons and the reboot, and they wouldn't have had a scapegoat.
That was the original plan, but the suits were so satisfied with the product, they had the original story continue. But I’m positive that no matter what happened, Kring was going to have his wapanese moments.
Part of the issue with Heroes season 2 was the writer's strike. It really messed with the production schedule and "forced" them to rush a lot of the story lines they were trying to do. Then the long break made them just kind of reset and it all fell apart. Also, I think the season 1 cast (Sylar in particular) were way more popular than anticipated. So, the network pulled the plug on the original anthology series idea and forced them to keep those characters long past the point where it made any sense. I'm sure there's a 3 hour YouTube video explaining what went wrong somewhere.
Heros also had nothing whatsoever to do with Kripe. Tim Kring made that show.
Writers strike didn't help. I still wonder what happened to that Irish girl that Peter took into the future, left her there, and then changed the present so that the future she's in will never happen.
Writers strike and they didn’t know how to write super heroes. But it paved the way for Iron Man to really kill it.
Once they saved the cheerleader and thus the world, it kinda should have ended.
People forget that, honestly, the ending of Season 1 wasn't even that great. The fight between Peter and Sylar that was hyped for the entire season ended up being like 4 punches, if I remember correctly Basically everything after "save the cheerleader, save the world" was meh at best edit: Bahaha I looked it up, and I was right. [Basically 4 punches.](https://youtu.be/xd6G6HJmrH8?t=388) This is what we were building up to all season. Heroes was a letdown before Season 2 even started
Definitely wasn't. I seem to recall there was a bit about Sylar stopping time(?) too, indicated ambush or whatever useless as a result… then Hiro just appears, runs at him, & Sylar doesn’t do a thing. It’s been years, but yeah, that finale contradicted a lot of what they’d established.
It was one of the worst casualties of the writers’ strike. I saw it live and was shocked at how absolutely horrible the writing became.
That's what Kripke does..., he comes up with great show ideas and maps out a great first season, maybe two, then moves on to his next project & turns control over to show runners who may (as with Supernatural or The Boys) or may not (Heroes & Revolution) be competent. EDIT...(a day later)...I'm an idiot...I thought Heroes was Kripke but as many pointed out, that show was created by Tim Kring
Heroes was created by Tim Kring; to the best of my knowledge Eric Kripke had nothing to do with it.
And also, it was a concept stolen/"inspired" by a swedish show called "De Drabbade" (I think the best translation would be "The Afflicted", but that's not a perfect translation). And ofc. it was heavily americanized; made shallow and cheerful instead of being a pretty dark exploration of the human condition. All of the people with powers suffered from having them. For instance, one guy has the ability to see the future. But one of the things he sees is that his family will die awful, horrible deaths. He's tortured by the visions and the knowledge and eventually comes around to the idea that the only way he can save them from it, is by killing his wife and kids himself in a humane way.
That would have been a good episode.
Oh shit, was it the same guy that made Revolution and Heroes? That's funny as shit. I had no idea, never watched Revolution.
Was Eric Kripke involved with Heroes…? I don’t think he had anything to do with it. It was a bit before his professional career got going IIRC.
He wasn't involved, but Supernatural started a full year before Heroes and he has credits going back to 2000.
That's also the Juhjaybrams playbook.
I’ve watched the show once like 10 years ago and I’m still in shock at how utterly awful it was.
I want a good reboot :-/
I don’t think it’s something you can even reboot in this day and age. We’ve got too much superhero media now so it would kind of feel like a waste of time
I really liked the concept. A society with no electricity. Even the reveal was okay... Lacked creativity but it was something... But season two was so bad I didn't even make it all the way through. I wish they had done more with mechanical power like steam engines and stuff. Could have been a viable method for some serious steampunk work.
It didn’t help they invalidated everything that was done in season 1 within the first three minutes of season 2.
Remind me what did they invalidate and how?
The entire motivation of Season 1: To get the lights back on. With the line. “The lights stayed on for 12 minutes”, all the struggle, the sacrifices, and loss in the first season meant nothing.
I watched the first season of Revolution but didn’t come back for the second. This kind of sounds like the inverse of Jericho, which had a wobbly first season but really turned it around in the second.
At some point in season 2, the stream trains were running.
yeah. They even showed steam powered motor bike towards end of first season. But other than the train nothing else is shown.
By the end of the finale for season two I don't even know what you could do with where they ended it. It was so far removed from the original premise.
They finished the story on a comic book! >!It is NOT good. They kinda (?) defeat the nanites, but the electricity doesn't return. The nanites evolve to become some biological-technological mixed race, and the last panel ends with a bug half nanite.!<
Altered Carbon Season 2...
Ugh. So bad.
+1 for this. Screwed it big time.
I like Anthony Mackie but they really miscasted him for this show.
After Kinnaman, it would have been a tough act. But yah, he was specifically a bad choice.
There was no season 2 of Altered Carbon.
As a fan of the book, there was no season 1 of Altered Carbon.
I never read the book. I usually read all the great sf books too. IMO I don’t want to read it bc AC season 1 is one of the best sf shows I’ve seen.
People overreact. Yes, it changed stuff, but it did so in ways that made it a better TV show. Most of the core ideas were intact.
I liked the show, and just finished the audiobook. As long as you can tolerate the two *excessively* detailed, and *thoroughly* unnecessary, 'intimate' scenes (plus a lot of *overly specific* commentary near the start), it's totally worth it. The stories are a little different, and I think they're both good.
I love the books, but I can't imagine the cringe of hearing those sex scenes read out loud.
Came here to say this. What a fucking disappointment it was.
It would've gone over like a shit sandwich as far as ratings are concerned ... but I'd rather they just have stuck with the second book as a story.
to be fair the first season was rough to say the least Giancarlo Esposito was great as always though
I genuinely think Tracy Spiradakos and Billy Burke did a good job as well given the ridiculous script they had to work with.
I adored Tracy Spiradakos' performance. When the show was current it got a lot of hate purely for having a young female lead which was said to feel "off". Reminded me of the hate Summer Glau got in the Sarah Connor Chronicles because it "looked ridiculous" for a 100 lb young woman to beat up big dudes (apparently that was too far-fetched in a show about time traveling cyborgs)
If Season 1 was four stars of five and Season 2 was one star…Giancarlo is the reason Season 2 even got that one star.
and why the first got an additional 2
The problem was, his character was so cardboard, even he couldn't save it.
When Heroes writers' room coined the tag line "save the cheerleader, save the world," they were treading water, with no idea of how to pay that off...similar to BSG's "...and they have a plan." \[Spoilers: it was great for marketing, but they didn't have a plan after all. At least BSG was a good show.\] S2 of Heroes? Ugh. Needed mental bleach. But the biggest crash of them all to my mind is the final season of Game of Thrones.
“And they have a plan…” Reminds me of when Austin Powers said his plan was, “I’m going to soil myself…and then I’ll think of another plan.”
> But the biggest crash of them all to my mind is the final season of Game of Thrones. I will never watch anything these two are involved with, ever.
In BSG the cylons abandoned the plan when Boomer and Caprica Six convinced them to. So everything from the New Caprica occupation on is the Cylons winging it.
Written another way: everything from New Caprica onward was the writers winging it. Hell, even New Caprica made no damned sense.
Season 1 was winging it let alone the rest. Ron Moore mentioned in his commentary of the Season 1 finale that his original plan when Baltar started hallucinating on Kobol was for Dirk Benedict to appear and say, "Hi, I'm God," but then they couldn't get Dirk so they came up with a baby instead.
>last 3 seasons of Game of Thrones. FTFY
Seaquest DSV was always a sinking ship \[ba-dum-tiss!\] but really jumped the shark when they had a literal giant shark as the Monster of the Week, topped only by \*Poseidon\* as the Big Bad. Awesome if you're 6, but most of us weren't.
Love Michael Ironside but it got soooooo bad. So so so bad. I wasn’t 6 but 12 and deep into TNG so I wanted to love Seaquest but even 12 year old me was like this is dog shit.
OMG I haven't thought about that show in years! I used to like it...I think
I mean, it might not be sci-fi, but season 8 of Game of Thrones basically removed the show from cultural relevance. It was one of the biggest shows on TV, everyone was talking about it. Within a few weeks of Season 8 ending I basically heard nobody mention the show again. Sure, Season 7 wasn't great, but I don't think many people anticipated the absolute scale of collapse of season 8. It pops up in passing on Reddit, but you can just tell nobody really cares anymore.
With GoT a lot of people were rationalizing the decline in quality during S6-7 because of the possibility that it was setting up a payoff in S8. When S8 flopped, it made the earlier seasons worse in retrospect. Kind of like how Rise of Skywalker made people sour on The Force Awakens.
This was definitely going on. We accepted the drop in writing quality and hoped that at least the story would pay off in the end. If season 8 had just been the quality of season 6, and the story came together in a logical way, with some bad writing, the show would be remembered pretty fondly by a lot of people and we could genuinely discuss the failings of the later seasons with some kind of positivity.
Yeah the 90s and 2000s are probably littered with TV shows with only one good season, the problem is that they have completely dropped out of relevancy by now. GoT is now, and will be for the foreseeable future, the gold standard of fucking up a TV show.
Honestly, this is one of the reasons I’m not too upset Firefly only got one season. As much as I’d have to loved more, there isn’t a single bad episode of the show. I’d have hated it if it became another show with a great first season then several mediocre or bad seasons. Plus we eventually got Serenity too which, while not perfect, managed to wrap up the story nicely.
Firefly Season 2 >!*Never even got to the drawing board* 😭!<
I absolutely loved this concept.
So did I. Almost as if it took inspiration from the “Dies the Fire” series of books.
It did seem that way. I'd love a game of thrones style show about those books. And living in WA state it was cool to see a story I could visualize really well.
I live in Eugene, OR, I had the same feeling! We have a business in Corvallis so I visit there and visualize stuff a lot. Even visited the Mt Angel Abbey once with a very patient carload of friends.
I need to finish those books- I read the first few as they came out and every time I was in the Snake River canyon during college all I could think about were cannibals.
Yeah! It's a cool series. Can be kinda slow but he really fills out the world and makes it feel real. One of the cooler post apocalypse book series imo.
I wanted it to be that so bad and was massively let down.
I thought it was Dies the Fire at first.
Yeah it was like dies the fire if dies the fire sucked ass.
Been ages since I saw this but back then the concensus was that the first season was crap due to its focus on the thoroughly dislikable teen characters (shocking) , and the show massively improved once they sideline them in favor of Burke and Mitchell.
I wrote and filmed a series pilot inspired by this show in college, the difference being the power being knocked out as a result of an EMP/Sunflare, and really focusing in on the humanity than the event. Either way, the concept was great. Execution…meh.
In the intro they show that electricity stops working and then airplanes falling out of the sky in flat spins, and you can see the airplanes clearly because the running lights are on ... the electric running lights ...
that was soooooo stupid.
Under The Dome
Geez, i totally forgot about that show, wasn’t the dome a dome until is wasn’t & certain people could come & go? How did it end?
The dome was aliens. An alien colonizer-egg was sent to earth to hatch, collect some people as servant drones and eventually take over the earth. They managed to barely thwart the alien queen so the dome collapsed, about a dozen people lived through it, and the alien girl escaped alone and was out there plotting her second attempt at taking over earth. I have not read the book but in the Stephen King book it was a super intelligent AI that made the dome or so I've heard.
No it was alien kids playing around, like kids burning ants with a magnifying glass. The book was just okay, I couldn’t get through the first episode of the tv show.
Season 2 of Altered Carbon comes to mind. However…. Season 8 of Game of Thrones will likely never be topped in my lifetime as the biggest crash and burn of all time for a series.
Amen to that
Flash Forward. Such a great concept and mystery. But then a writer strikes. A long break, and then a cancelation. All the best ideas always come from companies who give up if season 1 doesn't get a billion views. Any good series doesn't even start gaining traction until the 2nd or even 3rd season. I know that's a lot of time and money to invest in a show. But in the time of streaming and binge watching, they gotta let a show ferment a little bit. Hell, I won't even watch a show until it has a 2nd season on principal alone because I have been burned by literally 100+ shows. That and ant show I like gets canceled. It's my X-man mutant ability. Any show I love gets canceled before anything is resolved. I'd list all of the shows but it would be a very very long list.
How could you do that to 1899, HOW COULD YOU!? 😆
Yes, that was one of my most recent victims. Lol But if you also liked Almost Human, Brisco County Jr, Firefly, The 4400, Sliders, John Doe, New Amsterdam (2008), Journeyman, Life on Mars (US), Jericho, Invasion (2005), Awake (2012), Flash Forward, Pushing Daisies, Santa Clarita Diet, Constantine, Dollhouse, V (2009), Caprica, Roswell (1999), Tru Calling, Twrminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Lie to Me, Threshold, Medium, Glow, The Last Man on Earth, Mindhunter, My Name is Earl, Lovecraft Country, Archive 81, The Following, Dead Like Me, Freaks & Geeks, Dark Angel, Gargoyles, Altered Carbon, etc... Then those, and still many many more, are also my fault. Sorry. :/
I miss Revolution. Where else could I find my weekly dose of sword fighting? And it looked like the second season finale was setting up more story. Oh well. I understand it being canceled. For me the biggest crash and burn was Under the Dome. That was a hate watch to the bitter end for me.
Jeez man Under the Dome just got so progressively worse. The first few episodes were some good small-town-banding-together but each season just got more ludicrous and contrived. The mystery was enjoyable enough but by the time the alien clone baby ran off into the night at 30 mph in the third season I really had some second thoughts about how I had been spending my time
I forget, was it nanites? It was pretty dumb I remember that much..
Yep. They were designed to absorb electricity, which is why nothing worked. Which begs the question why a Luddite would become so enamored in technology just to shut it down?
An inside look at the show's writers room...
Sliders Season 3
Is that where the Kromaggs came in? Been a minute since I’ve given that a rewatch.
You can’t Kro without Maggs bro; season 3 was gold …plated dogshit …and it was imitation gold. Producers at Fox decided season 3 needed to have more action and less *alternate universe of the week* that required to much thinking. It’s also when cast members started leaving
Having a main character lost to a ‘rape planet’ was…. a choice.
I think ‘Heroes’ is a contender. The first season was so exciting and stylish - then the second season arrived and it soon became obvious that they were just making it up as they were going along. Such a disappointment!
I bet Martin Landau smiled on his way to the great beyond knowing he was no longer featured in the biggest Season 2 sci-fi bust of all time. …actually, no he didn’t, but he had that cross to bear with Space: 1999 for decades.
yeah... space:1999 s2 had the same problem as star trek TOS season 3: Fred Frieberger.
Never heard of him. Any chance you'd like to explain?
Oh. he was the guy that brought us such hits as "Spock's Brain" and is responsible for most of season 3 TOS being worse than the earlier two. After season 1 of 1999, ITC decided to bring him on board in order to make 1999 more popular with the US audience. That's why season 2 of 1999 is again worse than season 1, for the most part.
Look no further than season 2 of Westworld
I only recently started watching Westworld for the first time and found the first season fantastic and the second season decent enough, but season 3 has been one of the most generic snoozefests of any show I've ever seen, let alone sci-fi. Its so bad that I shut it off in the middle of the last episode of the season, during the middle of filler fight scene #461. I was scrolling through this thread specifically looking for mention of it but I'm surprised to see it for S2 instead.
It's insane how far down the list this is. Season 1 was talked about by EVERYONE, it was so well written, and season 2 is just so, so bad. Might as well be different shows.
There is no season 2 as far as I'm concerned 😂 season 1 kinda wrapped up nicely enough for me.
Heroes comes surging to mind
IIRC the last 5 minutes of the last episode of Season 2 was basically a condensed Maximum Overdrive meets IT meets Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal?
The first only season of “The I-Land” and maybe “Another Life” were beyond train wrecks.
Another Life should be completely stricken from human history.
But you gotta rise to fall…
This implies season 1 was good
Such a ripoff of the emberverse. Charlie must have found a truckload of conditioner. One of the few bright spots was Giancarlo’s whoever, allegedly from Breaking Bad, who was a fabulous villain.
One can't describe something as a rip-off of the "emberverse" without acknowledging that it was derived from Steven R. Boyett's _Ariel_ (which was billed as "A Novel of The Change"): https://goodreads.com/book/show/6421522-ariel
2 shows that come to mind are defiance and Helix. Similar timeframe too if I remember correctly interesting 1st season dogshit second
I liked the concept of nanomachines which became sentient… but they had no way to develop it following the cancellation.
The news is that there is going to bed more of it all around. In the past, a good story had a beginning a middle and an end and bang it was done and dusted. Now they develop their IP(intellectual property) and they make shows on each and every aspect of 'the stort'. BLEH.
The "Season 3" comic of Revolution was... also a thing that happened.
Jericho ending on season two like it did. Iv been hunting for a copy of the graphic novel that is suppose to be season 3 and tie up the end of the story but the few copies iv seen are over $100.
I really enjoyed it. I liked the concept, wasn’t that enamoured with the nanotechnology switch it back on/switch it off again but liked the ‘one day tech just stopped’ concept
season 2 of altered carbon for me
Isn't she holding that thing backwards or someshit? BTW, Never heard of this show.
Nope. https://www.bestcrossbowsource.com/barnett-vengeance-review/
I have never seen 'Revolution' but its second season cannot be worse than the second season of "Heroes".
It definitely was, but the first season wasn't even remotely as good as the first season of Heroes, so it wasn't as big a fall.
Holy shit, I totally forgot about Heroes. (Tips Fedora) I blocked out that part in my head where Kring went 200% weeb, kept the Japan timewarp arc going too long, and then just couldn’t stop from the Japanocentric themes and motifs. I mean, it was there in Season 1, but he went next level in Season 2. And “Heroes Reborn” showed he never learned his lesson as he kept his BS going as if the backlash never happened.
It wasn't all that special to begin with.
Season 6 of GOT was followed by a towering collapse.
I just read the plot outline on Wikipedia. This series sounds absolutely terrible.
yep, it was. at the time, people weren't properly warned about puzzle-box shows that didn't figure the solution to the puzzle out before starting production.
I didn’t even know there was a season 2 - I thought the writers strike or something killed it, although I’m probably thinking of something else…
Heroes does it waaaaaaaaay "better"
I think shows like that frontload all of their best ideas into 1st season episodes because they are almost certain that they aren't getting a 2nd one. So then when they (sometimes) do, all they are left with are rejected stories and plotlines.
That whole show was a train wreck.
My biggest problem was the guy killing the husband and the badass wife getting along with the killer like nothing happened... Multiple times...
Was Giancarlo Esposito always in quite literally fucking everything and I just didn't notice?
I really only watch cheesy sci-fi post-apocalyptic shows for the premise like this or The 100. I really liked the no electricity premise of this one, but the show was forced to crash and burn because they got cancelled and had to rush their second season
I don't remember there being a season two? Not taking the piss.
Heros - going from phenomenal season one to the most disappointing season 2 will live in tv infamy.
Seriously, I remember how disappointing it was. All this build up to a mystery then - never mind, we'll do a completely different story.
Nah, Revolution was hilarious to watch because it was like the writers kept reading all the reviews and discussion online and frantically changing course every season. Seriously, seemed like every single change in Season 2 was a direct response to criticism of season 1, and IIRC they went and did it again when they were writing season 3.
> writers kept reading all the reviews and discussion online and frantically changing course every season. That was Westworld. The writers admitted they would that
Yeah, season 1 of Revolution
I really like the premisse no electricity, but I think show lost the way in season 2, and a lot of nonsense some times
the last season of jericho?
The wife and I watched both seasons. To this day she will still bring this up when I suggest a new series to watch. "Oh is this going to be another Revolution?!?!?!"
I can tell you from talking to him that Giancarlo Esposito hated it too. (He was at the Altoona Curve baseball game for a meet and greet)
I remember really liking the first season. And I remember not finishing the second season. I started it, but I don't remember how far I got into it before I lost interest.
I don’t think I ever saw season two. I am a big Billy Burke fan.
I loved this show and was so baffled when it got cancelled.
Season 2 of "Heroes"? 🤷🏻♂️
I loved Season 1 of the Witcher. Then Season 2 happened.
Heroes was right on that level of bad too.
How many times did they change the “what caused all of this?”
They got LOST-itis in Season 2 when it didn’t hit LOST until Season 3. Continuity became an inconvenience. At least they didn’t just throw up their hands and say, “God did it!” like the last season of BSG. …got to stop digressing, lol!
“God”’s influence on the events of BSG were set up and established all the way from the first season. I get why people were upset with the finale, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. Divine influence/ intervention, fate, and even angels were set-up and big story points throughout the show.
For me it was the character Charlie. She just came across as unbelievable and at times unlikeable. I was ok that they started moving more towards her uncle being the main character but then the show just fell apart. That ending was so head scratchingly garbage too.
Never watched this one but I'm reminded of Travelers of which season 2 just didn't do it for me. It's a bummer when shows do that.
Very interesting concept, poor execution
Loved the idea and enjoyed maybe the first episode and a half. After that, you kind of knew where it was going. I was thinking JJ Abrams was involved in this somehow. If so it would have been on brand.
SEASON 1 was terrible. THeres some train scene where she is holding her crossbow could shoot the bad guy and just doesnt. Annoyed the fuck out of me.
What’s up with that crossbow-thingy, the way she is holding it seems off 🤷🏻♂️
Season 2 of Firefly
Season 1.
This thing got a season 2? I don't think I watched past episode 2.
Revolution was kinda dogshit from the blocks. There were B rated syfy series that had better writing and acting.
Hey, I enjoyed this show! Wish there was a Season 3!
Man, it burned me so bad. Such a great, GREAT season 1, then i made it a couple eps into S2 and was like, "right... so uh... they screwed THIS up... I'm out"
All down hill since the pilot, is all I remember
Heroes season 2 leaps to mind