14 TV Shows That Jumped the Shark

Television has been the center of our entertainment for years now, and we’ve seen shows come and go — both good and bad. Sometimes, a series will overstay its welcome and far exceed its expiration date. Some are never welcomed to begin with, but more often than not, there’s a pretty big audience around to leave a show when it starts to go bad. Here are 15 of TV’s biggest shows that we feel it’s time to admit have jumped the shark.
 

Heroes

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Heroes debuted back in 2006, with a lot of promise. Granted, most of the series elements seemed copied from USA Network’s The 4400, but we all still embraced it for it’s fresh approach to presentation. Then things went horribly wrong.

The Office

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The Office has been a fabulous show for most of its run. Characters Jim and Pam have had one of the greatest romances on TV, and we got to know all the characters inside and out by the time their wedding came around. When Jim and Pam finally got married, we felt the series start to turn. The wedding episode itself had sweet moments, but it was filled with the same, predictable, cheesy jokes that have been long overplayed. The wedding should have ended the series. Now with a baby coming, who knows what will happen. Oh, and there’s the merger. The key, in the past, to how the show handled change, was that it happened, but everything got back to normal by the end of the season. We think it’s getting too late to turn back now. Jim needs to get smarter than Dwight, Holly needs to return, the merger needs to go away (no matter how great it is to see Kathy Bates on the show) and we want more of the old awkward moments back. Everyone’s just too comfortable with each other now, it doesn’t feel like The Office anymore.  

24

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24 is based around a single basic premise of a real-time plot — every minute of airtime equals a minute for the characters in the story. No doubt it was a neat idea at first, but how many times are we going to go through the same plot line? How many more ridiculous things will Jack Bauer have to go through? The network should just pull the batteries out of 24‘s clock, once and for all.
 

Any CSI series

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The original CSI, set in Las Vegas, was hugely popular — and still is to a certain extent. It really started the painfully overplayed trend of the “solve a crime with _____” mystery cop drama — in this case, forensics. Recently, the original CSI has lost so much of the cast, and gone so far off track, that it’s almost unbearable. As for CSI: Miami and CSI: New York; both are a waste of air time and don’t really have any substance to them at all — and never did.
 

American Idol

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Let’s face it: the only season of American Idol that was somewhat watchable was the first one. It was a new concept at the time, and it was really the only season that sprouted a contestant that went anywhere, barring maybe one other. Now it’s so old and worn out, even Paula Abdul wanted to leave.
 

House

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Hugh Laurie is a wonderful actor, and House used to be a great show — the cases, House’s wit, and even House and Cuddy’s growing relationship were great tools to keep an audience going. Things change. Between trashing the “Huddy” relationship, institutionalizing House then giving him back his practice (Really?), having an otherwise meek doctor up and murder a patient while dragging the whole team into complicity, and bringing back “13,” easily the worst character on the show — House has officially jumped the shark. Thirteen started off as a promiscuous drug-seeking lesbian, then Foreman saved her with his love. But wait, she got a tumor out of nowhere — it’s OK though, it magically disappears overnight! She’s taken hostage by a gun-toting psychopath who wants to inject her with fatal drugs! It’s just too much. She barely has the facial expression range of a Stepford Wife. We can see why a fatal heart disease was written into her character — she’s disposable. End her already and get back to the House we know and love.  

Bones

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Bones was charming at some point in time. Yes, it was just another crime-solving show with a technical twist. Nonetheless, the Dr. Brennan/Agent Booth dynamic kept the show watchable throughout. Once they decided they needed to hop on the brain tumor bandwagon, and then decided it was a good idea to throw Family Guy‘s Stewie in the mix, things got ugly. Top it off with the fact that they led us on with Booth’s whole tumor-induced dream world — in which the sexual tension between him and Brennan is made kaput — only to turn around to ruin the whole thing with amnesia. That wasn’t the only string of events that turned us off to the series, either: Turning an intern into a killer for ratings, just to turn around and take it back once the fans raged against the decision — it’s all added up.  

NCIS: Los Angeles

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As if NCIS wasn’t cheesy enough, CBS had to go and make a spin-off (of a spin-off). NCIS: Los Angeles should have never come to be — period — and to make it worse, Chris O’Donnell plays the main character. Remember the failure of half-ass acting that was Robin, back in the 1995 ruination called Batman Forever? Yeah, that’s him. As for LL Cool J, we would say that he should just stick to his music, but after his last album, maybe he should just retire.
 

Law and Order: SVU

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Law & Order: SVU is definitely done. It used to be an award-winning show, but the writing has become absolutely terrible. Half the time the dialogue sounds like they’re reciting a sociology textbook: “Well, you know, 83% of all child abusers were abused themselves.” The breaking-point that took the show over the Fonzie-fold was when one of the lab techs, who was previously there for nothing more than comic relief, went crazy and killed another lab tech, tortured one character and then was convinced by another that they were soul mates so she could get his gun. Oh, that’s all aside from using Hillary Duff as a guest star — no thanks.  

Prison Break

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The mere concept of this series makes us wonder how the writers even managed to keep it going for even one whole season, but Prison Break went on for four seasons. Seriously though, there’s not a whole lot to it: Character is jailed, there’s some planning in-between, and then he breaks out — end of series, right? No. The series was well received, and the writers should have simply ended it on a good note and called themselves lucky when they had the chance.
 

Medium

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Medium started off in the Top 20 Nielsen ratings — no doubt due to Patricia Arquette’s leading role — but went down from there. It was based off of the real life experiences of self-proclaimed spiritual medium Allison DuBois, which at least made for an interesting first season. It’s been dragged on for six seasons now, getting more and more frumpy as time wears on; the real shark-jumping moment came when Allison was diagnosed with — you guessed it — a brain tumor. Her headaches, tumor, stroke, surgery and coma evoked not a single twinge of sympathy from viewers, because brain tumors have officially lost their potency. It seems like most network shows were plagued with brain tumors at the time; NBC dropped the series, CBS quickly picked it up and cured Allison of her brain tumor, and returned her to work with a very crippled look and more family drama than you can shake a stick at. They should have just killed the show off. 
 

How I Met Your Mother

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How I Met Your Mother started off as something different. The storytelling plot and unending mystery kept us going for a while, but we’re all still wondering who Ted will marry. The characters were lovable, but after putting Ted through so much, we’re done. Getting together with Robin, breaking up, making out again, getting serious with other girls, getting back with Robin, and so on, and so forth. It’s getting old. The show is simply frustrating now — the suspense was a great tool to keep us around for a few seasons, but it’s played out already and we’d rather have resolution than another Friends on our hands.  

Ghost Whisperer

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Another procedural drama, Ghost Whisperer‘s main character can see ghosts, communicate with them, and help them “move on.” Jennifer Love Hewitt is nice to look at and the show was catchy enough at first glance, but when her character Melinda’s husband, Jim, died himself it went from iffy to just plain bad. It wasn’t so much the fact that Jim died, but that his ghost came back and took over someone else’s body — which Melinda turned around to remarry. So this guy she married is both Jim and some other guy, but not really either. Yeah, too far fetched.  

Smallville

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Another series we can’t believe is still on the air, Smallville has been around since 2001. It was good for a while, but it just needs to be laid to rest. The plot lines are becoming ridiculous, and cast members are starting to leave — never a good sign. But, in the true fashion of the WB Network (ahem; 7th Heaven, Dawson’s Creek), it will likely overstay it’s welcome by a long shot.