Is The X-Files still the prime example of a great show turning to shit by the end?

[Rosenkrantz]

To preface, I'm still a fan of X-Files and I've just decided to do a rewatch of the entire show. It was a big part of my childhood, along with Terminator 2 and The Exorcist cemented my love for sci-fi and paranormal/supernatural horror. And I'm grateful it gave (a short) life to a gem like Millennium.

With that being said, most of the stuff Carter and co wrote past season 6 has been awful. It didn't make much sense and was simply dragging the main plot of the show (and main plot has never been a strong point of the series). Duchovny and Anderson became visibly disinterested in their characters. Ratings were dropping and the cultural clout the show once had started to disappear.

I know there's a lot of shows that lose steam in the later seasons, like Supernatural after Kripke left (ironically, I never liked his run, too serious for my taste), but outside of the last season of GoT and maybe Dexter I don't think any other show, at least during my time, took as much beating as X-Files.

What do you folks think is a prime example of a good show nosediving in quality towards the end?

 

[spineduke]

What do you folks think is a prime example of a good show nosediving in quality towards the end?

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Game of Thrones

Ive never seen something fall so hard from so high up. It went from one the most consumed and talked about shows to....nothing. to vanish from the cultural zeitgeist like that takes real work.

 

[bushmonkey]

Game of Thrones is way more a fall and a shitshow at the end than X-files ever was.

 

[MoosGoMoo]

GoT is the biggest example ever now, easily.

 

[DarthMasta]

GoT

 

[ArjanN]

Lost and Game of Thrones are probably more relevant go-to examples now.

 

[Hoggle]

Scrubs
Needed to end about four seasons earlier.

 

[Deleted member 2752]

GoT and Dexter are way worse. Maybe Scrubs, too?

 

[Everybody Lies]

Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Dexter is on the list too, but I don't think it reached the highs of those other shows.

 

[Soap]

I think x-files was a different kind of failure than the show mentioned here as the decline was drawn out far longer rather than having a dramatic drop in quality super fast. I know it is still ongoing, but I think The Simpsons is a better comparison.

 

[Couleurs]

Oz is another. The first few seasons were really good, but fell off a cliff quality wise as soon as they started the aging pill shit

 

[Burgess_101]

My wife loves xfiles and I've seen it all through like twice now and random episodes all the time as it helps her sleep.

Those last two seasons or so are really jarring because they just come across as a pisstake. I personally think it's worse than GoT because at least it seemed somewhat genuine.

 

[JasonV]

It was a subtle, gradual decline as they shifted from Vancouver to LA, with some fantastic monster of the week episodes mixed in.
*Just talking about the original run.


GOT just fell off a clip.

 

[Wrexis]

Sleepy Hollow was up there I think.

 

[El Bombastico]

Game of Thrones is worse, FAR worse.

Oz is another. The first few seasons were really good, but fell off a cliff quality wise as soon as they started the aging pill shit

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Between the musical episode, the IRA bomb episode, the Death Row photo shoot episode, and the Robson getting spooned episode, those last couple seasons were fucking BATSHIT.

 

[Deleted member 16516]

Stargate SG-1 is another example. Would have been better if they just ended it after season 8's finale.

 

[thenexus6]

I watched the X-Files for the first time maybe two years ago, and yeah it dropped off massively. I think I even skipped 1-2 entire seasons basically.

 

[YolkFolk]

Game of Thrones is a much bigger example.

 

[BarrBarr]

A lot of showtime shows consistently had great starts before turning into absolute shit as they went on.

Californication great first season, and then every season after it just got progressively worse

Weeds was another show that started off great before eventually being so offensively bad that I am surprised the show runner made a great show like Orange is the New Black

Dexter I don't need to expand on what happened to this show.

I'm sure that there are a ton of showtime shows that met a similar fate.

 

[Baladium]

I haven't even seen a single episode of Throne of Games but even I know how bad the final season is as if I had seen it.

 

[mgj]

BBC Sherlock. Season 1 and 2 were pretty great (minus the queerbaiting, and plot holes - it was still a good time to watch), 3 was fine and 4 was an abject disaster.

 

[mingo]

X files was a big decline but the reboot was decent if short lived. The biggest decline I've watched was the Walking Dead, but that wasn't towards the end, it was after like S3 or something. I managed to somehow watch till the Negan story finished and I just couldn't bare watching anymore.

 

[Jon Carter]

I'm sure a lot of people would disagree, but as someone who was mostly watching Smallville for the teen drama aspect of it, everything after season 3 was incredibly jarring. I tried to watch some episodes here and there later on, and every time, I had to come to the realization that this show I used to love so much I would watch each episode two or three times the week they aired was now unwatchable. I don't think I was ever able to sit through an entire episode of the second half of the show's run. Just cheap-looking, unexciting garbage.

 

[El Bombastico]

BBC Sherlock. Season 1 and 2 were pretty great (minus the queerbaiting, and plot holes - it was still a good time to watch), 3 was fine and 4 was an abject disaster.

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That final episode was the worst 2 hours of British television I have ever seen. I remain embarrassed for everyone involved.

 

[wow_bob_wow]

Yeah. The X Files revival was largely garbage. The sad thing is, I don't think with the X Files it would have been that hard to successfully revive the show. They needed to take the passage of time into account and essentially make "X Files: The Next Generation"-- bring in a new cast of characters that are investigating Monster of the Week cases and have Mulder & Scully retire and instead function as new informants a la Deep Throat or X. Just let the ongoing story arc die, and bring back the format that makes the show work.

 

[SlasherMcGirk]

No the original run was great. Great ending. Post show stuff absolutely garbage.

 

[UberTag]

I think x-files was a different kind of failure than the show mentioned here as the decline was drawn out far longer rather than having a dramatic drop in quality super fast. I know it is still ongoing, but I think The Simpsons is a better comparison.

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If The Simpsons ended after Season 11 or 12, you might've had a case to make. That comparison doesn't apply these days, however.

 

[astro]

Dexter, GoT, Heroes, True blood, Lost, X-Files, The Office (US version)... all varying degreees of quality as shows overall, but all had pretty major drop-offs towards the end.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

I'm quite glad I dropped x files half way through season 7 (it was getting tedious plus I heard it got bad by this point anyway), as my overall impression of the show remains very positive

other than that my choice would be HIMYM aka how to utterly ruin your show in the last 2 episodes

 

[shenden]

X-files is probably the worst one, for sure. I loved this show and the finale episodes that they aired a couple of years back was atrociously bad. I still can't believe how awfully bad it was.

 

[Majora85]

Surprised more people haven't mentioned The Simpsons. Within the space of a few seasons it went from one of the best TV shows ever made to an embarrassment that dragged on for literally decades

 

[ShapeGSX]

Lost.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Sliders

 

[Dekim]

Nothing has topped Dexter in terms of shitty endings in my mind.

 

[AniHawk]

Surprised more people haven't mentioned The Simpsons. Within the space of a few seasons it went from one of the best TV shows ever made to an embarrassment that dragged on for literally decades

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the recent seasons have not been bad. they're certainly more cleverly written, creative, and adventurous than the season 11-20 stuff.

 

[Mifec]

GoT turned to shit by S4, it took far longer for X files.

 

[Mafro]

Game of Thrones going from being a pop culture monster to forgotten about will never be topped.

 

[Bjomesphat]

Game of Thrones

Ive never seen something fall so hard from so high up. It went from one the most consumed and talked about shows to....nothing. to vanish from the cultural zeitgeist like that takes real work.

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Yeah it's weird. It's almost like the show isn't on the air anymore.

 

[Praxis]

I'd say Lost and GoT

 

[DeadlyParasite]

Seasons 1-5 of The X-files were godtier. Then the movie came out and everything after that just didn't work for me.

 

[Tavernade]

X-Files feels like a different beast from something like GoT. The way X-Files is structured ESPECIALLY if you're more into Monster of the Week stories than the myth arc (like myself) the fall in quality doesn't really impact how you view earlier seasons. Like, you can just have fun talking about all the good stuff from the first 6-7 years + the occasionally good episodes later and never have to bring up the bad stuff.

Versus GoT and puzzle box shows with poor endings which, since they're more serialised, diminish the good stuff earlier on since it never went anywhere.

 

[whytemyke]

Walking Dead got so bad that nobody even remembers it's still on lol

 

[ZackieChan]

That last season of XFiles they aired a few years back was so unbelievably bad, I was in awe the entire time.
True Blood is another one. At least it was fun but silly in the beginning. But that last season was so terrible. Just...how? I think at one point,

Spoiler

Tara

, a major character, just kind of died offscreen. Really really weird.

 

[Deleted member 8901]

There are way worse drops in quality than X Files. The monster of the week episodes were still decent up to the end.

Like others said, Simpsons has had like a 20 season run of being straight trash.

 

[Onebadlion]

The Simpsons is the prime example, but X-Files definitely went on far too long too.

 

[StopMakingSense]

Sliders

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not popular enough to be the right answer, but very very good answer nonetheless.

 

[GeoGonzo]

Nothing has topped Dexter in terms of shitty endings in my mind.

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The thing about Dexter is that the last season sunk to such an abysmal depth that it maybe dragged the whole show down with it, to the point where I often look back and think "was it ever a good show, or was it simply enjoyable but mediocre?"

 

[OneTrueJack]

I'd say Supernatural still takes the crown. By season 15 (fifteen!) the show had genuinely become a parody of itself. The production value had sunken so low that not only did episodes made decade prior look better, but it's hard to believe they're supposed to be a part of the same show.

I mean say what you will about these other shows (X-Files, Game of Thrones, Dexter, etc.) but none of them ever did a crossover with Scooby-Doo. Like, that happened on Supernatural. That's how little anyone involved cared by the end.

 

[Pluto]

Game of Thrones is way more a fall and a shitshow at the end than X-files ever was.

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In my opinion X-Files was worse because it just kept going for years after it should have ended, then it came back with two godawful seasons, still dangling the "myth arc" carrot in front of the audience without resolving anything because Chris Carter never had any idea what the "myth arc" was or what it would lead to.

Game of Thrones was good for much longer and really only fell in the last season and even then it at least gave us an ending. Not an ending many people liked but still an ending, X-Files just stopped after being shit ... twice.

 

[thesoapster]

Dexter is the worst in my mind.