The Final Problem

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this “Fighting Time Lords” shirt for you.

Gallifrey University Fighting Time Lords Shirt - Doctor Who parody, geeky tees, funny t-shirts, nerdy shirts

@sizemore twatted a tweet so good I had to ask for permission to make it into a comic. Luckily he obliged, and thus you have the only ending to House that I will ever accept.

Before the pedanti-squad gets their pedanties all knotted up, I do know that once during season four of House “it” was, in fact, Lupus. I’m actually quite glad House is ending. It’s really the only formula driven, procedural show I’ve ever appreciated. I think the blame for that appreciation falls squarely on Hugh Laurie. He has remained consistently captivating for eight years. Even when the plot was faltering, the sidekicks were boring or the case was too fantastic to get emotionally invested in HE was the grizzled glue that held it all together. Despite my stubbley crush on the pill popping, leg limping wonder doc, I firmly believe the writers and producers of House have taken that character absolutely everywhere he could possible go. He has gone through various stages of addiction, recovery, self-destruction, and re-recovery more than a few times. He’s taken the same physical and emotional journey through the peaks and valleys of self loathing and self discovery over and over and to have him continue to circle around the depths of the human condition for 1 or 2 more years would be abusive to the character and the audience.

In all honesty, the show could have ended after season 4 and I probably would have been fine. They might have even checked out with a little more integrity at that point. The subsequent seasons have veered into territory so implausible that the ideas might as well have been borrowed from rejected Nip/Tuck scripts. Still, they somehow managed to real in the crazy and keep things interesting without resorting to too much sensationalism.

The problem with House is that it has always asked the audience to suspend disbelief in order to allow for a character that in any sane world would have long since died by his own actions or those of someone who has spent any length of time in his company, or at the very least been completely abandoned by anyone and everyone he had ever worked with or known personally. The show has explored each of these ideas multiple times, but the consequences never seem to stick. No matter how smart he is, no matter how many lives he’s saved, House would have been fired from PPTH in the first season and had his medical license permanently revoked. It gets harder and harder to ignore this fact as the show goes on since he starts committing felony after felony and goes essentially unpunished. Even after he basically attempts to murder his girlfriend/boss and her entire family he gets a truncated prison sentence, a slap on the wrist AND his old job back. I think the writers found it harder and harder to reset the show back to its basic premise after each consecutive escalation of insanity. If it were to continue any longer, house would have to assassinate the president with a tank, then somehow be elected president himself.

OK, I would totally watch that show.

COMMENTERS: What show that you enjoyed just went on at least a season too long? When should it have ended? I bet more than a few of you are going to say Supernatural season 5. For me it was Heroes, after season 1 and Nip/Tuck after season 2. I would also have accepted a straight up cancellation of LOST after season 3, since none of the unanswered questions up until that point were EVER answered in the remaining 3 seasons.

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84 Comments

    • Supernatural. For sure.

      I had a friend who stopped watching Buffy after Season 5, he enjoyed the whole a lot more with it ending like that then he did when he decided he had to watch 6 & 7 because we were playing the RPG. I kind of envy him although the second half of 6 was good.

      Deadwood at season 2.

    • At the very least DBZ could be fun to watch. I do agree that it just went on too long. The same "Bad guy shows up. He's too strong. We train. We kick his ass. Yay!" plot in most every saga really didn't help it make a case for lasting that long though.

    • Dude, I seriously doubt anyone would give you crap for thinking DBZ went on too long. Even the creator thought the Buu saga was extraneous and, personally, I lost interest in the anime by the time Cell was wreaking havoc, but at least the ending of that would have been a good coda for the series.

  2. LUPUS FALLS.

    That's all I have to add to this conversation.

    No, wait:

    I would also accept a season finale where House and Wilson just throw their hands up at the rest of the world and give in to their insatiable desires for each other.

    • Oh please. Everybody knows Wilson has gay jungle fever for Foreman.

      Now a House, Chase, and Adams sandwich? That's something everyone can enjoy.

  3. Agreed that Supernatural wasn't great last season and I would have answered with that, but I am actually enjoying this season.

    I'm thinking House is the one that should have ended after he was in the asylum. And as much as I enjoy Bones, this should probably be the last season. They can't really expect to continue after they finally get the characters together and they're having a baby.

    • Yeah, Supernatural has been awesome fun this season. Last season I thought, "ok, its getting time to call it on this one" but now I'm back to wanting a Season 8!! Especially after last week's gloriousness!!

      meanwhile, i gave up on House about 3 season ago. OY VEY. (This may also be due to having drunks and addicts in my family. I could not believe people unrelated to him would stick around when family members are smart enough to walk away at some point.)

  4. I really can't think of a show that should have been axed (without going into reality TV and shows that I think just shouldn't exist at all) earlier than it was. I can only think of shows that were axed too early.

    I'm bitter than Stargate Universe got 2 seasons while Firefly got 14 episodes, where only 12 aired and they were all done out of order. Stargate Universe had a lot of potential (mostly with that mid-season finally), I just found it boring and too far from the formula that had made SG-1 and Atlantis such fun to watch. Too many bitchy people and civilians all up in my space warfare show. It could have been an okay show to watch if it hadn't had the Stargate name stamped on it. I haven't seen all of the 2 seasons (SG-1 is a better use of my time), and it was getting better as time went on, it was just never a show that made me have to see the next episode or draw me into the plot. (There was plenty good with the show, but I've already taken a tangent off of the original topic, so I'll just stop now).

  5. I’m thinking the show ends with Dr Wilson shooting House in the back “for his own good” and House dying with a smile on his face.

    • Really? You draw the line at Heroes season 4? I think it could have been fine if Season 2 was the last one, if they had wrapped it up.

      • Honestly, I think the main problem with Heroes is that they got fucked over by the Writer's strike. If they had gotten to do an actual second season, instead of having to ax half of it, then it could have stayed tolerable for another couple of seasons.

    • Angel season 4 was a bit iffy as well, what with the amnesia plot and constantly jumping from one implacable evil to the next. I did like the final bad, but it was all a bit cobbled together, and tried to make a charade out of the previous seasons.

      • I'm sorry, but Angel Season 5 was amazing. Spike just brought out the best in Angel, and let them examine Angel morally, which they had always avoided before. Plus, the finale of Angel was MUCH better than the finale of Buffy. Ridiculously better.

        And Six Feet Under – it could have ended after 2 seasons, for sure.

  7. Wait, no one’s said “X-Files” yet? After Duchovny and Anderson left, there was no reason to watch it.

    And it seems that people who loved the first two Stargate shows (myself included) didn’t love Universe for the same reasons that other people are vice versa. I gave up only three eps from the end. My husband told me what happened, and I don’t regret my choice. SG1 actually did a great job with actor overhaul on season 9. I was afraid that it would go the way of X-Files and suck, but the last two seasons were the best.

    Universe lasted for 2 seasons because there was already a franchise. Firefly (RIP) wasn’t already a known entity. I think it was a fluke that Stargate SG1 lasted at all on Showtime because when I tell friends the plot, it sounds ridiculous.

    BTW, I love how multiple people refuse to pronounce Syfy “Sci-Fi”. I thought I was the only one until I started listening to geek podcasts. That’s a decision that has gone on a year (or three) too long.

    • I was thinking the same thing. I'm afraid maybe that it is a symptom of age – I'm in my mid-30s, people in their 20's likely were too young to be watching the X-files when it was really good then witness the subsequent implosion of the series…

  8. I agree about House, it has gone on a little to long, but I still enjoy it.

    I watched Heroes till the end, hoping to get season 1 back, but kept being disappointed. Alias was similar, should have ended when they brought the secret organization down. The Office should have ended, but at least until I cut cable, I was still watching it. Chuck is another one, it was good, it went downhill, but I kept watching. Missed the final episode though.

    I actually disagree on SGU, it was just coming into it’s own as a show when it got cancelled. Same thing with Enterprise. A lot of lovers of those franchises hated those shows and they ended early, but were finally finding their strides and should have continued.

  9. I wish that American TV shows were structured more like British shows. Create a self-contained story in a single run of 3, 6, or 12 episodes, make it, and be done. If it's wildly successful and there's more story to tell, maybe another mini-series. I'd much rather face the bitter-sweet longing for more Jekyll, Sherlock, IT Crowd rather than the embarassment of pretending shark-jumping Fonzie and Mohinder the Fly don't exist.

  10. How I Met Your Mother is currently a few seasons too long, but we're still watching it in my household.
    Bones should have ended a few seasons ago.
    Buffy the Vampire Slayer went about four seasons past its logical endpoint.
    BSG only went half a season too long, despite what other people may say.
    Voltron, the Lion Force version, should never have been extended beyond the self-contained story featuring Go-Lion footage.
    Gundam 00…I guess that only counts as a half season too long.

    I could do this for a while.

    • BSG didn't go too long, it just spent far too much time in Suckville sucking it up in the middle of the series. Season 4 had some of the best the show had to offer.

      The finale should have ended half an hour earlier, though (right after assaulting the Base Star).

      • I totally agree – I always think of that episode about Lee Adama and a prostitute was a complete mess, and really didn't fit into the "flow".
        If I could wipe the angel part of the finale from my brain without damaging it, it would be so blissful.

    • Buffy should have just skipped seasons 4 and 5. 4 was horrible, 5 was meh. If they'd killed her in the fight against the Mayor and brought her back in season 6's storyline the series would have been much better.

      And I hate to say it, but Angel would have made more sense without the out of place season 5 (which would have made a lot more sense if the series had continued and not been cancelled)

      SG-1 should have ended when they beat the Goua'ould.

    • Yeah, BSG 4.5 was totally wretched. They should have quit with 4.0. And I STILL say Roslin should have been rubbed out in the premiere series. To paraphrase Hudson in "Aliens" "Let's grease this m*****fuckin' bitch of a bitch!" SO SAY WE ALL!!!!!!

  11. I'm enjoying the new season of Supernatural, even if I am the 1%. I think CSI (the original in Vegas) is slowly bleeding out and just needs a bullet to the head. You know its bad when the cast starts bailing on you. I'm probably also in the 1% that thinks the Simpsons have dragged on for way to long.
    I'm mostly stuck on shows that could have used one more season to wrap things up. A big one for me was Rome on HBO. After that I found myself boycotting HBO and cursing their name.

    On a side note I just recently finished catching up on your comic (2 straight weeks of reading) and introduced my friends to the sci-five, only one will do it in public though.

  12. The natural endpoint for House was the season that ended with him being locked in a mental institution.

    Only show I kept up with long after it should have ended was 24.

    • This. That was the last House I caught and it seemed like a great way to end the show, not particularly ending on a high but it was honest and poignant and I'd take that over a forced happy ending any day. I just haven't happened to see any later ones so for me it's like they did the right thing for once.

      Otherwise agree with the consensus, usually it's good shows or ones with potential being cancelled too early that's the problem.

  13. In my opinion house should end with Hugh Laurie suddenly switching back to his real british voice, and doing the ending to his old sketch comedy show A Bit of Fry and Laurie

    • wow,… I can almost get behind that,…it would be interesting. But what I truly want to see is them bring Frye in for the last episode or 2,… I mean he portrayed a good psychologist [or was he a psychiatrist I get the two mixed up] who had depth and was funny,….

  14. I found House MD fascinating because, before getting into it, I had just just watched all of Jeeves & Wooster and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. I think that Hugh Laurie is immensely talented. It could have continued for even a few more (increasingly ridiculous) seasons as far as I was concerned.

    • Let's hope they find a new vehicle for Laurie, I've been a huge fan of both Fry and Laurie for over two decades and it's great to see both enjoying a timely renaissance.

  15. I'm surprised Law and Order, in all its various incarnations, has gone on as long as it has. Granted, I'll still catch an episode or two, especially when TNT does their little mini-marathons.

  16. Only one I can think of is House. I lost interest when the original team left and that "contest" for a new staff happened. Then I was just watching it out of habit and stopped buying the DVD sets. This season actually started good, but the very next episode he's freed from prison, right back into the same standard episode structure, and within a couple more episodes, the same boring team.

  17. Twin Peaks (should have ended with Bob)

    X-Files++ (Should have ended just before the quadruple-bluff-smokescreen-aliens nonsense)
    Heroes++ (originally the creator had planned to do a whole new set of heroes each season. They should have done that.)
    BSG++ (should have ended before any magical cylon babies with cancer-curing blood)

  18. Definitely agreeing with X-Files, but the problem with that is it's hard to tell WHERE exactly it jumped the shark (the decline was so gradual). I do think there were probably at least two seasons too many.

    And I second "Battlestar Galactica" as well. I love the show, but I choose to believe in my heart that the series ended with them arriving on Earth and it was everything they hoped for (instead of being a wasteland). I could have definitely done without Season 4.5's weirdness and slide into the abyss. SUCH a great show up until then.

    cheers,
    Phil

  19. i'm gonna miss house, his self righteous dickhead way of being correct all the time was surprisingly charming. That being said, the series has gotten kinda watered down and recycled.

    Also i think supernatural has lasted 1-2 seasons too long

    Yeah i watch supernatural, big deal, wannafightaboutit

    • You are looking at the wrong crowd to pick a fight about supernatural I still love it despite the fact that they don't know where they are headed.but the actors keep the show running and anyway I like it . Wanna quarrel with me ^^?

  20. I can imagine an alternative time-line in which Lost was canceled after the second or third season. In that time-line Lost is one of my favorite tv shows and I hate the fact that it got canceled prematurely. Instead I live in this time-line in which I hate Lost and can't even look back fondly on the first seasons.
    Now I'm terrified that there is even another time-line in which Firefly wasn't canceled and got so bad I started hating it. But I can't believe Joss could mess it up that bad that I'd hate it.
    I remember Andromeda had a nice first season and lost me to boredom some time after that.
    Smallville lost me after season 6 but really I think could have ended at season 4.
    Sliders – is the best example of a show that was good and then bad. After the first two seasons it had 3 seasons which were amazing in that each time you thought the show hit rock bottom and then the next season it got even worse.

  21. The only show I have really strong feelings in this regard about is Prison Break. I thought the first season was absolutely enthralling, the rest, absolutely unwatchable. I kept tuning in, hoping, but never got more than 10 minutes into any subsequent episode.

    • OMG yes. That first season was planned out from the get go, but they obviously has NOTHING lined up for anything past the titular break from prison. They just kept shifting the focus/vaillain and calling it a "conspiracy." In reality it was just poor planning and laziness.

    • Season 2 wasn't bad, when they were on the run. The season in South American prison was lame, and then all that stuff about "scylla" and the main character's parents was awful.
      There's a lot of shows that have good ideas, but ones that aren't sustainable for several seasons…so utter crap is what they can come up with to continue.

    • Smallville logically should have ended at Season 4. It really went crazy in season… (was it 7ish?) when Lana faked her death by blowing up her own car with one of Lex's clones of her in it.

  23. Scrubs, anyone? Granted, season 7 was more a victim of NBC's mistreatment than anything, but in theory they could have retooled it to contain the important arcs of season 8 and ended it there.
    And as much as I agree that most of the last 2 seasons of Buffy were not so good, I wouldn't cut them off if it meant losing episodes like Selfless, or Conversations with Dead People. Same with BSG, except for the modern-day tag on the finale…

  24. One mustn't forget that Holmes wrestled out of Moriarty's grip thanks to his knowledge of baritsu. For all we know, the same will happen with House and Lupus and he'll be back in about three years.

  25. Personally, while there were moments of brilliance in later seasons, Buffy should have ended after S3. The whole point of the show was about how high school is a form of hell, and once they graduated, the show never really had an emotional core again.

    Also, I offer the perhaps heretical notion that Heroes was never actually any good. We all think S1 was good because we were starved for mainstream genre television with a super-hero theme. But if you look at it critically, all the flaws of the later seasons (ridiculously decompressed storylines, shocking twists that made no sense, Hiro losing his powers until right before the finale because he's too overpowered) were there in S1. We just all assumed that things would get better instead of worse.

    • Heroes always suffered from pacing problems, even more apparent when Hiro spent many many episodes in feudal Japan.
      I guess in my heart I believe that out there was someone who could of made the show work…maybe I'm delusional.

  26. "If it were to continue any longer, house would have to assassinate the president with a tank, then somehow be elected president himself.

    OK, I would totally watch that show."

    I would also accept "Run over by a train in a pre-commercial cliffhanger. Comes limping back as a pill-addicted zombie with a broken cane and resumes practicing medicine with none of his co-workers so much as batting an eye."

    • I would watch just about anything with Hugh Laurie in it. I only wish they do an ending that references the Reichenbach Falls thing where House fakes his death fighting somebody or something, and then attends his own funeral.

  27. I dunno. Considering the levels of vitriol I've seen in politics the last few decades, assassinating the president* with a tank probably WOULD get a lot of people to support him in the next election.

    *DISCLAIMER: No particular president is implied here, nor would it make a difference.

  29. Supernatural is still good, season 6 was the Fallout, theirs was no way for it to live up to the previous ark, so it had to be them falling apart so they could build back up to what is now again a very good show. Also "Weekend at Bobby's was one of the best stand alone episode's they have ever done.

    Angel had some terrible plots and Conner was awful, but I wouldn't give them up if it also meant no bad-ass Wesly, no goodbye for Fred and no Ilyrea (however her name is spelled. Also "Not Fade Away was the perfect cap for that show

    • Yup, Angel ending was great. They ended it just as it was getting awesome – Spike had a huge hand in that. My only problem with Angel is that they never got the whole concept of "peace through superior firepower". Knives and swords? Really? What is this, the middle ages? With all the resources of Wolfram & Hart, Angel should have had his pick of heavy weapons.

      Only Darla used guns – when she first met Buffy in the first season. And Buffy used a rocket launcher once. After that it was all fisticuffs and sharp things.

  30. Heroes after season 1.

    How I Met Your Mother should have wrapped up sooner…they really seem to have forgotten about the whole, you know, "meeting the mother" thing for the past few seasons.

    X-Files should have ended after Mulder and Scully were replaced (actually, it probably should have ended sooner than that; when it switched from "mystery of the week" to "giant and ridiculous conspiracy theory" was have been a good time to end it).

    And, since it is the subject of the comic, House could probably have ended several seasons ago, but I'm still watching it.

    • "Could" being to the code word here. I still love all the episodes. House is still as crazy as ever. But I hate how they start to potray him as a PERSON. I liked it when he was a narcissistic son of a female dog. Oh well. No one listens to my ramblings.

      • Well, yeah. I still enjoy the show quite a bit, but I think I'd be done with it by the end of this season whether it was ending for good or not.

  31. Smallville, seasons 5 – 10. It started as a cute show, but it started to really go downhill after season 3. I'm willing to give a show one semi-rotten season in return for three decent seasons. I'll humor that. But seasons 6 – 9 were, at times, laughably bad (Okay, at many times). And then season 10. It was like being punched in the face for 24 hours straight – the kind of thing they should screen in Guantanamo Bay. I can't even say the plot line was terrible, because they no longer had a plot. It was like what would have happened if Waterworld had been made into a TV series, and that series got a 10-season run.

  33. Star Trek Voyager, the fact that you knew the show was going to last several years and that they weren't going to get home until at least the second half of the final season completely sucked out the tension of all those "are they going to be able to use this wormhole/spatial anomaly/transwarp conduit/slipstream drive/super long range teleporter/etc. to get home?" episodes.

    • Yup, agreed – Star Trek Voyager after the first season. The only thing that made the show watchable for me was the Doctor (Robert Picardo – awesome name for a Star Trek show) and 7 of 9 (Jeri Ryan). The rest of the characters just either didn't have anything to do or were boring. Or both.

      When I read the show bible (the initial premise of the show with establishing characters) it was awful right from the start. The producers took out all conflict or any interesting quirks from the very first page. That's a dozen potential episodes right there.

    • Wait… So if I…? HOWARD! BRING ME THE DAMN TANK! No, not the yellow one. The one with all the flowers on it. Yes, it's the 42 mm. Back up slowly… FLUFFY! Howard! You killed FLUFFY!!!!
      What is wrong with me? XD

        • Tank…Girl? Never heard of it. Yup. I definetly never have seen that movie. Stop asking questions.

          BTW: The tanks that you can buy from the UK are nice. Sad part is, they are disarmed completely. Oh well, guess I'll have to just buy a 42 mm cannon…

  35. I definitely think the Robert Patrick seasons of X-Files were unnecessary, even though he is awesome. I do think some parts of the story arc in those last seasons could have been worked in to the earlier seasons that should have been the end, particularly with them getting drawn back to that Oregon town from the pilot. That was a nice touch. But there was too much crap wrapped up with it.

    I hadn't seen Supernatural until about a week ago, and I'm only on season 3, so as far as I know, it's great all the way.

    I did like the second season of Dollhouse, but I would happily give it up in exchange for another season of Sarah Conner Chronicles. Season 1 of Dollhouse offered an acceptable wrap up with Epitaph 1, but SCC ended on a huge cliffhanger. Still bitter about that.

    I would keep the last season of Buffy but cut the intervening college years into a single season. And still probably cut out a lot of the whininess and speechifying in the last season.

    And, of course, Simpsons after season 9

  36. Smallville should have ended when they graduated and been re tooled as "Metropolis" half the problems spawnd post season 4 was the more and more convoluted ways they came up with for him to come back to smallville just so the nhame made sence even though 90% of the interesting stuff was happening in smallville

    etho the collage years of buffy were just sad it's like after HS they didn't know what to do w her if I had been writing it Giles would have brought in a watcher that had a California PI license for Buffy to apprentice under and she would have become a PI herself (YES i know thats what angel did but it really is the perfect cover for being a hunter of weird shit)

  37. I can only concur with others. How I Met Your Mother is rapidly approaching this point, and Lost, the X-Files, and Buffy also did. Then again, I can't think of shows that ended when they should have… Arrested Development, (maybe) Community, Firefly all come to mind as shows that were cut off before their time. I'm not sure of a show that ended at an ideal moment.

    What I really commented to say, though, is Joel: have you seen the BBC's Sherlock yet? I know it's not sci-fi but it's Moffat and Gatiss and right up your alley. And I REALLY want to read comics about it!

    • Sopranos, ended right on cue, and ended well. Six Feet Under did as well, though they crammed a LOT in the last few minutes of the finale.

  38. You know, this thread is making me sad. How can you guys say terrible things about shows and then claim you love them?! That's like saying "I love my wife, but only on Monday – Thursday. I can definitely do without the rest."

    That's like people who were disappointed by the last episode of LOST so claim they hated the show! You watched it for 6 years, how much could you have hated it?

    (I'm a giant nerd…)

  39. The bronies fear the upcoming season 3 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, because the show's creators left it in the hands of their producer and the execs. It may be good, or it may be the foul beast from the pink ghetto which season one was supposed to have defeated. Either way, the summer hiatus will be hell on us all, as was last year's.

  40. SLIDERS!

    That show was absolutely amazing for two seasons . . . then "the network" got a hold of it and it became something truly awful. I own the first three seasons of Sliders, and refuse to watch the third.

  41. Huh. Apparently I'm old, as the most egregious example of show-sticking-around-too-long-itis that popped immediately to mind was Northern Exposure, which seems to predate everything my fellow commenters have mentioned. Regardless, that show jumped the lupus pretty damn hard at the end there.

    Oh, and just because people are talking about Buffy's logical ending being the end of Season 3, and because reruns of the end of season 3 are on TV as we speak — I just want to say that possibly my five favourite minutes of TV ever are when Buffy accepts the Class Protector Award in the penultimate episode of Season 3. If the series had ended there, I really couldn't have been such a philistine as to complain.

  42. Only thing that really comes to mind is Futurama, which made sense to end where it did (the first time) because since Fry didn't have any knowledge of pop-culture after he would have left, the couldn't really tie things together and it got boring… an episode devoted to ipods where fry could say nothing was really what jumped out and said "This could be an entirely different series and be better for it".

    I was torn on House Season 4, I thought 5 was better for it… but it could've stopped there, methinks.

    Sienfeld comes to mind… the last season was lackluster, but I'm not sure where it should've stopped… it'd been going downhill a while.

    And I know I'm one of few, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Simpsons… I mean, it's hit or miss, up and down, but there's been some terrible years…

  43. Yeah, Simpsons, no question. I love that show more than Matt Groening's own mother, but, dang. They've been lucky to get 5 good eps a season starting with Season 9 (and probably NO good eps from 11-15). It's one of the greatest shows in television history, but they betrayed everything funny or emotional about the show in about 1999, and have only recently begun to win parts of it back.

    Heroes lost me from the season premiere of Season 2, when they brought back Sylar. That showed me that it wasn't what I thought (a fantastic premise with unlimited possibilities and great writers), but was just a soap opera selling commercial time.

    I submit Exhibit A: http://hijinksensue.com/2008/12/01/there-goes-my-…

    Nevertheless I followed them, hope glimmering in my eyes, until about halfway through "Season 4: The De-plottening." One of the bumps to commercial said something like "Can the heroes save the world? Find out after the break!" And I was like, "Save the world from WHAT? Nothing has happened for 12 episodes!" Then I hurled a Wiimote into my TV screen so I would never see another episode of potential pointlessly squandered.

  44. SUPERNATURAL yes. In my opinion, Supernatural should have ended at Season 5. Sam and Dean go to the showdown with Lucifer. Sam says yes. Lucifer and Michael fight. Camera zooms out to a view of Earth from space.
    (dramatic pause)
    Earth blows up. End of series.

    I stopped watching Smallville around season 7 or 8, but picked it back up because they had some interesting looking previews, and I got sucked back in.

    I'm starting to get that feeling with Spartacus. Several episodes go by without anything actually happening, and it feels like the writers are just padding out the season. I think the season finale is this week, which actually makes me happy.

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