These 12 TV shows started out a lot better than they ended. Here are our picks of some shows that fell off after a certain point, losing their luster somewhere along the way.

Happy Days

ABC

This classic 1970s sitcom is famous for declining in quality after a Season 5 episode titled “Hollywood: Part 3” in which Henry Winkler’s Fonzie jumps over a shark on water skis.

It’s widely acknowledged to have fallen off after that point, though it went on for a total of 11 seasons, ending in 1984.

Lost

ABC

Listen, no one loves Lost more than this reporter. But even I can admit that the show really fell off in its final season.

To my memory, Lost fell off when Sayid (Naveen Andrews) was brought back from the dead in that mysterious, ancient pool in the temple in Season 6. He comes back… evil? As if that’s supposed to make sense? And then he just inexplicably turns good again. Which, listen, we love that for Sayid — but him being brought back from the dead is, to me, the moment I noticed Season 6 take a turn for the worst.

I know that the finale of the show is widely contested and that many people were disappointed by it, but I actually liked it at the time. It’s not perfect and perhaps leaves something to be desired — certainly some questions go unanswered — but all in all, Lost is still a great show, even if it lost a considerable amount of quality at the end.

Grey’s Anatomy

ABC

Though Grey’s Anatomy is a beloved soap opera, it’s been on for so long that it can’t possibly keep up the quality it once had.

After beginning in 2005, the original seasons were truly great. But around 10 years in, during Season 11 in 2015, it started to lose most of what was good about it. That’s also when creator Shonda Rhimes left the show.

At its current iteration, it has long since lost the majority of its original main cast members, including Patrick Dempsey (McDreamy), Eric Dane (McSteamy), Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, and Sara Ramirez. Now, people who still watch the ABC drama lament that it’s lost secret sauce when it stopped connecting the patients’ struggles to the internal world of the doctor fixing them.

American Horror Story

FX

This 12-season mammoth has been going since 2011, but not all of its seasons are created equal.

Everyone that has stopped watching the show after being an avid fan has their personal season that broke them. Mine is Season 4, Freak Show — specifically when they killed off Ma Petite by drowning her alive in a jar of formaldehyde. That’s was simply unnecessary and I will personally never forgive creator Ryan Murphy for that choice.

Jessica Lange, the best character on the show in my opinion, also left the show after Season 4, taking a lot of its spirit with her. However, props to Evan Peters, who was always excellent.

But others argue, like in this well-put Screen Rant article, that it all went downhill after Season 7, Cult, when the show stopped using a centralized location for each season.

I think that’s a pretty good argument, because the house from Season 1, Murder House was like its own character, as were all the other locations following it until Cult.

Game of Thrones

HBO

The first handful of seasons of Game of Thrones are some of the most beloved television episodes of all time. But most fans agree that the last few seasons were nowhere near as great as the first few.

Some argue that things took a turn after Season 4 and that it wasn’t the same from Season 5 on through the eighth and final season. Coincidentally, George R. R. Martin, who wrote the books the show is based on, stopped writing and consulting for the show after Season 4 to focus on his books.

Common gripes are that characters were brought back from the dead that shouldn’t have been; other deaths were unnecessary; dialogue became hard to believe, and that fight scenes became gratuitous. It’s pretty much agreed on unanimously that the final season was a disappointment, specifically the series finale.

Westworld

HBO

The first season of Westworld is widely regarded to be absolutely fantastic, maybe even flawless. But after that brief golden era, it all went down hill.

Season 2 is known to be confusing, and Season 3 is considered to be just generally bad. It was canceled after Season 4.

Common gripes are plot holes, generic gunfights, and a loss of direction in storytelling.

House of Cards

Netflix

The general consensus is that House of Cards began to decline after the end of Season 2 when Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood character becomes president.

At that point, his scheming no longer has as much gravity to it, and it starts to get old. He’s already the president — he’s not much of an underdog anymore.

Then, of course, it really took a nosedive when Kevin Spacey was fired from the show and was not a part of the sixth and final season. The result is a narrative that obviously involved some scrambling to pull it together with the show’s main character.

Dexter

Showtime

The first two seasons of Dexter are considered to be really great, following Michael C. Hall as the titular Dexter, a Miami-based blood-spatter expert who is secretly a serial killer. But he only murders bad people, in a sort of twisted Robin Hood concept.

Season 3 gets mixed reviews, but the show regained its strength in Season 4. However, the last couple of seasons really went down hill, with the eighth and final season taking some plot turns that actually infuriated many viewers.

Fear the Walking Dead

AMC

A spinoff of the beloved zombie apocalypse series The Walking Dead, this series focuses on the days after the outbreak and the immediate aftermath.

The first three seasons are regarded to be pretty good, but when original showrunner Dave Erickson left at the end of Season 3. That means Season 4 and beyond no longer benefited from his creative direction.

With eight seasons in total, many argue that the show got rather silly in its final days, becoming pretty convoluted and less creatively strong.

Riverdale

Warner Bros. / The CW

This Archie Comics show was beloved for its first season. A lot of fans still loved Season 2, but some began to question the writers’ decision making after that point.

It aired for a total of seven seasons, from 2017 to 2023.

It was once about high school students, but then devolved into something else entirely. Archie (KJ Apa) was supposed to be the main character, but he really didn’t have much of a personality later on and the show began to revolve around Betty (Lili Reinhart). Then with the advent of the musical episodes where everyone was singing… it really lost the plot.

Glee

Fox

The first two seasons of Glee are pretty universally beloved, and it stayed relatively good in quality up until Cory Monteith’s death in 2013 during the filming of Season 4.

His character, Finn Hudson, had to be rewritten out of Season 5, and many fans say the show lost its special touch without him in it.

Ryan Murphy has since said that he regretted making the Monteith tribute episode, Season 5, Episode 3: The Quarterback, and that he feels the show should have ended after the actor’s sudden death due to a heroin overdose and alcohol intoxication.

Supernatural

The CW

This beloved CW drama about the demon-hunting Winchester brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) and their angel pal Castiel (Misha Collins) used to be excellent, but it definitely fell off after Season 5.

Though it went on for a shockingly long time — 15 entire seasons — most Supernatural fans agree that Season 5 was its peak, and everything went downhill from there.

It was still good for another four or five seasons, but by the time it got to the last couple of seasons, it was really far gone.

Many have griped that there are too many convoluted characters. Other folks disagreed with the retroactive continuity that took place in Season 15 when the origin story of God and his sister Amara (The Darkness) was rewritten to contradict what had previously been established in Season 11.

Liked This List of TV Shows That Totally Fell Off?

Universal Pictures – Credit: C/O

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