Random Long-Running TV Series That People Need To Stop Watching (15 items)

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  (#1) Grey's Anatomy

  • Ellen Pompeo, Justin Chambers, Chandra Wilson

  Grey's Anatomy is basically a soap opera. In the first 14 seasons, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) has discovered not one, but two secret sisters, she conceived her third child with McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) while he was on his deathbed (and those kids are hardly ever seen), plus McDreamy died. The guy who was essentially the number two character dies in Season 11, along with a whole lot of other fan favorites. There have been over 20 deaths of characters who were at least somewhat integral to the show, so chances are your favorite character isn't even part of the series anymore. 
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  (#2) The Walking Dead

  • Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Steven Yeun, Chandler Riggs, Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, Michael Rooker, David Morrissey, Melissa McBride, Scott Wilson, Michael Cudlitz, Emily Kinney, Chad L. Coleman, Lennie James, Sonequa Martin-Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Alanna Masterson, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand

  By the time The Walking Dead put its eighth season in the ground, long-time fans were running away. The Season 8 premiere pulled the lowest ratings for a premiere since Season 3. To make matters worse, Season 3 actually saw an increase in ratings, as its premiere had more viewers than the previous two seasons' premieres. Generally, when shows start spawning other shows (Fear the Walking Dead in this case), it's a pretty good indication that the main event has gone on long enough. 
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  (#3) Homeland

  • Claire Danes, Mandy Patinkin, Rupert Friend

  In 2018, Homeland began its seventh season, yet it's been dead in the water for some time. Ever since Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) survived longer than he should have (beyond the first season), the show has given viewers nothing but diminishing returns. 

   Robert Rorke of the New York Post ravaged the third season of the show, saying "Seldom in the history of cable TV has a series imploded as quickly as Showtime's Homeland... The show, in the middle of its third season, is now impossible to take seriously." Whether it was Season 1 or Season 3 where things went bad, the show is at least four seasons past its prime. 
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  (#4) Modern Family

  • Ed O'Neill, Sofía Vergara, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter, Nolan Gould, Rico Rodriguez, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, Jeremy Maguire, Reid Ewing

  IMDB's synopsis of the episode "Pig Moon Rising" reads, "Mitchell [Jesse Tyler Ferguson] accidentally knocks over an urn containing the ashes of Cam's [Eric Stonestreet] beloved pet pig, Lilly; Cam tries to catch Mitchell in a lie." Quick, what season is that? If you said one or two, you'd be forgiven. It's actually Season 8, but Modern Family's comedy-of-errors format causes a lot of episodes bleed together. It's a formula that grows stale rather quickly, yet it's still being employed over a decade later.

  In pretty much every episode of this show, there's a scene in which two people have separate problems that they discuss with one another, without actually mentioning the subject. This leads each to believe that they were discussing their own personal issue, which only compounds the problems. They didn't invent this brand of humor, and while they really did utilize it successfully for a time, the gags had an expiration date from the get-go. 
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  (#5) The Middle

  • Patricia Heaton, Neil Flynn, Charlie McDermott

  At the end of Season 1, The Middle had run its course. Despite this, the series continued, and enjoys heavy syndication. Its viewership is declining, with Season eight marking its lowest average audience numbers yet, but still it persists. Patricia Heaton plays the overworked mother Frankie, who's basically just a nicer version of Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond. The real kicker, though, is her husband Mike (Neil Flynn). The actor was absolutely adored by Scrubs fans for his hilarious performance as the Janitor, yet in the next sitcom he chose to work on, he is supremely boring. While coastal fans gave up years ago, Middle America still loves the show, so it may limp along forever.
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  (#6) NCIS

  • Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette

  NCIS is not only is it basically identical to its two spin-offs, it's virtually indistinguishable from the overcrowded genre of crime procedurals. The show's ratings aren't really trending downward (it peaked in season 10, but it's stayed relatively steady since), but that's because its audience replenishes itself.

  While the show regularly loses viewers to mortality, there are always plenty of new AARP members to take their place. Since the story has little continuity, NCIS is virtually immortal, like many of the genre's shows. Just because something can live forever doesn't mean it should.
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  (#7) The Big Bang Theory

  • Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Sara Gilbert, Mayim Bialik, Melissa Rauch, Kevin Sussman, Laura Spencer

  The Big Bang Theory has been on the air for over a decade, and it's been syndicated for half that time, so the show feels ubiquitous, but also rather tired. The more you watch, the more you come to realize that virtually every episode revolves around a couple fighting, usually Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Penny (Kaley Cuoco).

  Leonard and Penny fight in pretty much every episode, even if the main plot is about a different couple's spat. At the very least, you can be sure that the episode you're watching will be about two or more people engaged in an over-the-top argument. On top of that, while Sheldon's (Jim Parsons) quirks were brilliant and innovative in the beginning, his shtick has long since ceased to dazzle. The writing is on the wall for this one, as the show's ratings have been dropping steadily for three years.
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  (#8) Arrow

  • Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, Colin Donnell, David Ramsey, Willa Holland, Susanna Thompson, Paul Blackthorne, Emily Bett Rickards, Colton Haynes, Manu Bennett, John Barrowman, Echo Kellum, Josh Segarra, Rick Gonzalez, Juliana Harkavy

  Arrow is far from the longest running show of all time, but it's still about three seasons past its prime. From the moment Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough) shows up at the beginning of Season 4, the show gets out of hand, and one could make the argument that it started to go downhill after Season 2. 

  After the second season, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score dropped out of the 90s to 73%, and Season four plummeted to 44%. While that was the definitive low-point for the show, it still hasn't climbed back above the 70s, whereas the first two seasons were in the high 80s and low 90s.
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  (#9) Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

  • Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, Ice-T

  Really, how long can viewers watch Mariska Hargitay frown? Law and Order: SVU has been on since the previous century, and it actually began as a spin-off. Also, Ice-T, the guy famous for the song "Cop Killer," has played a cop for 20 years. While the show's ratings have shown a slight dip, it hasn't plummeted enough to put the series to bed, so there's really no end in sight. When its inevitable 21st Season comes to fruition, it will have outlived its ancestor, Law & Order, and that's kind of insane.
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  (#10) Shameless

  • Emmy Rossum, William H. Macy, Ethan Cutkosky

  In the most recent few seasons, Shameless exemplifies the most tell-tale sign of excessive longevity: creators are starting to rewrite the show's history. They've rebranded Lip (Jeremy Allen White) by thrusting Eddie's (Levy Tran) niece upon him in order to make him more likable, a trope made all the more problematic by the fact that Eddie herself is rather contrived. Originally, she was only ever utilized to generate plot lines for Lip.

  Worse than that, creators rewrote the entire narrative of Ian (Cameron Monaghan) and Mickey's (Noel Fisher) relationship, turning it into a volatile, destructive thing, simply because Fisher planned to leave the show. Season eight felt like the writers had expected to call it quits a season or two earlier, so the overarching themes and character growth had to be altered to continue on. Once external necessity dictates the writing process, it's time to put down the pen.
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  (#11) Criminal Minds

  • Shemar Moore, Matthew Gray Gubler, Thomas Gibson

  It's kind of amazing that Criminal Minds is still on the air, and that its viewership generally exceeds NCIS's. The show is best described as the CBS crime procedural that is neither CSI nor NCIS. It has been in decline for the past couple years, with Season 12 garnering the smallest viewing audience yet. When a show that already feels like a third wheel begins to lose viewership, that's a pretty good indication that it's time to start wrapping things up. But it's CBS, so it will probably run for another 10-15 years.
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  (#12) Family Guy

  • Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green

  Viewership of Family Guy has been on a steady decline since Season 6 (which originally aired in 2007). The sixth season garnered an average of 7.94 million viewers — the show's highest since Season 1 — but that number has continued to drop in the following 10 seasons, and Family Guy Season 16 only pulled an average of 3.93 million viewers. 

  People are not watching anymore, and it's hard to blame them. In Season 12, MacFarlane and co. made a half-hearted attempt to serialize the show with Brian's death, only to bring him back a few episodes later with a time travel retcon. South Park transitioned to serial episodes later in its run, and their dedication to the new format has paid off. In contrast to this, Family Guy shot itself in the foot; it could have reinvented itself like the kids from that tiny Colorado mountain town, but instead it opted to continue doing one-off, antic-filled episodes. When a show is on for decades, it's pretty much obligated to reinvent itself, or it will inevitably lose its audience.
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  (#13) The Simpsons

  • Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Julie Kavner

  In 2018, The Simpsons brought forth its 29th season. Twenty-nine years is a long time, and even the generation of adult cartoons that The Simpsons spawned is getting old, with Family Guy having 16 seasons and South Park over 20. A Season 6 episode of South Park was even titled "Simpsons Already Did It," implying that these types of shows can't really do anything new, since all storylines are recycled to an extent.

  Well, that episode aired in 2002. If The Simpsons already did everything there was to do over 15 years ago, how have they kept it going? The Simpsons's highest viewership actually came with Season one (in the '80s), which averaged 27.8 million viewers. Season 28 only averaged 4.8 million viewers, which is actually the second lowest to date, as the previous season managed to dip below that.
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  (#14) It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

  • Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson, Danny DeVito

  One can only sit back and watch lunacy for so long, and that's exactly what It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is. Perhaps you could call it anarchy, but most episodes come down to the same things, and the shtick is a bit dried up. We get it, they're a bunch of sociopaths.

  This show was hilarious in its early days, but as is the case with all gimmicks, it has inevitably gotten stale. Halfway through the series, creators got so desperate that they had to make one character suddenly fat. The show only lives on because it switched networks in 2012 from FX to FXX, but unless an FXXX comes along soon, the gang may be out of places to run.
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  (#15) Supernatural

  • Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Katie Cassidy, Lauren Cohan, Misha Collins, Mark A. Sheppard, Mark Pellegrino, Alexander Calvert

  The CW has trouble writing shows beyond their third seasons, and Supernatural is way past its expiration date. CW shows don't pull in a ton of viewers to begin with, and Supernatural has yet to match its average 1.4 million viewers garnered in the first season. The show is actually now more popular in Russia than the US.

  Episodes from the first season are pretty cringe-inducing (in case you forgot about the time when the brothers hunted down a racist ghost truck), but it's clear that creators completely threw in the towel when it came time to write the most recent seasons. As of late, Supernatural has started making fun of itself. Self-referential humor can be fun, but it's also a sign that a series recognizes its own ridiculousness. It's rather unbecoming to see a show laugh about how it inexplicably still exists. 

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