TV Seasons That Ruined Your Favorite Shows

It’s a major blow to a show when one of its principle cast members leaves, but when two leave, that’s a critical hit. This is exactly what happened in the eighth season of That 70’s Show, when Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left to pursue roles on the silver screen. Fans reeled from the introduction of Randy, an obvious and unworthy stand-in for Eric’s character and Donna’s new love interest. Fans also questioned the relationship between Jackie and Fez, which felt forced, and not true to their characters.

Although Roseanne Barr is often the butt of many jokes, her sitcom Roseanne was a ratings hit. The show remained popular until the very last season, when the titular character and her working-class family won the lottery. What followed was a season-long parade of Roseanne attending fancy soirées and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. However, in the season finale, viewers learn that all of the events of the season never happened. Roseanne never won the lottery. She made it all up to cope with her husband’s death. The shift in tone, the introduction of wacky gimmicks, and the retcon in the finale contribute to making this the weakest of the series.

For many fans, Season 7 of True Blood was horrific, and not in the way they were hoping. True Blood’s final season unceremoniously killed off several of its major characters, ones who deserved a better and more meaningful end. The season also overused new characters and unimportant side characters, like Tara's mother Lettie Mae, while giving some of the more interesting supporting characters, like Pam, little to do. The moronic finale was the final nail in the show's coffin. 

After some ups and downs throughout the run of the series, fans hoped for an epic, blood-spattered romp to end Dexter’s run. Unfortunately, Season 8 was unfocused and uneven. Most of the supporting cast was pushed to the sidelines, and the new characters never paid off. What upset fans the most was the quiet ending. Fans wanted the show to go out with a bang; instead, Dexter left everything behind and became a lumberjack.

If you don't know, the phrase "jumping the shark" is a reference to the infamous scene in a Season 5 episode of Happy Days, in which everyone’s favorite biker with a heart-of-gold dons his leather jacket and water-skis over a confined shark. Sean Connelly, the man who coined the phrase, describes it as the “defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill.” The episode highlighted a growing trend within the series; Fonzie was becoming an infallible superhuman, and fans felt it wasn’t true to his character.

According to Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, the ninth season of the show was meant to be a spinoff, but the network wanted to use Scrubs’s brand recognition to earn more viewers than would a spinoff. Lawrence credits his inability to market the show as a spinoff as one of the reasons this season wasn’t as successful as previous ones, but there were some other notable issues. The new main character was bland, and the show began recycling plot lines from previous seasons.