4 Things To Consider Before You Abandon A TV Show

Very few people would probably label themselves as a quitter, so it’s no surprise that I don’t. I don’t quit things: not books, or movies, and especially not TV shows. I get so wrapped up in the stories and characters, not to mention the drama, that I find it hard to walk away even when I come to dread watching them. That being said, I have been forced to drop shows from the “rotation,” as I call it. Considering on an average week I am watching somewhere between 15-20 shows (I haven’t actually counted because I feel that falls under the “first step to admitting you have a problem” category) you’d think I probably would’ve abandoned more shows than I’ve kept, but nope, you’d be wrong.

It actually takes quite a bit for me to abandon a show that I once loved. Usually it’s terrible characters. Characters I can’t understand, or relate to, or have zero redeeming qualities. It’s true that not every character has to be your true love, but a show where all the characters leave me questioning my morals and ideals are more of a headache than they are worth.

I both love and loathe fall premiere season because it means new shows. It also means MORE shows. Recently, I found myself coming back to shows I’d stopped watching. Part of the reason for this was that I genuinely don’t like to leave things unfinished. I want to check it off the list and not feel like it’s hanging over me. The other part of it is that most of these shows are off the air. There are a finite amount of episodes to watch and it’s no longer a weekly commitment. Sometimes I just really want to know how the show ended and what happened to the characters I actually liked.

Here are some things I’ve learned from the shows I’ve abandoned and come back to:

Bad stories can get better.

Last year I stopped watching Gotham. Anyone who was watching can attest the show was a train wreck. It didn’t know who its main character was or what story it really wanted to tell. It wasn’t until they started focusing on the villains that make up the city of Gotham that the show truly found its feet. I still don’t care for the story of young entitled Bruce Wayne, but I enjoy the current direction this season is heading in.

Sometimes fluff is what you need.

I don’t even remember when I stopped watching Hart of Dixie. It had all these things I should love: Rachel Bilson, hot guys, Josh Schwartz (The OC, Chuck, and Gossip Girl), and amazing clothes, but it was so sugary sweet. Living in the South, I also didn’t love the way Southern women were portrayed. When I came back to the show, I realized that the portrayals were way off, but I still loved the story of the characters in this small town, and obviously Wade. Wade and Zoe 4ever.

A complicated show is sometimes worth the payout.

I loved Revenge when it first premiered. The whole first season was amazing. Modern day Count of Monte Cristo-retelling with a woman at the center was just what was missing from my TV lineup. Season 2 brought a lot of decisions that set up the show to fail. I bailed after that because I knew the following seasons would have to live with all those weird decisions. I’ve had it on my Netflix queue for forever thinking that I would one day get to it. After holiday boredom led me to try again, and while Season 2 was still bad, I found that it still held the threads of the story I’d loved so much in the beginning.

Turns out not everything deserves to be finished.

After an argument with my sister after she found out I’d abandoned Once Upon a Time, I promised her I’d give it another try. After all, it had all things I loved: fairy tales, heroine stories, and magic. I came back in at the tail end of Season 4, and while I caught up I realized why the show bothered me so much. Everything was all black or white. There was no in between for fairytale characters. Eventually all the “don’t do a bad thing because it makes you bad” got irritating. This season is proving to be much more interesting, so we’ll see how it ends up.

What are some shows you’ve come back to and loved? Tweet us @litdarling.