6 Sitcoms That Started Great, Only to Fall Completely Off a Cliff
Sports halls of fame feature a handful of athletes — Sandy Koufax, Gale Sayers, Pete Maravich — who achieved undeniable excellence before their careers were cut short by injury or tragedy. But what if Koufax had pitched another eight seasons of so-so baseball? Would he still be considered an all-time great?
Here are 6 sitcoms that got off to Hall-of-Fame starts but delivered mediocre laughs as the seasons wore on — and on and on…
Roseanne
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The first few seasons were like nothing else on television (at least since The Honeymooners), depicting a working-class family made up of cast members who resembled the people watching the show. But as the show’s titular star assumed more and more control, Roseanne grew increasingly bizarre. It went completely off the rails in Season Nine, with the Connors winning the lottery and whooping it up in decidedly non-Connor fashion. When the season’s final episode revealed that the whole year was a dream and that Dan had died (also a dream, apparently, since he was alive and kicking for the reboot), you could hear America’s collective forehead slap.
How I Met Your Mother
HIMYM was a victim of its premise — its title promised the story of how Ted met his wife, but delivering that answer meant ending the series while ratings were still high. Instead, producers engineered convoluted plot gymnastics to keep the story going, leaving viewers weary by creaky Season Seven and beyond. To make matters worse, the show failed to stick the landing, delivering a finale that USA Today deemed the worst of all time.
The Goldbergs
Redditors on r/Sitcom singled out The Goldbergs for falling off the comedy cliff after its first five seasons, describing the show’s decline as “a huge drop in quality,” a plunge into “predictable plot traps,” and “just Bev constantly meddling in her kids’ lives.” Others criticized the show’s characters for becoming Flanderized, that Simpsons phenomenon when multidimensional roles get reduced to a single comic stereotype.
NewsRadio
The death of Phil Hartman is the easy explanation for a show that lost its way after arrogant Bill McNeal was no longer around to bring his bombast to the news. There was nothing particularly wrong with Jon Lovitz as his replacement — other than the show felt definitively off-kilter. The Simpsons hasn’t quite been the same without Hartman either.
Arrested Development
Even David Cross, who played Tobias on Arrested Development, knows the show should have quit when it was ahead. He recently told the How Success Happens podcast that any plans for a third reboot would be a terrible mistake. “I love those guys, but I don’t think we should do it anymore,” Cross said. “Ideally, we would have stopped after Season Four.” (Most others say the show should have hit the brakes after Season Three.)
Modern Family
Like How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family was a victim of being too successful to cancel even though the show’s storylines had run their course. The parenting trials of the Dunphys were relatable, but what do you do with sitcom kids when they graduate high school? You can only recycle so many iterations of “Gloria was right and Jay was wrong” plot lines before viewers throw up their hands and give up.
