Shows That Were Fucked Up On Purpose

[haziq]

I've been thinking about this lately.

There have been shows that either had bad endings, or were ended prematurely. 99% of the time, it seems to be creative direction, and that's a good thing. If a creator has a certain vision for their work & they execute it, you can't really help it if the mass opinion doesn't match up with that of the creator. It happens.

But I feel like, recently, there have been a couple of examples of shows being ruined on purpose, or at least, for really awful reasons. The obvious example of this is Game of Thrones, where the showrunners deliberately limited the show's runtime, despite both GRRM & HBO being willing & able to keep the show running for much longer than eight seasons, simply because they were both over the show, had a deal with Disney to make Star Wars films, and was working on a deal with HBO to make a Confederacy fanfiction show. What's worse, you can see the deliberate lack of care with the cinematography (Starbucks cup & water bottles being left in shots), rushed developments with both characters & events in the plot, retcons (the prince of Dorne???), etc. And with subsequent interviews & that one panel they did, David Benioff & DB Weiss exposed themselves as wildly incompetent, and the fallout (which not only affected fans of the franchise, but even affected the cast) was what probably led to them losing the Star Wars deal & Confederacy show talks falling apart.

And since I mentioned Star Wars, I feel like The Rise of Skywalker falls under this umbrella. It could be the result of Disney not having a plan & entrusting their biggest franchise outside of Marvel to two different people with wildly different visions, but TROS feels extremely malicious to The Last Jedi. I don't think TLJ is a good film at all, but I will say it at least had interesting ideas - the deconstruction of The Force, Rey's lineage not being important, etc. TROS takes a big dump on all those ideas, while also being bad in its own right. It honestly feels like the modern trilogy is a slapfight between two kids arguing over who gets to play with the coolest toy.

Anyways, are there any other examples of this?

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Gyaru☆Kuri!

Gyaru☆Kuri!

I love a good gyaru romcom, but holy shit, I never experienced a heel turn like that in my life. Starts off as a typical nerd and gyaru romcom where he cleans her filthy bedroom and it offers the reader cleaning tips. Then around chapter 8 or 9 it goes from ecchi romcom to hentai/rape with 0 warning. Like, wow.

I read on reddit that I guess the author was pissed that his manga was getting canceled and the last few chapters with hentai/rape stuff was done as a middle finger to the publisher. Wish I'd have known that before starting it. Heel turn of the century.

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[Joe]

Not really a TV show, but similar idea.

I heard a story once about some musical producers on Broadway that were staging a WWII biopic, and the entire time, secretly, they were trying to tank the whole show. Like, every decision from the play itself, to the director, the casting were all made to ruin the show. Bad script, horrible actors, past their prime director. All the talent was super invested in the show, fanatically so. But the producers were trying to tank it, because they were convinced they could make more money if the show failed, somehow.

 

[Lotus]

Promised Neverland Season 2.

 

[gblues]

Not really a TV show, but similar idea.

I heard a story once about some musical producers on Broadway that were staging a WWII biopic, and the entire time, secretly, they were trying to tank the whole show. Like, every decision from the play itself, to the director, the casting were all made to ruin the show. Bad script, horrible actors, past their prime director. All the talent was super invested in the show, fanatically so. But the producers were trying to tank it, because they were convinced they could make more money if the show failed, somehow.

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Huh? This is literally the plot to The Producers.

 

[BossAttack]

Not really a TV show, but similar idea.

I heard a story once about some musical producers on Broadway that were staging a WWII biopic, and the entire time, secretly, they were trying to tank the whole show. Like, every decision from the play itself, to the director, the casting were all made to ruin the show. Bad script, horrible actors, past their prime director. All the talent was super invested in the show, fanatically so. But the producers were trying to tank it, because they were convinced they could make more money if the show failed, somehow.

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Damn, that sounds like a story I heard once before. It'd be hilarious if they made a Broadway show about this story. And even more hilarious if they made a film based off that show.

Huh? This is literally the plot to The Producers.

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😑

 

[Joe]

Huh? This is literally the plot to The Producers.

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No, I think the Broadway show was called Springtime or something like that?

 

[BWoog]

The Flash maybe? I feel like they've been pulling the budget on that show every season since its first.

 

[TrashyPanda]

Altered Carbon Season 2 wasn't bad but the budget was clearly slashed and sent out to die with little marketing.

 

[WascallyWabbit]

I don't know if this counts but the original Firefly was aired out of order

 

[Trouble]

LOST

We were promised that everything had a logical explanation, then that was thrown out to the window to extend it by 2 seasons.

 

[Poimandres]

Not really a TV show, but similar idea.

I heard a story once about some musical producers on Broadway that were staging a WWII biopic, and the entire time, secretly, they were trying to tank the whole show. Like, every decision from the play itself, to the director, the casting were all made to ruin the show. Bad script, horrible actors, past their prime director. All the talent was super invested in the show, fanatically so. But the producers were trying to tank it, because they were convinced they could make more money if the show failed, somehow.

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Sounds like a great premise for a film.

 

[zma1013]

Terriers was sent out to die with that awful marketing that had people thinking it was some cute dog detective show.

Still pissed it didn't get a 2nd season.

 

[Pikachu]

Korra book two?

 

[Santerestil]

No, I think the Broadway show was called Springtime or something like that?

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Considering was a WWII show, maybe a Springtime... for Churchill? Or Stalin? I dunno.

 

[The Unsent]

I don't think GOT was 'fucked up' on purpose, I think it was just a more boring reality that D and D were good at creating a success adaptation but the wheels began to unscrew and they had to conclude it without the books. They weren't very good at their own stuff.

There were meant to be 7 books and they wrote the last 3 series based on their own stuff

 

[TrashyPanda]

LOST

We were promised that everything had a logical explanation, then that was thrown out to the window to extend it by 2 seasons.

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This is not correct.

 

[Calvinien]

Crusade is probably the best example.
The network that aired the final season of Babylon 5 greenlit the project but wanted out later on. They were already on the hook for a single 22 episode season and could be sued for not making those episodes. So they forced intentionally terrible notes ad changes on the show in order to waste time and budget with the goal of getting it to flop so hard that Warner Brothers would pull the plug. This included but was not limited to: changing the uniforms for the characters in mid shoot, and airing the episodes out of order, requiring reshoots with the new uniforms, then episodes with the old uniforms. Since the first episode aired with the new uniforms, they had to script a sequence where the uniforms are formally swapped, so they could use the old footage of later episodes....with the intention of having the characters switch back to the new/old uniforms at a later date.

Then when the show was canceled, SCiFI tried to buy the rights and save the show, but TNT refused to sell so nobody could profit form them.


That old war of the worlds show form the late 80s was massively retoled in between seasons, with the major suspicion that the new showrunner did this to torpedo the ratings o it could not compete with his self created show that WotW was airing against.

And in modern times, Warner famously tried to release he snyder cut as an unfinished workprint in order to avoid the humiliation of people realizing they spent 50 million dollars to have joss whedon make the movie worse.

And speaking of Jos whedon, a great deal of angel season 4 was him dumping on charisma carpenter for getting pregnant.

 

[machine]

No, I think the Broadway show was called Springtime or something like that?

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Springtime for Hitler? Like the play they were putting on in The Producers? Hmmm

 

[TheWooniestWoona]

I'm convinced that the creators of Spongebob were trying to get the show canceled after the first movie. The more they tried the more popular it became.

It was the real life Wacky Deli.

 

[diakyu]

Promised Neverland Season 2.

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Wrap it up, literally made bad on purpose

 

[Toth]

Didn't they sabotage the Clerks animated series?

 

[Crossing Eden]

LOST

We were promised that everything had a logical explanation, then that was thrown out to the window to extend it by 2 seasons.

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They didn't have any logical explanations. They had ideas but nothing set in stone.

 

[AlexBasch]

Altered Carbon Season 2 wasn't bad but the budget was clearly slashed and sent out to die with little marketing.

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Yeah, I really liked Season 1 but you could totally tell how Netflix just wanted to kill that series. Can't blame Anthony Mackie though, he did what he could.

 

[Nizensky]

Didn't they sabotage the Clerks animated series?

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Really. I loved this show. Anyone got details

 

[NuclearCake]

Game Of Thrones.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Yeah, big agree with Game of Thrones.

If they weren't interested in making the show anymore, they should've handed it off to somebody else.

Hopefully sometime down the line here, we can get a reboot of the show or something. Or maybe all of the spinoffs that are in the works can make up for it. Only shitty thing about the possibility of a reboot is I feel like the casting was nearly perfect, and dealing with that in a reboot would be next to impossible.

LOST

We were promised that everything had a logical explanation, then that was thrown out to the window to extend it by 2 seasons.

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Absolutely still my favorite show of all-time. I didn't watch it when it originally aired though, so I'm unaware of what promises were made. Seemed like basically everything was explained by the end though.

 

[Charred Knight]

This is not correct.

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Are you seriously suggesting that JJ Abrams constantly puts in mysteries that he has no answer for and then constantly leaves projects expecting someone else to answer his mysteries for him.

Man what would happen if JJ Abrams came back to one of those projects and actually be forced to answer one of his own mysteries, I bet the answer would be completely stupid.

 

[ParanormalFupa]

Yeah, why didn't HBO and D&D simply do what no other show runners have been able to pull off? They didn't nail the landing on their triple lindy of a TV show because they purposefully didn't want to, yeah that must be it…. Shows get fucked over time because things/life cannot be kept the same no matter how much you want them to.

 

[I am a Bird]

Not really a TV show, but similar idea.

I heard a story once about some musical producers on Broadway that were staging a WWII biopic, and the entire time, secretly, they were trying to tank the whole show. Like, every decision from the play itself, to the director, the casting were all made to ruin the show. Bad script, horrible actors, past their prime director. All the talent was super invested in the show, fanatically so. But the producers were trying to tank it, because they were convinced they could make more money if the show failed, somehow.

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You're talking about the bus that couldn't slow down right? I love that show.

 

[Prophet Five]

Gilmore Girls, Season 6. Once The WB wouldn't play ball with the Palladinos anymore ASP wrote Season 6 into hell so whatever came after would be a clusterfuck. She even said in a panel that she asked for basic things and WB refused but ended up having to get them anyway to replace her, lol.

There's a reason she ignored most of the seventh season for the Gilmore Girls mini series a few years back.

 

[ZeroX]

The Flash maybe? I feel like they've been pulling the budget on that show every season since its first.

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99% of shows get their budget cut as time goes on, or they have effective budget cuts where the money stays roughly the same but expenses go up due to cast/crew salary increases. It happens to every CW show, even the mega hits. The Flash isn't purposely being sabotaged, it's just in a business model that is designed to wring profitability, not quality.

 

[Ablacious]

I think the 'they didn't want to make it anymore' on GOT is missing scope. I think it was pretty much the entire production. That Starbucks cup when thru a whole lot of eyes before broadcast.

 

[TrashyPanda]

Are you seriously suggesting that JJ Abrams constantly puts in mysteries that he has no answer for and then constantly leaves projects expecting someone else to answer his mysteries for him.

Man what would happen if JJ Abrams came back to one of those projects and actually be forced to answer one of his own mysteries, I bet the answer would be completely stupid.

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No? I agree with you 100% about JJ. He took a lot of the credit for LOST being successful and then turned around and said he didn't have anything to do with it when the backlash came. Dude is a grifter.

I was saying the statement was incorrect due to the fact that the show wasn't extended by two seasons. Half way through Season 3 after a couple bad episodes they were allowed to set an end date for the show and given three more seasons. This allowed them to craft the endgame.

Before this the show didn't have an endgame or any pre-planned answers, but regardless of how you feel about the show it wasn't made bad on purpose.

 

[Magilla]

Sliders the thread. The scummy backstage shit on that show should be a show all on its own.

 

[Croc Man]

I can't actually think of any examples right now but there's been many a show that the writers left on a cliffhanger to try and force a renewal that never came. If they actually wrote an ending instead they'd be more satisfying and have the chance to live on as a cult classic.

Glow is similar to that, except they actually got the renewal only for covid to finish it anyway.

 

[metsallica]

Promised Neverland Season 2.

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Yeah, I mean, it's this. Staff literally removed their names from it as it was airing.

Also The Promised Neverland is a one-season anime and I have no idea what you're talking about la la la la…

 

[dosh]

I will never not believe that the last Penny Dreadful season wasn't purposefully fucked. It was too badly written for it to be an honest attempt at a satisfying ending.

 

[onpoint]

Didn't Twin Peaks go through this

 

[Solo]

LOST

We were promised that everything had a logical explanation, then that was thrown out to the window to extend it by 2 seasons.

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This is factually incorrect. LOST was renewed for 3 additional/final seasons during Season 3.

 

[gforguava]

Gilmore Girls, Season 6. Once The WB wouldn't play ball with the Palladinos anymore ASP wrote Season 6 into hell so whatever came after would be a clusterfuck. She even said in a panel that she asked for basic things and WB refused but ended up having to get them anyway to replace her, lol.

There's a reason she ignored most of the seventh season for the Gilmore Girls mini series a few years back.

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Yeah, this is a great(maybe the best) example.

Most examples in this thread, even GOT, weren't fucked up "on purpose". The creators might've been checked out or whatever but they didn't actively try to make the show bad.

 

[higemaru]

Snuff Box was an emergency replacement for some Channel 4 show and while amazing, is clearly done with disregard for anything resembling grace. Not exactly a malicious example.

the 3rd season of Todd Margaret definitely feels like it was written with a gun to David Cross's head. And the 5th season of Arrested Development hates its characters with such ferocity that I can't help but think that Hurwitz wanted to sink the show…but then the show has always been extremely mean.

 

[Tater]

The Lyon's Den: A legal drama starring Rob Lowe that was cancelled. However, they were still contractually obligated to finish the original 13 shows. So the producers made the rest of the episodes as ridiculous as possible, turning Rob Lowe's character into a serial killer. At the very end, he kills his partner and then jumps out of a window:

The Lyon's Den - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[haziq]

Most examples in this thread, even GOT, weren't fucked up "on purpose". The creators might've been checked out or whatever but they didn't actively try to make the show bad.

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Then they could've passed the show off to someone else. Maybe another director they've worked with, or someone on the writing team. But they didn't. Meaning they were over the show that made them famous & wanted to move onto their other projects, but were narcissistic enough to not wanna see anyone else's name on the project but theirs. So they rushed it on purpose.

 

[Annubis]

Aldnoah Zero season 2 because they wanted to subvert expectations.

 

[gforguava]

Then they could've passed the show off to someone else. Maybe another director they've worked with, or someone on the writing team. But they didn't. Meaning they were over the show that made them famous & wanted to move onto their other projects, but were narcissistic enough to not wanna see anyone else's name on the project but theirs. So they rushed it on purpose.

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Them being shit doesn't equate to self-sabotage. There is a world of difference between someone no longer caring about what they are doing and thus the show going downhill and someone going "I am going to tank this show."

The Lyon's Den: A legal drama starring Rob Lowe that was cancelled. However, they were still contractually obligated to finish the original 13 shows. So the producers made the rest of the episodes as ridiculous as possible, turning Rob Lowe's character into a serial killer. At the very end, he kills his partner and then jumps out of a window:

The Lyon's Den - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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What the what.

 

[RiOrius]

Really. I loved this show. Anyone got details

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Not the person who made the claim, but according to a 30min YouTube video I just watched, the bottom line is that Harvey Weinstein (who was their contact at Miramax) talked (or perhaps tricked) Kevin Smith (and one or two others whose names I forget) into going with ABC instead of a much better UPN deal to develop the show. Then ABC, which had been pretty interested in the show because they were in 4th and thus needed something bold and interesting, suddenly struck gold with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and were now in 1st and didn't want bold and interesting anymore, so they pretty much tanked Clerks Animated with notes, schedule changes, etc. and only aired two episodes.

The video I saw (which appears to get its info mainly from the Clerks Animated commentary?):

 

[GungHo]

I do not think Game of Thrones was deliberately tanked. I think that the people involved were dealing with something beyond their capabilities. I don't think they didn't want to succeed. They just didn't know how to succeed and thought that they would be given more leeway for not sticking the landing. It was essentially like watching Kerri Grubb miss her final vault and get stomped by the fans of the Philadelphia Flyers.

I do not think Star Wars was deliberately tanked either. I think that the people involved had an incredible misunderstanding of what their audience wanted. In this case, I'm not even sure the audience knew what they wanted for Star Wars beyond "not that", "this guy doesn't act that way", "it didn't go that way in my head", "didn't we already cover this", and "where did that come from".

 

[Messofanego]

The Lyon's Den: A legal drama starring Rob Lowe that was cancelled. However, they were still contractually obligated to finish the original 13 shows. So the producers made the rest of the episodes as ridiculous as possible, turning Rob Lowe's character into a serial killer. At the very end, he kills his partner and then jumps out of a window:

The Lyon's Den - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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That is...amazing? Better than most of the examples in this thread which seem to have more understandable reasons than active sabotage.

 

[SlasherMcGirk]

Really. I loved this show. Anyone got details

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I know they aired them after sat morning cartoons and completly out of order. The first episode was the flashback episode which a lot of the humore requires seeing the first episode and then the last episode I believe. Made no sense.