When I talked about the worst TV shows

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Late 2015 seems like such a long time ago. It seems like a different world, in a lot of ways. It was a world where I had little to complain about other than the sorry state of television, which wasn’t really that sorry. Still, I managed to pull this post out of the air. 2015 wasn’t a bad year overall for television, but it was certainly not free from its losers. Take a look at the article, I’ll wait.

The one thing these bad shows had in common

What’s interesting is that if you look at all these shows, the one thing that they share is that their leads have all but disappeared. I had to look up who was in the second season of True Detective —it was Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Vince Vaughn — these were top-tier people but it doesn’t seem like they’ve been busy since. Practically no one from the cast of Minority Report has gone on to be a household name, and that’s better than what’s befallen the cast of Transparent, one of whom stands accused of sexual harrassment.

The shows I didn’t mention

This article didn’t mention Grandfathered, which was aimed squarely at Generation X. Someone forgot to tell Generation X, though, because they didn’t watch. The slacker generation didn’t watch Grinder either. Most of the shows of ’15 were the same as they are now: predictable competition shows, cop shows, doctor shows, and sitcoms. In that way, the world hasn’t changed.

Will we look back at 2021 the same way?

It’s far too early in the year to know if there will be big flops, but it’s a fair bet there will be. I have to wonder if we’ve finally reached the tipping point with home buying and renovation shows. There seem to be three or four of them on at any time of the day, every day of the year. I suppose in retrospect these shows were comfort food for people in quarantine; it was the closest one could come to visiting someone else’s home. But as we look forward to the world opening up again, will we shake our heads at the myriad varieties of house hunting shows? We can only hope.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.