Everyone loves scrolling through Netflix or Hulu or HBO Maxx or whatever streaming service you use, for hours and finally finding a great show that has several seasons with 45-minute episodes each season. But everyone hates it when that show goes on so long that it gets bad. Everyone has experienced watching their favorite show go down the rabbit hole of mediocrity and awful character decisions

One of the most popular examples of this is Greys Anatomy. Although I have not watched the show myself, I’ve heard from several people who have watched the show that after some of the later seasons the show goes downhill. A show I have watched spiral into the garbage pit of shows was Flash. I was honestly impressed with how the show made a C-list superhero into a solid B-lister and quite possibly an A-lister. The CGI was simplistic, but it worked and looked incredible for a TV show. But all good things must come to an end, as the airing of season four saw way too much use of very, very bad CGI. Almost every running scene abandoned the close up shot of Grant Gustan for a wide completely CGI shot. Not only was one of the best and unique parts of the show ruined but they also pushed aside fan favorite characters like Barry Allen himself or Cisco Ramone for lesser, and more annoying side characters like Iris West and Kaitlin Snow. The last and probably worst and most downgraded part of the show is the plots of the later seasons. As with most CW shows the plots are either really, really shallow and boring giving absolutely zero reason for the audience to even pay attention to it or it’s so unbearably absurd and campy that it’s way too cringy to watch. The show is currently on its eighth season and it’s just getting worse.

The Flash isn’t the only show to have its plot and characters ruined over time. The Walking Dead is another great example. The Walking Dead made die-hard fans of the comic and regular TV fans jump for joy when it first debuted. The make-up effects were absolutely fantastic and unmatched by any other running show at the time. The show made you care for the characters and when one was killed off and it was a genuine shock. The plots of each season built off each other and made the audience get invested not only in the characters but also in the story. And the cinematography. Every single episode was shot with a slight tilt to the camera to add to the uneasiness of the world and atmosphere of the eerie, post-apocalyptic Georgia. But of course, they had to go and ruin it. The later seasons saw fan favorite characters like Glenn Ree and Abraham be killed off and later in the same season Sasha was killed off too. That’s not bad itself but trying to replace these characters with worse less interesting characters wasn’t the way the show should have gone. Not only that but the later seasons’ plots get overshadowed by pointless and boring filler episodes with more of the boring side characters I talked about earlier. The show is on its eleventh season and with its main character off filming some stand-alone tie in films, the show doesn’t show many signs that it will recover.

All hope is not lost, however. There are shows that go on just long enough like Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This show is perfection. The story that grips you and compels you to keep watching. The characters that mesh so well together. The show makes you care about the characters’ relationships with each other. The action scenes and animation are astonishing and so well-choreographed. The sound effects and voice acting are some of the best you will ever hear. And when the show was picked back up on Disney+, they gave it the ending it deserved with even better action scenes character acts ending in a meaningful and satisfying way and with all the original voice actors returning. This show is the peak of television programming.

While most shows continue on even after they should have died, there are some diamonds in the rough that make up for the other boring and bland shows out there.