Random Long-Running TV Series That People Need To Stop Watching (15 items)

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  (#13) The Simpsons

  • Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Julie Kavner

  In 2018, The Simpsons brought forth its 29th season. Twenty-nine years is a long time, and even the generation of adult cartoons that The Simpsons spawned is getting old, with Family Guy having 16 seasons and South Park over 20. A Season 6 episode of South Park was even titled "Simpsons Already Did It," implying that these types of shows can't really do anything new, since all storylines are recycled to an extent.

  Well, that episode aired in 2002. If The Simpsons already did everything there was to do over 15 years ago, how have they kept it going? The Simpsons's highest viewership actually came with Season one (in the '80s), which averaged 27.8 million viewers. Season 28 only averaged 4.8 million viewers, which is actually the second lowest to date, as the previous season managed to dip below that.
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  (#5) The Middle

  • Patricia Heaton, Neil Flynn, Charlie McDermott

  At the end of Season 1, The Middle had run its course. Despite this, the series continued, and enjoys heavy syndication. Its viewership is declining, with Season eight marking its lowest average audience numbers yet, but still it persists. Patricia Heaton plays the overworked mother Frankie, who's basically just a nicer version of Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond. The real kicker, though, is her husband Mike (Neil Flynn). The actor was absolutely adored by Scrubs fans for his hilarious performance as the Janitor, yet in the next sitcom he chose to work on, he is supremely boring. While coastal fans gave up years ago, Middle America still loves the show, so it may limp along forever.
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  (#4) Modern Family

  • Ed O'Neill, Sofía Vergara, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter, Nolan Gould, Rico Rodriguez, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, Jeremy Maguire, Reid Ewing

  IMDB's synopsis of the episode "Pig Moon Rising" reads, "Mitchell [Jesse Tyler Ferguson] accidentally knocks over an urn containing the ashes of Cam's [Eric Stonestreet] beloved pet pig, Lilly; Cam tries to catch Mitchell in a lie." Quick, what season is that? If you said one or two, you'd be forgiven. It's actually Season 8, but Modern Family's comedy-of-errors format causes a lot of episodes bleed together. It's a formula that grows stale rather quickly, yet it's still being employed over a decade later.

  In pretty much every episode of this show, there's a scene in which two people have separate problems that they discuss with one another, without actually mentioning the subject. This leads each to believe that they were discussing their own personal issue, which only compounds the problems. They didn't invent this brand of humor, and while they really did utilize it successfully for a time, the gags had an expiration date from the get-go. 
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  (#8) Arrow

  • Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, Colin Donnell, David Ramsey, Willa Holland, Susanna Thompson, Paul Blackthorne, Emily Bett Rickards, Colton Haynes, Manu Bennett, John Barrowman, Echo Kellum, Josh Segarra, Rick Gonzalez, Juliana Harkavy

  Arrow is far from the longest running show of all time, but it's still about three seasons past its prime. From the moment Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough) shows up at the beginning of Season 4, the show gets out of hand, and one could make the argument that it started to go downhill after Season 2. 

  After the second season, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score dropped out of the 90s to 73%, and Season four plummeted to 44%. While that was the definitive low-point for the show, it still hasn't climbed back above the 70s, whereas the first two seasons were in the high 80s and low 90s.
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  (#6) NCIS

  • Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette

  NCIS is not only is it basically identical to its two spin-offs, it's virtually indistinguishable from the overcrowded genre of crime procedurals. The show's ratings aren't really trending downward (it peaked in season 10, but it's stayed relatively steady since), but that's because its audience replenishes itself.

  While the show regularly loses viewers to mortality, there are always plenty of new AARP members to take their place. Since the story has little continuity, NCIS is virtually immortal, like many of the genre's shows. Just because something can live forever doesn't mean it should.
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  (#14) It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

  • Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson, Danny DeVito

  One can only sit back and watch lunacy for so long, and that's exactly what It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is. Perhaps you could call it anarchy, but most episodes come down to the same things, and the shtick is a bit dried up. We get it, they're a bunch of sociopaths.

  This show was hilarious in its early days, but as is the case with all gimmicks, it has inevitably gotten stale. Halfway through the series, creators got so desperate that they had to make one character suddenly fat. The show only lives on because it switched networks in 2012 from FX to FXX, but unless an FXXX comes along soon, the gang may be out of places to run.

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