/dev/null/kevin

Have you ever given up on a TV show? I don't mean watching a show once or twice and then stoping.   I mean you've watched the show for years, but then it really jumps the shark and you just can't watch anymore.  I usually stick with a show until its bitter end (or cancelation), but a couple of shows just put me over the edge and got purged from my TiVo season pass list.

I've given up on the following shows:

• The X-Files - The Truth was out there and the truth was that Chris Carter was just making it up as he went along.  This show was the hardest to stop watching because it used to be one of my favorite shows.  Sadly, it became apparent that no one invovled with the show gave a damn about the story, or the characters, and only wanted to collect a paycheck.  The "jump the shark" moment was the movie, and I bailed out a few seasons after that.  I never saw it, but they even named one episode of the last season "Jump The Shark" so they all knew it, too.

• Joey - My wife and I wanted to like this show.  We tried, and tried, and even stuck through the whole first season.  Secretly, I hoped it would be canceled, but it wasn't (at first).  For the second season, TiVo recorded episode after episode and we let them languish until they started dropping off.  Oh well.

• Andromeda - I probably never should have even started watching this dumb show in the first place, but it managed to overcome the "Hercules" factor, for a while.  But then Robert Hewitt Wolfe left and things went downhill fast.  Kevin Sorbo took more control and dumbed things down.  Way down.  Not even Lexa Doig was enough to watch this show.

• CSI: Miami - This CSI spinoff started off okay, but soon Miami's flashiness and action plots left realism and science in the dust.  As a fan of the CSI format, I put up with David Caruso's earnestness for several seasons.  Unfortunatley, Caruso's character of Horatio Caine is really a cartoon character.  While CSI's Gil Grissom always follows the evidence, Caine follows hunches and declares people guilty (or innocent) without any real evidence at all. My "favorite" thing he does is say things like "Don't worry Timmy, I'll get the guy who did this to your father.  I'll also pay for your entire college education."  The entire CSI:Miami team also uses their guns more than their microscopes and make huge, plot-driven, leaps in logic.  Strangely, this show is huge in Europe (more so than the original CSI).  It must be the same people who love David Hasslehoff's singing.

• Star Trek: Voyager - This show started weak and stayed that way.  I can watch any Star Trek series in reruns except this one.  I'll even watch Enterprise again sometimes, but not Voyager.  Never has so much good potential been squandered as with this show and in doing so Rick Berman and Brannon Braga destroyed the Star Trek franchise.