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alt title(s): Season Decay Retrospective opinion that every long running series has one season considered the worst or weakest for whatever reason by a fan majority. This might in fact be tied to the dislike of a specific arc, but can also befall episodic shows. In some series, a new director takes over and pulls the series in a different direction; this can give the impression of Seasonal Rot to those who liked the old way, but may also bring in new viewers who prefer it like this.
Perhaps related to Jumping The Shark, although the changes can be somewhat subtler and not so much permanently wreck the show as lightly alienate a noticeable segment of its viewers for a while. This hopefully gets fixed at the end of the bad season, when writers aren't as stuck in their created plotlines which have taken their course, and have time for everyone to reflect on them. Dis Continuity can result when fans choose to ignore said seasons.
Every series will eventually succumb to irreversible and progressively worsening Seasonal Rot if it runs long enough. Better series might have several years at the beginning of the run where each season seems to be better than the last, but sooner or later they will decay if they don't end. It's why they end. If the creator has any chance to continue the series, he usually will do for as long as he can. If not ended by Executive Meddling, then eventually the characters grow stale, the writers run out of ideas, and then this will happen. After that, the show is cancelled, and a new one is brought in, and the circle of life continues.
One reason that Too Good To Last series are so fondly remembered is that they never lived long enough for Seasonal Rot to set in. The reverse of Growing The Beard and Surprisingly Improved Sequel; it can segue into or from either one other at times.
Note that examples have to be specific seasons, otherwise is just becomes " Jump The Shark but you're allowed to add examples".
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Pokémon: The majority of Johto, though Hoenn and Sinnoh also take criticism for dragging on far longer than necessary.
- Rockman.EXE Stream, the fourth season of the Mega Man NT Warrior anime adaptation. Looked down on for turning the Mons on the internet premise into a Sentai show revolving around an ever-growing team of main characters with the ability to turn their Navis into super suits. The transition started with the previous season, but at least that mixed those segments in with segments that, um, actually focused on Mega Man.
- Also because "Mons on the internet" was originally called Digimon.
- Not to mention, the main villains' (Duo and Slur) status as Villain Sue and Karma Houdini was quite annoying.
- Supposedly the whole Cross Fusion business came about as a result of Executive Meddling, as the show's Axess timeslot onward was right before an actual Sentai show, and having resources and budget being shifted around to The Movie, not to mention incorporating said movie into the plot of the TV series itself, was probably responsible for the mostly abysmal art and a story that didn't know what to do with itself. That still doesn't excuse them for throwing out the entire purpose of the series, however.
- If you apply the concept to just the video games, Megaman Battle Network 4 is perhaps the worst in the series. The game had a, shall we say, developable plot about a net-connected Meteor threatening to destroy the Earth. Unfortunately this plot point is kept as a B-plot and about 80% of the game revolve about going from tournament to tournament, helping an adversary with his/her life problems, kick his/her butt, on and on. The meteor plot is solved at the very end of the game, very quickly and leaves little to no impression on the player. It's like a filler game, if that is possible.
- The Mega Man Star Force anime had this to a lesser degree in that there was virtually no plot in episodes 31 on until the end of the first season. So it was more like half-seasonal rot.
- A condition which continued into the second season, with the addition of an Adaptation Decay epidemic that discarded almost every aspect of the game it was purportedly based on, up to and including The Rival becoming the polar opposite of his game self.
- The Megaman Battle Network anime also ran into this during its second season. First it threw in a ridiculous amount of filler before remembering it had a plot, then it wrapped up the plot before the season was even over, and then it filled out the rest of the season with more filler because they had literally run out of plot.
- The last episode was particularly notable for this, being a blatant Shout Out to Ghost Busters and famously comprising of, to quote a fansite, "twenty minutes of filler, a minute of eyecatches, and the entire plot crammed into the ending theme." To say nothing of the episode a few earlier that was a rather gimmicky race...
- The last episode had the most insulting thing of all the anime - the last boss of the first game randomly pops up and it's defeated in less than a minute with barely any introduction.
- ...those are some of my favourite episodes though.
- The video game series itself is perhaps even more guilty; depending on who you talked to, the "seasonal" rot began either with the fourth or fifth game, but definitely while the series was still on the NES. Only with the latest entry of the series, Mega Man 9, is the series considered to have climbed out (incidentally, it returned to a "retro" 8-bit presentation). The Mega Man X series is almost universally regarded as entering seasonal rot after X5, especially because Keiji Inafune has moved on to the Mega Man Zero series.
- It is worth noting that the 8th game in the X series is generally considered playable, or even fun.
- Yu-Gi-Oh GX, after a Mind Screw of a third season (which still proved to be entertaining and well-written), had the abysmal fourth season, which tried (and failed) to top the Mandatory Twist Endings of the previous season, and supposedly explain away the loose ends from the first season without actually doing so. The fact that they made the main villain a secondary character's Superpowered Evil Side with a ridiculous agenda didn't help matters any.
- Season 4's main failing seems to have been the case of it being rushed for the sake of a new series installment, not the fact that it wasn't properly planned-out to begin with. It managed to wrap up things quite nicely in regards to what would happen to the main characters (by making them search for their own paths and identities, without having to rely on Judai at every turn) and the Big Bad's ploy was not all that different to the conclusion reached by a well-known show who got nowhere near the amount of flak that GX did for the very same plot-point.
- On that note, the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is said to have peaked at season 3 and took a sudden crash and burn when the aforementioned season 4 filler begun. Reasons for this include: trying to out-Epic the previous season, giving a random Monster Of The Week the ability to use a God Card, brainwashing an established self-sufficient female character into a whiny villain, giving Yami Yugi Wangst by stealing regular Yugi and causing him to spend half that season yelling "AIBOU!", creating disgustingly huge plot holes (Duel Monsters was created 10,000 years ago in Atlantis! Also, there's a world of Duel Monsters spirits), and a final duel that borders on the ridiculous where Kaiba loses (gasp) and the Big Bad and Yugi try to one-up each other on Infinite attack power. The next filler arc, despite not having much in the way of new interesting characters, was seen by most fans as decent.
- But the KC Grand Prix wasn't exactly seen as a salvation either, and still made part of the seasonal rot. Why? Because it was completely irrelevant. The main characters have a set purpose of unlocking the Pharaoh's memories and what to they do? Join a random tournament for no reason, of course! The fact that the Big Bad of that season is a random guy who has a silly grudge against Kaiba don't make things much better.
- Let's put it this way. In duel-based Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fic, it's a common problem that you will, in the end, be copying a season. If your story looks like Battle City, KC Grand Prix, or Memory World, people take it in stride. If your story looks like DOMA (Dartz's Arc), people start readying Torches And Pitchforks.
- Akazukin Chacha. The second season (of three) is best not watched. Or, at least have the remote handy to fast-forward through the several minute long transformation sequence sequence (yes, multiple in a row...)
- The Wallflower becomes increasingly formulaic after the 15th volume or so. When the author starts raving about her cat and sending the gang off to random places so the natives can be surprised by Sunako-chan, you just know it's not going to end anytime soon. It would have been wiser to let the main Odd Couple's Romance Arc progress beyond Aw Look They Really Do Love Each Other around the 12th, instead of the Sahara-sized deserts of filler
 we're receiving.
- Zero No Tsukaima has generally been thought to have gotten worse each season. The first season followed the novels better than the second or third seasons did. Not to mention that each season seemed to simply drop more and more into just being fanservice.
- With Digimon, it's either the second season (Digimon Adventure 02) or the fourth (Digimon Frontier). Your Mileage May Vary.
- Adventure 02's main problem was the Distant Finale while Frontier showed clear signs of this right from the start.
- Frontier's main problem was the Royal Knights mini-arc (episodes 38 - 47, more or less). Almost ten episodes of the same formula (knights decide to absorb a certain area, kids try to stop them, kids are defeated, all of the kids are shown to be digital except Koichi, next episode) for almost ten episodes straight. No plot advance, no character development, just... padding.
- Your Mileage May Vary. While Frontier is not among his favorite seasons, This Troper felt it was an interesting change of pace to see heroes get Curb Stomped at every turn. It helped raise the tension for when they finally pulled out a win.
- Naruto fans often dislike the Pain arc's resolution, particularly Chapter 449 when three characters who were dead are revived, as are all the other ninja that Pain killed, as well as Pain's backstory. Others, however, disagree.
- In Bleach, many fans are critical of developments past the start of the last Ichigo vs. Ulquiorra fight, citing a one-sided battle that turns a complete 180 after Ichigo dies and is returned in an upgraded version of his hollow form, the revelation that Yammy is Espada 0 and the deaths of the top three Espada. Most fans cite the Bount Arc as the weakest part of the anime, and the worst of the three major filler arcs, due to factors like length, poor characterization and borrowing from the Chapter Black saga of Yu Yu Hakusho.
- Many people also dropped it at the beginning of the Espada arc.
- After Ichigo's fight with Grimmjaw is when the manga really stopped having a plot and became an endless series of shinigami vs. arrancar fights. It didn't help that the arrancar, previously established as being quite powerful, were demoted into being nigh-mooks and made the entire "winter war" incredibly one-sided.
- If things can be divided by story arcs for this, Otogi Zoshi noticeably suffers in its second arc. The pacing is poor compared to the first, the artwork (generally quite nice to look at for the first half) has a considerable quality drop, plot points don't link as clearly to the conclusion, and much of it slips into predictable mystery of the week stuff. If the page for Otogi Zoshi itself is to be believed, Executive Meddling in the form of a tight schedule, tight budget, and the presence of 14 directors is very likely to blame.
- Sailor Moon's fourth season, Sailor Moon Super S, is usually regarded as the weakest of the series even though it has some of the best animation. In addition to leaving out the highly popular Outer Senshi introduced in the previous series, it consisted of mostly comedic filler episodes and deviated from the manga's corresponding and dramatic "Dream" arc. It also didn't help that a series titled "Sailor Moon" spent much more time on the character Chibiusa than on it's main heroine.
- Want to know a good way to introduce Seasonal Rot? Make eight versions of essentially the same episode with the only differences being the characters outfits and the numbers mentioned in the exposition in a fourteen episode season.
Comics
- Spider-Man comics were consistently popular and well-received for over 30 years until the Clone Saga of 1994-1996. The storyline initially featured decent sales figures, but by the end, critical and fan response was so negative that the Spider-Titles had to be cancelled and rebooted. The negativity was largely because the Clone Saga JUST. WOULDN'T. END.
- And yet again With One More Day/Brand New Day, which has the wider rot problem of the sales of the franchise pretty much going straight into the toilet, even with Marvel cancelling all satellite Spider-Man books and upping Amazing Spider-Man to three times a month publication.
- While the X-books have had their share of up and down periods, it could be said that the former flagship title Uncanny X-Men experienced a decline in quality starting with 1998's "Hunt for Xavier" arc, from which it did not recover fully until the end of Chris Claremont's third run on the title in 2007, when Ed Brubaker took over the book. Your Mileage May Vary, though.
- This Troper is of the opinion the core X-Books got better after he left until the end of Messiah Complex and then they started to go downhill again since they can't seem to decide on a direction, worming them into Dark Reign did not help. The spin-offs I feel are doing better, Cable especially since it at least has a steady plot behind it and it's fun seeing a possible future explored. X-Force was also decent until then Marvel decided to try to copy Blackest Night with Necrosha. X-Men Legacy was quite good with Xavier as the focus but the sudden shift to Rogue has felt rather offputting. Astonishing X-Men has definitely picked up since Wheldon left and the series is not getting delayed anymore, although the Flanderization and derailment of Forge is nothing short of being a Wall Banger.
- Depending on who you ask, the seasonal rot for the Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog series started either after issue 50 (the appropriately-titled "Endgame" arc), or after the Bem/Xorda arc (starting the comic's Planet Of The Apes Ending and several characters' derailment, especially Sally Acorn's Chickification). Exactly how long the Seasonal Rot lasted (or indeed, if it ever did end) also depends on who you ask.
- A number of fans of the book have noted that, after Ian Flynn and Tracey Yardley became the new creative team in issue #160 (and tied up as many of the storylines Left Hanging by the previous writers as they could), the overall quality of the book as started to recover.
- This seems to be happening with the "second season" of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, since the writer and the artist both left and they subsequently hired new people. The writing and art style shift is... jarring, to say the least.
- The "Reads" arc of Cerebus, largely due to consisting mostly of an extended Author Filibuster.
Literature
- The tenth book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series falls under this due to excessive use of Padding and Purple Prose. Most fans see some manner of seasonal rot setting in anywhere between books 4 and 9 already, but it's disputed where it really went downhill. Either way, book 11 was a significant improvement, resolving several plots and paving the way for the final book with, by WoT standards, barely any padding at all.
- The fourth book of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast for Crows, is regarded by fans as anywhere between "Strong as ever", "below the excellent quality of the previous books" and "dull, boring crap that goes nowhere". This arises from a shift in focus to newer POV characters, whose plots some consider to be cases of Trapped By Mountain Lions, and the story being essentially chopped in half, with a lot of the more popular characters being left out completely.
- Stephen King's The Dark Tower runs at a strong pace until crashing in a brick wall in Wizard and Glass, shortly after introducing us to the world of The Stand (a storyline with promise), with a flashback sequence seemingly unrelated to the story we've been reading (until we find out that the main characters are Roland, Alain, and Cuthbert using pseuonyms. 600 pages later, we return to the story, but from this point, the story never picks up, and many fantastic bits of potential are wasted. Even up to the end of the story, Mordred turns out to be crap, the Crimson King is crap, and the Tower just sends Roland back to the beginning of the first book. Therefore, we never find out what we wanted to know, and the entire quest was pointless. Yeah, the first three books are awesome (sorry, I meant books two and three, plus the first section of four), but the others, you read because you have to.
- Naked Empire, the eight book of the Sword of Truth series, is commonly thought to be the weakest part of the series by even people who like it as a whole. Yes, this is the book with evil pacifists. Afterward, the series gains back some of its momentum in the three last books.
Live Action TV
- Six Feet Under: most fans agree that the fourth season is the worst one, and the creators themselves tend to agree. Character-arcs tended to become redundant, out-of-place, irrelevant, or overly gratuitious in their content ; it was at that time that the scenarists understood they could not keep using the same characters forever and decided the next season would be the last. Nevertheless it's still top-quality television, but watching it you really do feel the writers were starting to get a bit confused. It's also compensated by the fact both the beginning and the end are top-notch ; the fifth season also did a good job explaining the relevance of more controversial plotlines introduced during season four.
- Xena Warrior Princess: Fifth or sixth season. Fans argue.
- Star Trek:
- original: Third season
- Next Generation: First season, which tended toward the Anvilicious. Season two, while generally considered an improvement, isn't very well-liked either; Dr. Pulaski was meant to be The Mc Coy, but she came across as cold. Some of the later seasons may have descended back into Seasonal Rot, though it's hard to get any agreement of which ones. The show really took off starting with the third season, displaying a case of Reverse Seasonal Rot in that the show actually started poorly and rose in esteem later.
- Deep Space Nine: Season three is distinctly weak, due to two factors: the departure of Peter Allan Fields (who was responsible for the first two seasons' best writing), and an increasing reliance on Ferengi-centered comedy episodes. It was back on its feet by season four, though. Season seven receives this accusation by some fans due to (allegedly) lower quality stories and Ezri Dax.
- Voyager: Depends who you ask, but Season 2 is frequently chosen. It contained some of the show's least popular storylines (with fans and eventually writers) and famously led longtime Trek reviewer Tim Lynch to stop watching. The show improved steadily from here, beginning by leaving Kazon space behind.
- Enterprise: It reverse rots from the time the Xindi attack on up.
- The West Wing: Everything post-Aaron Sorkin, but mainly the fifth season.
- Babylon 5 has been likened to a sandwich; the best parts are the middle three seasons.
- Season Five, however, has a note that it "recovered momentum", once the plot gets going. Originally, the last three episodes of season four were going to kick off Season 5.
- Red Dwarf gets this a lot.
- Either the sixth, seventh, or eighth series; which one qualifies best, or rather worst, as the seasonal rot depends on who you talk to.
- While fans differ as to where it began exactly it's generally agreed that the period in between Series 3 and 6 was its peak, with the rot starting depending on personal impression. However the rot became obvious after Rob Grant and Doug Naylor split. With Doug Naylor choosing to revive the series and turn it into a comedy/drama with no studio audience for Series 7 and a new Kochanski and getting the backlash that followed. Despite returning to a pure comedy format and shot in front of an audience for Series 8 the response was similarly poor.
- Sliders: Universally, season three, during which Maggie was introduced, Professor Arturo had a bridge dropped on him, and Quinn Mallory ceased being the genius he once had been. The debate is how much the show recovered, if at all.
- Doctor Who seasons 22 through 24. Season 22 introduced the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and with that a lot of problematic storytelling. Season 23 is derided as much as season 22, possibly due to it being mindscrewy. Additionally, both seasons are notable for being the point where Continuity Lock Out and Continuity Porn are particularly bothersome. Season 24 introduced the clownish and goofy (at first) Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), ramped the Camp Up To Eleven and introduced the world to Keff McCulloch and his disco-aerobics brand of incidental music. Really, the show seems to be called on this one with every season, with symptoms ranging from regeneration to shifts in tone by new production teams to questionmark lapels appearing.
- In the revived series, season two is generally considered the weakest series. Of course, regardless of how well-received the episodes of each season may be, the final episodes are frequent targets of derision due to Russell T Davies apparent fondness for the Reset Button and use of Deus Ex Machina to resolve the plot.
- The Avengers: Original: Sixth series, though this is a bit unfair as the first series was lost after transmission save for two episodes.
- X-Files: The ninth season, though some consider the Seasonal Rot to go back further.
- This may go back to season 6 where, in the wake of The Movie, it became obvious that they didn't know where to go. Mulder and Scully spent half the season off The X-Files, which meant the writers had to come up with increasingly contrived ways to get them to investigate the case of the week. This also forced unlikeable characters like Spender and Fowley (whose only purpose seemed to be gumming up the Mulder/Scully relationship and giving fans hissy fits) on us, a trend that would continue into seasons 8 and 9.
- John Cleese was perfectly aware of this (and meeting audience's inflated, unmatchable expectations) when he created Fawlty Towers, a popular British sitcom that only lasted two series of six episodes each. He decided against making further episodes because he knew that anything he would've written after it would not meet the expectations of the viewers.
- And yet there have still been fans, both then and now, who have argued that one season is worse than the other. Go figure.
- Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant purposely emulated this with The Office and Extras, sticking to two six-episode series and a Christmas special each and tying up all the loose ends, rather than seeing how far they could draw it out. When asked why, they'd often point out that Fawlty Towers, one of the most celebrated British shows ever, was only thirteen episodes. (There are those who'd argue that the American version of The Office should've taken their cue from the original even though many agree that it the show only began to grow its beard in the early-to-mid second season.)
- This is a common feature of British comedy shows, and British TV in general, the argument being that concentrated quality is often preferable to pushing on past a show's prime to inevitable shark jumps.
- Monty Pythons Flying Circus: John Cleese left the show after the third season. Without his rigorous quality control, the fourth season, renamed simply Monty Python, featured way too many half-baked ideas and thin premises stretched well past breaking point, resulting in a horribly uneven batch of episodes. The nadir of the series is probably "Mr. Neutron", a silly, underdeveloped science fiction story with only very intermittent laughs that took up an entire episode.
- 24: The fourth series of the show is markedly different from the preceding three seasons; Jack is effectively deposed as head of CTU operations, the building itself has undergone a makeover, and just about everyone from the previous season is gone without explanation. They've been replaced by an ineffectual boss who's holding her schizophrenic daughter in the CTU medical wing, a portly computer tech suffering from a nervous breakdown after learning that his mother will die from radiation poisoning, and an obvious mole who treats everyone around her like crap. It's not surprising that, by the end of the season, almost all of the major surviving characters from the series were brought back into the fold. Alternately, season six starts out promising, and then becomes mired in a complex family drama and plot points ripped haphazardly from previous episodes.
- Fans have noted that 24 contains an unusual combination of this trope and the odd/even rule from Star Trek — odd numbered seasons are generally good and feature interesting, varied plots, whereas even numbered seasons feature lazy and borderline ridiculous plots involving nuclear terrorism.
- While not every fan of the prison drama Oz agrees that the final two seasons were the worst, it's hard to argue against the fact that storylines became increasingly outlandish and implausible during the show's final years, which involved, among other things, accelerated aging drugs, a dog-training program in a maximum security prison, a prison guard being signed by the NBA, and one character apparently gaining psychic powers, which he uses to win the lottery. This all in stark contrast to the gritty realism of the show's early seasons.
- Smallville: While the fourth season brought us Impulse and Krypto, its primary plot was magic stones and reincarnated witches. The writers clearly didn't know where they were going and way too many conspiracies made it hard to keep track of where it had been, especially with Jason and his mother, whom the writers couldn't decide if they were working together or apart, or if they wanted Lana alive or dead. It also had a butchering of Mxyzptlk preventing a more traditional (i.e. having any qualities even remotely resembling Mxyzptlk) version from showing up in the future.
- Well, in their defense, it would be hard to introduce an omnipotent fifth-dimensional imp into a "realistic" show. Although I agree that that was pure butchering.
- Most fans complain about season 8. Mostly due to the increasingly poor plots (Clark always rushes in at the last minute to save the day and it's starting to bug everyone), bringing Lana back again, dialogue filled with needless Purple Prose, and not moving forward at all with the plot.
- Lana returning easily derailed the entire season, putting all the established plotlines on hold in favor of milking the guest star. The butchering of Doomsday didn't help either, especially since unlike Mxyzptlk he was a regular.
- Lost has had this, although the matter is debatable. What's known for sure is that season 2 lost many viewers because of an overly large Kudzu Plot. The first six episodes of season 3 (the "pod") were widely panned and turned off a lot of fans (who would then go on to miss episode 7, "Not in Portland", considered one of the show's finest, and the nearly unbroken line of incredible episodes that followed it). Fortunately, now that the series' end got scheduled to the sixth season years in advance, seasons 4 and 5 have started expanding the context of the story and tying together some of the various loose ends.
- Power Rangers: The fans near universally hated Power Rangers Turbo (season 5), but the Crisis Crossover season Power Rangers In Space picked up the slack and won everyone back over.
- The last couple seasons (starting point depends on the viewer) of MacGyver aren't viewed as favorably as the first couple seasons due to the Genre Shift of the show. By the last season, it was practically little more than a soapbox for the major issues the writers viewed as important. Most of the elements that made the show successful toned down or phased out in favor of Anvilicious issue-of-the-week episodes.
- The fourth series of the British series Teachers. The surrealism that had always bubbled under in the earlier series before coming to the fore in the third series got a little too out of hand, the dramatic elements almost entirely vanished, as did most of the better characters, to be replaced by pale imitations. One of the standout characters in the previous series had been Bob, a lovable loser, but for the fourth series he was flanderized into a Butt Monkey with a cheating Thai bride completely unaware of his status as the Butt Monkey. It might actually be possible that this is the way it always was, but we only noticed when the plots went downhill...
- Batman: Despite the stereotype, this series' first season had fairly good balance of drama and farce, but the subsequent seasons lost it with the Season 2 become primarily ridiculous while Season 3 was both embarrassingly cheap and ridiculous.
- The Los Angeles season of The Apprentice. It would have probably been fine if the location was the only thing that changed. Instead, we saw former viceroys Carolyn and George replaced by Trump's children, the week's losers having to live in tents, the winning Project Manager staying PM until a loss, said PM getting to sit in on boardroom elimination discussions, an entire team getting immunity for a week and as a result the losing team being split into two groups that had to compete against each other, and the final challenge pitting two teams of two instead of just two finalists. This resulted in a winner that never served as Project Manager. This led to poor ratings and a near-cancellation (it was brought back as a "celebrity" edition).
- With the UK incarnation of the show, the second season is generally agreed as the worst, with the very competent candidates in the previous series replaced by a bunch of complete morons (with the obvious exception of Ruth Badger). Depending on who you ask, the third season was either when things got back on track, or the year when the show went all icky and "mainstream" on viewers.
- Season 2 of Heroes. Half the characters had boring storylines, one of the more interesting ones was mostly off screen, and Maya Herrera. Cut short by the writer's strike, and acknowledged by the writers as inferior to Season 1.
- The first half of Season 3 was arguably worse. The writers heard the complaints that Season 2 was too slowly paced, and not enough twists. Their answer? A Random Events Plot and one Aborted Arc after another. Fans could no longer say it was predictable or slowly paced, but the result was even worse. The show mostly returned to form with the second half of Season 3, and Season 4 seems to be holding its ground so far.
- Desperate Housewives: Season three, though part of this was due to the fact that one of the show's stars (Marcia Cross) was written out of the second half of the season due to her pregnancy. The season five time jump also gets points for seasonal rot as storylines such as Bree and Orson being new parents were aborted while the relationship between Mike and Susan once again got haphazardly derailed in order to drag out the "Will they or won't they" drama.
- Saturday Night Live: Just about any season depending on who you ask, but the sixth season stands out as uniquely awful. The entire cast and writing staff left in 1980, but the network insisted that the show continue along anyway; new producer Jean Doumanian knew nothing about comedy, having been previously in charge of booking musical guests. As a result the musical guests were fantastic and the new cast and writers barely watchable. Finally NBC stepped in and fired everyone except Joe Piscopo and some kid named Eddie Murphy that was hired mid-season and was showing a lot of promise...
- The 20th season also stands out as particularly bad, partly as an inverse to the 1984-85 season when NBC brought onboard a slew of big name comics to try and keep the show going. While it had its moments, the overall chaos of having a large number of egos behind the scenes pretty much led to a subpar season and a massive cast purge at the end of the season so that Lorne Michaels could rebuild.
- In a similar vein to SNL, Nickelodeon's All That was revived after three years with an entirely new cast, new writers, and, all and all, a whole new atmosphere. Many fans would rather it was left be.
- Season 3 of Supernatural: Executive Meddling lead to Bela and Ruby, the audience was always Anviliciously reminded that Dean only had one year to live, and the season premiere ("The Magnificent Seven") was too bright and shiny. Season 4 has been a grittier improvement, but Genevieve Cortese is generally reviled in her portrayal of Ruby throughout the fanbase, and many fans really miss Katie Cassidy. Fans that weren't nearly so loud when she was actually onscreen.
- The Drew Carey Show began going downhill part-way through the fifth season, after Mrs. Louder mysteriously vanished without a trace, only to be replaced with new guest stars every few weeks. However, the last two seasons changed so much that the show was nearly unrecognizable. And unwatchable, judging from the ratings.
- Season 8 of The Amazing Race was a "Family Edition" which was utter crap, and even the production team later said that It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time but turned out badly. The intra-team drama invariably became parents yelling at kids, having children restricted international travel, teams of 4 also restricted international travel (as the show already requires a huge travel budget with teams of 2), the challenges had to be watered down for the families, and so on. The entirety of the race ended up taking place in North and Central America, and viewers watched families turning seemingly dysfunctional while being challenged to such difficult tasks like pitching a tent in exotic Pennsylvania. Its main shining moment was the injection of Unfortunate Implications Narm of an African-American family having the surname of "Black" (leading to such captions as "Black Family: Last Place" with narration to match). Thankfully, season 9 returned to the original format.
- And now Season 15, which had a whiny, mediocre cast full of pseudo-celebrities running on a subpar course. It did not help either that three teams essentially quit the race when they came up against something “too difficult” (which included, of all things, going down a waterslide and unscrambling the name “Franz”).
- SeaQuest DSV stopped playing to its strengths in Season 2; the writers introduced a lot of weird sci-fi elements that were out of place on a submarine show. The Season 3 ReTool did a lot to fix this, but it came too late to avert cancellation.
- "Out of place"? It was practically a different show! Season one had most of its plots rooted in the real world and at least semi-plausible science, with subtle homages to Star Trek which were entirely forgivable on a show set on a giant hi-tech ship; season two started out by dumping half of the cast for obviously younger, sexier, weaker characters without explanation and tried to out-Trek Trek with the particle/alien/technology/hole in the spacetime continuum-of-the-week.
- Although still popular, many long-time fans of Seinfeld think that seasons 8 and 9 were notably different from the former ones. This is because the showrunner Larry David left the show after season 7, leaving Jerry Seinfeld as the new Executive Producer. With the remaining writing staff left to its own devices, these seasons featured faster-paced, "wackier" episodes with many references to previous episodes, and attempts at running gags. Characters also slightly de-evolved, especially George, and Kramer's stunts became ever increasing. Still, the series continued to enjoy ratings success and a tenth season was proposed, until Seinfeld declined.
- Season 2 of Veronica Mars: Not merely content to have an underwhelming Red Herring-laden season-spanning mystery (complete with Wall Banger resolution), it dragged several of Season 1's plot elements down with it (most notably Ret Connning the resolution to Veronica's rape storyline). Not to mention having Aaron Echols' hamfisted Karma Houdini-turned-Karmic Death. Season 3 is a bit of a Broken Base: Some consider it a continuation of the rot, others where the rot started, and still others considering it a rebound season (but not enough to save it).
- While still probably the best adaptations out there, the sixth and seventh seasons of the Granada Sherlock Holmes adaptations were marked by increasing (sometimes justified, othertimes... just weird) deviations from the Canon. This was mostly due to Jeremy Brett's worsening health, and the planned filming of the entire Canon was cut short by Actor Existence Failure.
- Everything post-season 8 of M*A*S*H. Radar leaving is a no-no. However, some will even say that the rot happened post-season 3, with the departure of Henry and Trapper.
- This troper has the opposite opinion, that any season with Trapper is a Rot'd one and to be skipped, with BJ's arrival signaling the series Growing The Beard.
- Season Five of House. Plot points that were never brought up again, Wilson and Cuddy acting like bigger asses than House was, an overemphasis on Foreteen and giving Thirteen all the big plotlines, Chase and Cameron being very rarely seen, the medicine being even worse than before, House turning pathetic and rather stupid and Kutner's dumbass suicide made this season even worse than Season Three in the fans' eyes.
- Arrested Development, while generaly considered to be Too Good To Last, had a weaker story arc involving Charlize Theron. Acknowledged by creators in the episode SOBs:
George Sr.: Hey, we can have some celebrities in. Oscar winners, like Nicole Kidman...
Michael: I don't want to just round up a bunch of famous people that have nothing to do with our family as some sort of cheap stunt. What's that got to do with us?
- Even though the arc itself was somewhat weak, the Mr. F plot twist was amazing.
- Part of the reason season 3 suffered was having only thirteen episodes. Many plot points seem rushed. George is put under house arrest with no explanation for why he didn't get sent back to jail.
- Survivor: Thailand seems to be considered by most fans to be the worst season, an opinion also shared by host Jeff Probst, who referred to it as "mean-spirited" and "ugly" and called the final four contestants of the season the least likable ever.
- Season 5 of ''Three's Company is when Suzanne Somers' infamous salary dispute took place, which put the show through hell that year. The show effectively became "Two's Company" for a while when Suzanne refused to show up on several tape days and had to be hurriedly written out. Chrissy was eventually replaced in the apartment for the rest of the season with her cousin Cindy (a character that many fans seem to dislike), and was only seen herself over the phone in the one-minute tag scene at the end of each episode, before disappearing completely without explanation the next season.
- Friday Night Lights: Season 2, which bafflingly changed gears from the first season's subtle, understated, and authentic portrait of small-town life to Landry murdering a rapist and hiding the body, Matt having a sexy affair with his grandmother's live-in caretaker, and Tim Riggins running afoul of Dillon's dangerous local meth dealer. Many fans feared that the show had Jumped the Shark only for it to return for a brilliant third season once again in the best spirit of the shows original intentions and with even less filler than the already-brilliant first season. Some have called the ongoing season 4 the best yet.
- Oh, Twin Peaks. The first season and the beginning of the second were a cultural phenomenon, considered by critics to some of the best television ever created. Then, creator David Lynch succumbed to Executive Meddling and revealed Laura Palmer's killer, who until that had been the major driving force of the plot, and in so doing left the show directionless. To make things worse, Lynch suffered some serious Artist Disillusionment after this and left the show, leaving it in the hands of writers who really didn't know what to do with it. The episodes post-Lynch were pure filler, and ratings plummeted, leading to its cancellation at the end of the second season. Luckily, there was a brief upswing in quality once the replacement writers got their game together, and Lynch came back to direct the (awesome) series finale.
- Oh, Robin Hood. There was still time to save it even after the Wall Banging horror of the season two finale (in which Marian was killed off), but a number of contributing factors ensured that the third season not only earned the hatred of the fans, but the cancellation of the show. This included the new writers who apparently didn't bother to watch the previous two seasons, the dropping of long-term storylines from the show, the complete lack of mention of Will Scarlett and Djaq (who were abandoned in the Holy Land), the reimagining of Tuck as a character who was a monk in name only and played by a black actor, the introduction of the ghastly Kate as a love interest for Robin, the reduction of the outlaws into bit-parts (whose only job was to babysit Kate and talk about how great she was) the abandonment of the "rob from the rich/give to the poor" premise, the painful introduction of Guy and Robin's half-brother in an attempt to set up Robin Hood as a Legacy Character for a proposed Season Four, and finally, the mass cast exodus of all but two of the original cast members (who were disposed of in some of the worst deaths conceivable), who certainly weren't shy in voicing their displeasure at the direction the show had taken.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Season six and seven were... let's see: both seasons heavily featured Dawn no longer being plot critical and being whiny and annoying because she's not special when she'd already had her chance. Season 6 had filler villains, padding, emotional coldness to a ridiculous degree to the girl who had to dig herself out of her grave which is major Character Derailment, magic "addiction", Evil!Willow, Tara's death by magic bullet and subsequent change to Morality Chain, Giles leaving, Karma Houdini all around, Xander jilting Anya, "Doublemeat Palace", Spike and Buffy's "Romance", that horrid near-rape scene. Season 7 gave us: Kennedy, they depowered Willow so as not to overshadow Buffy, Stalin!Buffy, that scene where Buffy calls a girl who committed suicide 'weak and stupid', the female counterparts to the watchers which was useless as there were female watchers already, Dawn declaring that the Summers' home was also hers so Buffy had to get out, and these are just the most common points of contention.
- Some argue that the fourth season was the worst, although the last two seem to get more hate overall.
Web Comics
- Sluggy Freelance lost a lot of its readers during the massive plotline known as "Oceans Unmoving", mainly because the plot's only relevance to the series was showing what happened to BunBun after Holiday Wars. It took what should have been a a very short, sweet explanation and turned into into a one year plotline that constantly stopped the action because it had to cram in as much exposition as possible about the cosmology. For many people, the comic never recovered from it. Others like to just pretend it never happened.
- Still others found it a fairly interesting change of pace that had a lot of wasted potential. Unfortunately, forcing it upon the readers with only a tangential relation to the rest of the canon was not a smart move on Pete's part.
- One more take: "Oceans Unmoving" would have been a great thing to release all at once, say as a book. It drew more resentment because it came at the expense of the regular cast, and the cool concepts weren't well served by a one-day-at-a-time schedule. People forget that a lot of Sluggy stories felt overlong and tedious at the time, but read well in the archives.
Western Animation
- Most fans of The Simpsons agree that the first eight seasons were the best, and that starting with Season Nine, the quality started to go downhill. In the latest seasons, quality is pretty much judged on an Episode-by-Episode basis. Some ("24 Minutes," "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind", "How the Test Was Won") are considered to have comparable quality to the first eight seasons. Many others are...not so good.
- The fifth season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Largely after the writers were given free reign contentwise, meaning we got a ton of overtly gross-out storylines with rotting corpses and severed penises, as well as Master Shake murdering a cat.
- Winx Club, season 3, what with various plot points that went nowhere and stuff.
- Drawn Together, the first half of Season 3, when the show became too dark for its own good.
- Fans generally hate the third season of Animals of Farthing Wood due to it being lighter in tone compared to the first two seasons which were very dark. Apparently darkness is good....
- South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, for reasons they have never adequately explained, greatly dislike the show's second season. Fans on the whole disagree.
- The flak Trey and Matt received from both fans and Comedy Central over doing the Terrance and Phillip season opener as an April Fool's gag (instead of resolving the Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut cliffhanger) might have something to do with it.
- Season six is another example, largely due to the backlash against Parker and Stone retiring Kenny and their plans for Butters being the new Butt Monkey being derailed by Comedy Central and fans literally rescuing Butters from the Scrappy pile. Needless to say, ever since that season, Parker and Stone have openly threatened to quit production of the show (to the point that Parker almost bailed entirely midway through season eight).
- Season 3 of Gargoyles, when they renamed it to "Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles". When the series' creator hits the Reset Button on an entire season (via the ongoing Gargoyles comic), you know things came off the rails in a big way. The introduction of
The KKK HYDRA The Quarrymen as recurring antagonists was merely the cherry on top.
- Oh, ReBoot season four. Where to begin? With the character derailment? The multiple idiot balls at play? The endless retcons, intentional or otherwise? It's so difficult to choose.
- More the second half of Season 4. The Daemon arc was decent.
- Code Lyoko fans consider Seasons 3 and 4 (or if not that, just Season 3) to be inferior to the first two story-wise (though far superior stylistically). While Season 2 involved and ended with an exploration into the computer's past and the progression of the major romance arcs, the next two seasons shunted that to the side in favor of episodic filler, which was more often than not dedicated to the increasingly-unfunny escapades of the comic relief characters.
- Season Three of Danny Phantom suffered from this due to Executive Meddling.
- Butch Hartman's other work, The Fairly Oddparents, suffers from this. General fan consensus is seasons 4 and 5. Everything else is highly subjective.
- Everybody Loves Hypnotoad has been going downhill since Season 3... Or So I Heard.
- Spongebob Square Pants has been going downhill since the movie. Spongebob and Patrick become dumber and more unlikable with each season, Mr. Krabs has become a borderline Complete Monster, Sandy has become a Ted Baxter instead of one of the only truly intelligent and smart Only Sane Man...
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