10 Great TV Shows That Lost It By The End
8. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The genre show that continues to define how genre shows are produced even today, a dozen years after it completed its seven season run, Buffy The Vampire Slayer is one of the most popular and influential television series of all time. Which is why its such a shame about the last couple of seasons of the show.
Truth to tell, the show never again reached the heights of seasons two and three. It was a high school comic melodrama with supernatural themes: Buffys graduation from high school removed a lot of the focus from the narrative. No one wanted to see Xander fumble over finding a career, or Buffy pretend to go to college: it simply wasnt the reason we all watched the show. While there would continue to be individual stand-out episodes right up until the end, the lustre had begun to flake and fade.
Creator and showrunner Joss Whedon would move on to other projects and pass the majority of his responsibilities over to Marti Noxon after the fifth season, which saw Buffy die saving the world. The quality in storytelling took a huge nosedive in his absence, featuring far too much navel-gazing angst: a show about a vampire-slaying ex-cheerleader and her friends should never be this dull. Never the most sympathetic of protagonists, Buffy returned from the grave even more self-obsessed and whiny than before she'd died entering into a weird and uncomfortable relationship with former archenemy Spike.
By the seventh and final season, it felt like we were watching glossily produced Buffy fan fiction, all hamfisted dialogue, staccato pacing, cringeworthy characterisation and, worst of all, relentlessly humourless, dull-as-ditchwater stories. It didnt help that Buffys spin-off Angel had hit its stride as Buffy began to tank: Angels season four, an incredible single-arc tour de force featuring no less than four Big Bad antagonists, was the best thing on genre television in the 2002/2003 season, while its parent show could barely muster the energy to crack a smile. When the series finale hit screens and insulted the intelligence and loyalty of every fan still watching, it was a mercy killing.