10 TV Shows That Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead
1. Prison Break
The most obvious example of a show that didn't have the legs to go any kind of distance, Prison Break was actually originally rejected by Fox for precisely that reason. The high concept of the series was that Lincoln Burrows, a troubled ex-con, was framed for the murder of the brother of the Vice President of the United States and sentenced to death; his brilliant brother Michael Scofield comes up with a convoluted plan to break him out, and has himself incarcerated in the same prison with the full, detailed escape plans tattooed on his body.
Why a genius like Michael couldn't just memorise all the plans isnt ever really touched upon by the show: the tattoos are a cool visual (although realised with terrible CGI), and that's that. By the end of the first season, the plan is in action and the prison break has begun but Michael still has plans left to pursue, and so some of the tattoos are still in play.
By season three, half the cast are imprisoned again, locked up by the political cabal that framed Lincoln: but this time in a savage South American prison. Michaels tattoos had stopped being relevant midway through the second season, and the show had now devolved into a bog standard conspiracy thriller with a prison shoehorned into the plot to justify the title of the series.
By the fourth season, which saw the protagonists on the run yet again, still trying to clear Lincolns name, there had been no point to this show for a good two years. Prison Break would probably have succeeded on a cable network, with a greater prospect of adult levels of violence and threat and the promise of being wrapped up in two or three short seasons rather than four very, very long ones (and a 5th somehow on its way).
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