10 TV Shows That Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead
8. The Vampire Diaries
An odd case, this: a show which ran out of steam due to too much story, not too little.
The incredible, breakneck pacing of The CW's hardy perennial vampire potboiler is legendary amongst the millions of people who've watched the programme over the years. Characters leap from scene to scene, relationships spring to life, age and die in the space of a single season. New faces pop up every few episodes, with sinister secrets and hidden agendas.
People die, often horribly, and some of them come back, only to die horribly yet again. There are vampires, werewolves and witches: but there are also vampire/werewolf and vampire/witch hybrids, which pretty much telegraphs the next Big Bad being a werewolf crossed with a witch, or possibly a ninja superspy from the future.
Let's not forget the presence of reincarnated doppelgängers, meaning two actors have played more than one different character at once on various occasions, and the kind of bitchy vendettas that can only come from characters having had a strop on for a century at a time. Half the characters hate each other because they used to be friends/lovers; the traditional way for one vampire frienemy to one-up another is to stab him/her or break his/her neck, rather than spitting on their food or telling people they've died, like a normal person.
So many characters, so much plot, such phenomenal pacing and now they've done it all. Theres only so many times each and every character in a show can be killed and return before the stakes for conflict and drama simply disappear. The Vampire Diaries reached that point at least two years ago when it lost around 40% of its audience (a million viewers) over season five... and true to glorious form, accelerated past it in a blur of the usual broken necks, stabbings and soap opera intrigue.