Tuesday, September 05, 2017

10 Worst Shows of 2016

It was not a good season for TV.


111


1) AGENTS OF SHIELD

Each episode made it more and more difficult not to notice that the best characters tended to be written off the show and that Clark Gregg shouldn't be a lead on any television show.

2) SPEECHLESS

It takes a special kind of bad to be the lowest rated show on ABC Wednesdays but SPEECHLESS manages this feat.  Sandwiched between THE GOLDBERGS and MODERN FAMILY, SPEECHLESS manages to run away audiences in a manner not seen since NBC's THE SINGLE GUY has a show performed as poorly or had even less reason to air.

3) POWERLESS

NBC thought the country didn't have enough superhero media.  Forget the movies and THE CW which serves up countless shows.  This one from NBC was going to be a sitcom and it was about those trapped in the superhero world but not having powers themselves.  The only thing more dumb than that would be casting Alan Tudyk in a lead role. 

4) CONVICTION

Not even the considerable talents of Bess Armstrong could save this series whose premise appeared to be: What if Chelsea Clinton got busted for doing coke?

5) AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS

They aren't American videos.  And there's no point in this garbage still being on the air.

6) GOTHAM

Nor is there any point in all this before-they-were-heroes nonsense.  Next up, SYFY is going to bore us with KRYPTON -- because who doesn't want to learn -- or 'learn' -- about what Krypton was like 200 years before Kael was born?  GOTHAM is boring and should have gotten the axe long ago.  What's next?  GARDEN set 2000 years before Adam and Eve show up?

7) THE GOOD PLACE

Here's a clue for NBC, when the debut showing of your sitcom gets 8 million viewers but week six finds it down to three million, you don't have a hit on your hands. 


8) THE CATCH

The closest Peter Krause ever came to being sexy onscreen was playing Kevin on CYBILL early in his career.  That role ended in 1997.   Twenty years later, his face had done all these weird things and he seemed entirely asexual so why did anyone cast him in this attempt at a romantic comedy?  Equally questionable, the heavy gloss treatment given to Mireille Enos who was famous for her raw performance and raw appearance in THE KILLING. The pairing, like the show, never worked.



9) SUPER STORE

 It's sad to put this series on the list.  It's a show that always should have been funnier than it was and a show that, as season two progressed, should have just been funny -- even a little.  Season three should be the last for this increasingly disappointing show.

10)  MADAM SECRETARY

 Increasingly disappointing.  Does this show exist just to peddle war and fear?  It would appear to be so.  Ava and C.I. nailed it in September of 2014: "Madam Secretary plays out like a Little Golden Book instructional."  They called it when CBS was pimping it as the new great drama, THE GOOD WIFE reborn.  Three years later, did you notice, Tea Leoni's received not one Emmy nomination, nor has the series.