Top 10 Shows That Went On WAY Too Long
Nov 10, 2025
All though we hate to admit it, some of our favorite shows tend to overstay their welcome on TV. Whether it's The Walking Dead, The Office, Friends, or any other long running show, more often than not it extends a season or two too long. Today we rank the shows we feel went too long.
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Zombies survive
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This is kind of evolution. Hey, guys, I'm Jack O'Shea. And I'm Mikayla Pascoe
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And this is Ranked vs. Ranked. Today, Mikayla, we're going to be ranking the top five shows
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that went on too long. They overstayed their welcome. They overstayed their welcome for a variety of reasons. Yes
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Every one of these shows is actually a show that I, especially at one point, loved. Yeah
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Like, I have to like the show before I can say the last season was bad. Yeah, you have to be emotionally invested
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So all these shows, when you're like, hey, you. I like that show. So do I
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Get out. All right, what's your number five? My number five, I'm going to have to go actually
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into the reality range. Ooh. American Idol. Oh, that's a great pick
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That show needed to be put down 10 years ago. People weren't watching it anymore
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They were hiring people to sit in the audience. They were hiring extras. Really? Towards the end
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What is the difference between American Idol and X Factor? You knew it went on too long when they had replaced
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all of the judges. You get a weird Steven Tyler. Yeah. You're like, hey, listen, dog
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And all of a sudden, everybody was nice. And then they tried to be mean to fix it. I don't like you
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And I don't really think you're going to make it in Hollywood. The old story
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So this is a Marine vet who lost his leg. This is a homeless mother of six
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They're homeless. They're on the street. Really? It's trashy. Yeah. What's your number five? My number five is, and this is tough
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because I think this might be my all-time favorite show, as it is with everybody, The Office
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Once Andy was in charge and became. They changed his character completely
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The most annoying character ever. The first wedding, I think, in the show is Phyllis
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She got married. It was like kind of normal. It was still The Office. It's like, oh yeah, her coworkers went to the wedding
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By the end, all the weddings, all of a sudden- Only office people. The accountants were their groomsmen. What
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When the show gets stale, they have to add drama to characters where it's like
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They give them marital problems. Yeah, that you either don't want to happen because they're like, hey, I like these characters
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Or it's just unrealistic, where it's like, why are all of a sudden Pam and Jim different characters Yeah Doesn make any sense Anyway that my number five My number four just the final couple seasons were so hard but I did still enjoy the show so so so much and so did you Desperate Housewives
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Season one is like, there's like this murder-suicide, we're not really sure what happened
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It's a mystery. And that's the drama to the first season. But then towards the end, it goes from them being like
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we're fighting over painting a fence to, there's actually a hostage situation and a bomb threat
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We always talk about that episode where one character got murdered, another character murdered somebody
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another character like- There was a hostage situation while she was going into labor
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And Susan's boyfriend cheated on her. And they literally at the end of the show
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all the Desperate Housewives were all together like, we've all had hard days
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And it's like, Susan leave. Get the out! My number four is another very, very popular show, Friends
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Friends has the thing where it's my number one rule for when you can tell a sitcom has jumped the shark
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When they're running out of plot lines, and what they do is they take two of the characters
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who would never date, and then they have them secretly hooking up
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but they can't tell. They can't tell anyone. They can't tell anyone else. What the world are they living in
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I know. I have a hot take on friends. What? I don't think Russ and Rachel should've been together
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We are so over. Fine by me! I think the better couple
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Phoebe and Joey together, would've been a more wholesome, like, yeah, they're good people together
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There's something in here I want to eat. Is it the shampoo
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OK, my number three is a show I'm pretty sure you've never seen, Pretty Little Liars
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No, I haven't. First couple seasons were so incredible. It's basically about this group of high school girls
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One of their friends goes missing. They're not sure if she's murdered or what. And they're all getting ominous text messages
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from this person called A. The A mystery was they figured out who A was
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And then A gets killed. And then someone else becomes A It ends with a new character kind of being A That like This has nothing to do with the plot That was the definition of a show where they wrote literally week to week and weren sure what was going to happen
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My number three is Friday Night Lights. Okay. Okay, and this kind of goes for all shows about characters set in high school
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The start of season three, Tim Riggins is at football practice. And it makes everybody think, how is Tim Riggins still in high school
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So you're saying that Tim Riggins, who was played at the time in the first season by a 29-year-old actor
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was actually just turning 16 and learning how to drive, even though he was an alcoholic having lots of sex with older women
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who had been the year before the defensive captain. So he was a freshman
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As a freshman, he was the captain of the defense. There's also a big brief subplots of now it's a lot about stem cell research
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and how it can help paraplegics. Great stories, not for the show. They're embryonic stem cells, but the sharks don't seem to make the distinction
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You just said you're gonna give them a shot from a shark. Okay, my number two
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Holy , this is still on. The Walking Dead. Like, now they're away from the comic book
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It's not like they're creating new storylines and s***. This has been on for what, like 10 years now at this point
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Clearly the zombies aren't going anywhere. The zombie, you're not going to win. Why do you keep living in fear
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What's the endgame? Have any of them thought about just becoming a zombie and then realizing like
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hey, it's actually pretty sweet being a zombie. Zombies survive. This is kind of evolution
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My number two is the hit home box office television series Entourage
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Now Entourage will go down in history. Of course. As the show that ages the worst ever
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It's incredibly offensive. It's blatantly sexist. Tons of blatant homophobia. I mean the whole thing is guys calling each other gay
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That's the entire show. I would tie him up and allow the entire screen actors guild to ly rape him if not for the fact that I know he would enjoy the show though completely jump the shark and like is unwatchable when turtle the the pothead friend who is like the definition of a guy who just
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mooching off the view creates his own business and is very successful
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all right my number one is a show that is currently still on air it's gotten so
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bad that you can tell that the actors want out so bad. Riverdale. It went from
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like, oh what's going on in our community? Who's the bad guy? To like, there's like
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witches in the forest because they tried to basically merge it with the world of
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Sabrina, the teenage witch. It's like Downton Abbey being like, oh by the way, Harry Potter's real
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This is where I dipped out was when they were like, we're gonna be a musical show
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And it's like, what? Who's watching this stuff? They've like killed the characters and like resurrected them. My number one is Grey's Anatomy. I almost put this on my list
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but I didn't watch it after the show. Well it's still on first of all. So I stopped watching Grey's
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Anatomy after a plane crashed killing a few of the main characters. It was that after they crashed
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I forget which character but one of the characters was like kind of just looking around and literally
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said the line, it's like we're on a TV show and that's when I said this is insane. This is enough
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They've had 10 seasons since then, killing off even more of the characters
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Here's the arc for every single main character, with the exception of Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith Grey
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They start off on the show, they're a doctor, they fall in love with somebody, blah, blah, blah
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If you're a male doctor, at some point, they basically just kill you in some sort of tragic fashion
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If you're a female doctor, before they kill you, you become a lesbian, and you have some sort of lesbian story arc
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I mean, it was something like 12 years ago, the head of surgery at that point, the head of the hospital
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they're like, he might have dementia. He's still there! It's been 12 years


