What's the largest dropoff in quality in a book/movie/TV series?

[Everlong]

What would you say is the largest dropoff in quality? Ideally from one season to the next, not over time.

Season 4 of Dexter to Season 5 has to be up there. Season 4 had possibly the series' most compelling villain and incredibly shocking end. Season 5 had that lame Julia Styles story and it seemed like Dexter moved on far too quickly from the Rita incident.

Season 3 of House of Cards was almost like watching a completely different show after season 2, although I think it was at least still decent quality if not great.

[Circled Square]

Dexter was my first answer. I also thought the last season of Seinfeld was pretty bad.

[SlightlyJames]

I'd agree with the ones that have been said. Might I also volunteer Season 5 of Game of Thrones?

[Circled Square]

Another one that's underrated is Hot Tub Time Machine. It wasn't ever a great movie, but it was a decent laugh IMO. The second one? Absolute trash.

[Hanley!]

You gave some great examples there, Tim. The first four seasons of Dexter compared to the last four are like night and day. One of the best shows I've seen and one of the worst. Season 4 was almost as good as the incredible first season, and Season 5 was a massive let down right from the start. Julia Stiles sucked, the kids were written off the show unrealistically and everything became super contrived. There were more stupid side plots and everything just got lame very quickly.

House of Cards was never as good as the first few seasons of Dexter, but I liked it a lot until this year. I only finished half of Season 3 and wasn't bothered continuing. It just wasn't very entertaining. The characters (and the show itself) kinda lost their balls.

LOST is another example that occurred to me. Between Season 4 and Season 5. LOST was never a great show in my opinion. It just had moments of brilliance, and was a great show to talk and theorise about before we realised they were making it all up as they went along. However, the show was always pretty fun to watch until Season 5 where it took a serious nose dive. Too much focus on shitty characters with no charisma like Juliet. Too much character flip-flopping from the likes of Kate. And too much supernatural shit. Having a little supernatural stuff in the show - shrouded with mystery - is what made it so good in the first place. But they went totally overkill in Season 5 and it made everything less special.

Veronica Mars is one of my favourite shows and Season 3 isn't bad. It's really good at times. But it pales entirely in comparison to the first two seasons which were almost perfect. It went from being one of the best shows on television (arguably the best), to just being a decent show.

[SKS]

In my opinion,

Dexter after season 2
Supernatural after season 5
Hunger Games trilogy after the second book
HIMYM after season 5/6
Spider-Man Tobey Maguire after movie 2
Batman trilogy after The Dark Knight

[Hanley!]

^ I liked Season 3 of Dexter. It brought in some extra side plots which distracted a little from Dexter's own stuff. But I reckon Miguel was one of the best villains in the show's run, if not the best. I thought Jimmy Smits's performance was one of the best in the entire show. I thought he was very believable and intimidating in the role.

Agreed with everything else you said though, for sure. Except for the Supernatural bit, cos I've only seen 2 episodes of that.

[UTK]

I'll second Season 5 of Game of Thrones.

I feel like the GoT writers fell victim to the show's stereotype: that it's a show with no happy ending in sight that likes to torture its viewers. The characters who die in the books die for a reason, not just shock value. Plus, each book is ~1,500 pages long, so it honestly doesn't even feel like George R.R. Martin kill main characters that much because there's so much that happens in between big deaths. In addition, although there are a lot of negative things happening to our favorite characters in the books, there are still some payoffs, such as: Northern lords plotting behind the Boltons' and Freys' backs, Wayman Manderly's "North Remembers" speech (actually, everything about Wayman Manderly), Stannis being generally awesome and being a beacon of hope for the North, Lady Stoneheart extracting vengeance on all the Freys and Lannisters, Sansa returning to a more normal, happier life....all of these things have been cut from this season or the show as a whole. Why? We need some sort of payoff; we're given it in the books, but the show doesn't seem to understand the idea that some positive things need to happen, that there needs to be some hope for our favorite characters. Add all that to the shitty Dorne plotline, and I'd say I was extremely disappointed in the 5th season of Game of Thrones. Huge drop in quality.

In the same vein, to be honest...I really didn't care for A Dance with Dragons. It was definitely my least favorite ASOIAF novel. It did not feel as steadily paced as the first four (which makes sense, since it was really just everything he had to cut from AFFC strewn together, with a few new chapters.) Martin really fucked himself over with the Mereeneese Knot, and I really disliked the Aegon plot twist. Tyrion's chapters were my favorite in the first three books (especially the second), but in the fifth they were a pain to get through. Where do whores go? I DON'T FUCKING KNOW, STOP ASKING ME.

[Hanley!]

Yeah, I think some people underestimate how much Dance with Dragons sucked compared to the other books. The drop in quality is not all the show runner's fault for diverting from the source material in places. The source material featured a major drop in quality too.

Martin's world is interesting as fuck, and he really knows how to write political intrigue. But there are problems with his writing and they're becoming more pronounced as time goes on. First of all, his attempt to make fantasy more realistic is really just an attempt to make it more miserable. He's supposed to have crafted a world where the hero doesn't always win, but instead he crafted one where the hero never wins. After a while there's nobody left to root for, because all the good guys are dead. And there's no reason to care. Why would anyone want to live in that world anyway, when everyone alive there is miserable?

He also took things too far in terms of adding extra characters. It becomes a chore to try and remember all of them, and several characters seem inconsequential to the story, yet still receive a lot of focus in his books. Sometimes characters who probably have no part to play in the direction of the story are getting their own point of view chapters. It feels like he's badly in need of an editor sometimes.

[Everlong]

I liked Dance better than Feast For Crows, tbh. The Greyjoy and Dorne stuff is REALLY tedious, and it's all over that book. Brienne is also not particularly interesting as a POV character.

[UTK]

Martin's world is interesting as fuck, and he really knows how to write political intrigue. But there are problems with his writing and they're becoming more pronounced as time goes on. First of all, his attempt to make fantasy more realistic is really just an attempt to make it more miserable. He's supposed to have crafted a world where the hero doesn't always win, but instead he crafted one where the hero never wins. After a while there's nobody left to root for, because all the good guys are dead. And there's no reason to care. Why would anyone want to live in that world anyway, when everyone alive there is miserable?
.

But like I said, there are glimmers of hope in the books. I think TWOW will really be heavy in the Starks' favor. The show, however, has absolutely no glimmers of hope. The examples I mentioned aren't actually the only things: there's also the possibility of the North rallying behind Rickon when Davos finds him.