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The 10 Worst Shows of 2018
10. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Even for longtime fans of the wacky Bluth family, Season 5 felt like a huge mistake. The tart, zippy charms of the original Fox run had long since worn off, replaced by recycled jokes and hopelessly convoluted plotting. Even the once-tight ensemble cast looked disinterested, sluggishly going through the motions, and Jeffrey Tambor’s off-screen scandals couldn’t help but cast a nasty pall over the whole endeavor. As much as it pains us to say this: Let’s hope this is our last visit to the banana stand.
9. CAMPING
Much like actual camping, this deeply unfunny HBO comedy sounded like a great idea at first — Jennifer Garner starring in a new Lena Dunham show! — but ended up being a long and painful ordeal we couldn’t wait to be done with. Garner’s high-strung Kathryn McSorley-Jodell was one of the most insufferable TV characters in recent memory; her manic efforts to plan a birthday camping trip for her husband played like cringe humor without the humor. We’ll just stay indoors, thanks.
8. HAPPY TOGETHER
Led by The Carmichael Show‘s Amber Stevens West and Happy Endings‘ Damon Wayans Jr., this freshman CBS sitcom had plenty of (ultimately squandered) potential. The plot? A happily married, if somewhat dull, couple agrees to house a famous musician following his buzzy breakup with a girlfriend. The problem? The premise grew stale after just a few episodes, and the comedic talents of Happy Together‘s two leads were wasted on lame, uninspired jokes.
7. REL
Handing one of the breakout stars of Get Out his own show seemed like a good idea on paper… unless that paper was a script for Rel, a largely laugh-free addition to Fox’s Sunday night lineup. Never quite sure of what it wanted to be — other than just “not funny” — this show simply wasn’t worthy of the comic for which it was named.
6. HERE AND NOW
Six Feet Under and True Blood vet Alan Ball served up one of the year’s most mystifying stinkers: a hopelessly dull family drama hampered by unlikable characters and a caustically negative worldview. Tim Robbins and Holly Hunter led a family of mopey yuppies, all miserable in their own way despite their upper-class trappings. It tried to tackle a hundred hot-button social issues, and make sense of life in a post-Trump America… but just ended up boring the pants off us.
5. I FEEL BAD
We wanted to like this comedy about a harried working mom (played by Sarayu Blue) who’s trying to have it all and bemoaning her inability to do so. But the show got off to an unappetizing start by having its protagonist ask her younger male co-workers if she were still “doable” — a moment that would’ve been cringeworthy before the #MeToo movement and seems downright offensive in the midst of it — and never really redeemed itself. As the season went on, Blue’s Emet insisted on focusing on the most frivolous “problems” (losing weight before a work party, for instance), therefore ensuring that her clichéd search for work-life balance would never happen.
4. INSATIABLE
Long before Insatiable premiered, the Angry People of the Internet™ decided to boycott the controversial Netflix comedy for reasons of fat shaming: Debby Ryan’s character, originally known as “Fatty Patty,” loses weight after having her jaw wired shut and becomes a vengeful (skinny!) pageant queen. And while the show’s initial conceit may not define the show as a whole, those angry boycotters still dodged a serious bullet. A clunky, overstuffed, tone-deaf bullet.
3. KEVIN CAN WAIT
Somewhere, the ghost of Donna Gable is still cackling about the decision to axe Kevin James’ King of Queens follow-up. Less than 50 episodes in, the CBS multi-cam was already running on creative fumes. The show completely fell apart following a controversial Season 2 shake-up that found James’ former co-star Leah Remini replacing Erinn Hayes. From there, what started as a mediocre, yet wholly watchable family sitcom morphed into a substandard workplace comedy.
2. THE PROPOSAL
Watching The Proposal was like entering a bizarre alternate universe where the words “female empowerment” held no meaning. Created by Bachelor boss Mike Fleiss, this icky reality series featured 10 eligible men or women who in each episode would compete in pageant-style rounds for the heart of an anonymous suitor/suitress that they didn’t meet until the end of the hour. Not only was the premise eyeroll-inducing, but the demeaning visuals of bikini-clad women begging for the love of some dude were completely off-putting — as were the allegations that a male contestant may have been involved with a sexual assault.
1. MEGYN KELLY TODAY
It’s only fitting that an unscripted program is topping this year’s list, because you couldn’t write a bigger TV disaster in 2018 than Megyn Kelly Today. The former Fox News staple was never cut out for morning television, as evidenced by the forced Ellen DeGeneres-like persona she tried to adopt (complete with occasional dancing!), which only added to the show’s disingenuous vibe. Given how offensively bad it was from the start, it’s actually appropriate that the show’s downfall ultimately came as a result of its host defending blackface. (As for Kelly’s subsequent “apology,” she seemed about as sorry for saying it as America was sorry to see her go.)
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Image: Courtesy of Netflix
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Image: Courtesy of NBC
