Once upon a time, I used to watch TV shows through to the bitter end just because I had started them.

 

 

Then I realized that it wasn’t my job to stick with a show just because. It was the show’s job to keep me interested.

So today’s letter/entry is devoted to those times I realized I didn’t have to deal with a show’s shenanigans anymore–whether the show infuriated me or just bored me.

Here are a few reasons I have quit shows:

• I realized I only liked one or none of the characters
• People kept coming back from the dead
• There was a dumb plot point involving a character I liked
• A female character was raped so the audience would have sympathy for her
• Brothers bonded over hiding a dead body
• The show got too dark/grim/depressing
• The show started to revolve around a character I didn’t like or didn’t care for
• The major will they or won’t they character hooked up off screen and the woman got pregnant
• I got scared something terrible would happen to the one character I did like

Basically, once I started to dread watching the show, I knew it was time to quit.

And, of course, I have quit shows because I don’t have time to watch them, which is an entirely different bucket of sad that I don’t want to get into.

The point is that life is too short to keep investing in things I don’t enjoy out of some misplaced sense of obligation. So I don’t do that anymore, and my life is better for it.

For the A to Z challenge, I’m blogging about fannish pursuits (aka things I’m a fan of or have strong feelings about). Tune in tomorrow to see what I picked for R!