10 TV Show Seasons That Need A Redo

From the first season of Parks and Recreation to the final season of Game of Thrones, some TV shows had seasons so bad that they desperately need a redo. Since TV shows run for so many years, some overall great shows have been let down by a lackluster season.

The eighth season of The X-Files was missing Mulder. The ninth season of Scrubs was basically a rebooted spinoff (and a terrible one at that). These bad seasons of great shows need to be remade.

Scrubs Season 9

The ninth season of Scrubs should never have happened. It switches to a new location and only retains three of the seven main characters from the first eight seasons. It feels like a totally different show, which is reflected in the revamped title, Scrubs: Med School, which makes it sound like a spinoff.

Like most spinoffs, it fails to live up to the classic original. Season 9 shifts away to a medical school, where Turk and Dr. Cox have taken up teaching positions, and the new cast of students are nowhere near as lovable as our familiar ensemble from seasons 1 through 8.

The X-Files Season 8

David Duchovny left The X-Files after its seventh season, so the show went into season 8 without one of the stars who made it so great in the first place. Gillian Anderson was still there as Scully, but it wasn’t the same without Mulder at her side.

Mulder was replaced by Robert Patrick’s Special Agent John Doggett. Patrick is a great actor who was hot off Terminator 2 at the time, and the character of Doggett was fine, but there’s no replacing Mulder. It’s like doing a Lethal Weapon movie pairing up Riggs with some other guy.

In its first three seasons, Community established itself as one of the funniest and most subversive sitcoms on the air. But as the series went into its fourth season, creator and showrunner Dan Harmon was fired and replaced with David Guarascio and Moses Port.

What followed was the show’s worst season by far. When Harmon was inevitably brought back for season 5 and the series got back on track, season 4 was referred to as “the gas-leak year.” The show itself acknowledged that this season needs a redo.

True Detective Season 2

Nic Pizzolatto worked on the complex, interwoven, dual-timeline narrative of True Detective’s first season for years and years, initially as a novel. By the time it came to the screen, he’d deliberated over every character, and every twist and turn, to the point of perfection.

But when it was a hit and HBO demanded a second season, he was given just a few months to do it all over again. Where True Detective’s first season is an unimpeachable masterpiece of Peak TV, its second season is a slapdash, half-baked disappointment.

Arrested Development Season 5

The first three seasons of Arrested Development are some of the greatest TV comedy ever produced, but the fourth and fifth seasons produced for Netflix are a different story. Season 4 had some bright spots, like Michael moving into George Michael’s college dorm, but season 5 was unforgivable.

It rectified the biggest problem with season 4 by bringing the ensemble back together, but the overarching plot doesn’t sit right. Buster Bluth is the sweetest, most lovable character in the show, but season 5 made him a murderer.

The Umbrella Academy Season 4

The first three seasons of The Umbrella Academy had done a really powerful job of examining the psychological impact of abusive parents. It portrayed the negative effects of parental abuse on everyone involved — not just the kids, but the parents themselves — and examined the difficulty of forgiving a family member.

But the fourth and final season undid all that poignant thematic exploration by giving Reginald Hargreeves a happy ending with his wife, and making sure that the siblings wouldn’t be remembered, so all their trauma was for nothing. It completely undermined the message of the previous three seasons.

Parks & Recreation Season 1

By the time Mark was ejected from the cast and Ben and Chris came along, Parks and Recreation had found its footing as one of the best comedies on the air. But its first season feels like a totally different show — and it’s borderline unwatchable.

Later seasons would evolve Leslie Knope into an inspiring, empowering hero, but she’s a ditzy airhead hated by her colleagues in season 1. It skews too close to the cynical tone of The Office, and doesn’t become the optimistic, feel-good show we know and love until around season 2 or 3.

The Walking Dead Season 7

The Walking Dead’s season 7 premiere became notorious for turning off a huge chunk of the fan base. After Negan was introduced in the season 6 finale, season 7 began with a full hour of psychological torment.

Once Negan came onto the scene, The Walking Dead turned into grueling torture porn. It just wasn’t fun to watch anymore; it was relentlessly bleak. Plus, this season splits up the cast and settles into the show’s annoying revolving-door formula, flitting between different characters’ storylines, which killed the momentum.

How I Met Your Mother Season 9

The series finale of How I Met Your Mother often comes up in discussions of the worst TV endings of all time, as it should be, but the problems are with the final season as a whole. For some reason, the writers decided to set the entire 24-episode season on the weekend of Barney and Robin’s wedding.

They had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for story ideas to pad out a whole season set over a couple of days at an upstate B&B, mostly disappointing. And to add insult to injury, the marriage we spent the whole season waiting for ends shortly into the finale.

Game Of Thrones Season 8

Game of Thrones started to go downhill a couple of years before its final season, but it completely fell apart in season 8. The writers had run out of novels to adapt, so they were going off George R.R. Martin’s story outlines, and they didn’t adequately flesh them out, which led to a lot of jarring plot turns.

From turning Daenerys into a mass murderer to naming Bran the King of the Six Kingdoms, Game of Thrones’ final season made baffling decision after baffling decision. If any season of television needed a remake, it’s this one.