Cut Primetime Shows Off and You Won't Get a Hangover...2.

I once liked pecan pie for twenty-four hours. The first time I had it was after Thanksgiving my senior year of high school and it blew my mind, it was so good. So I ate a couple more pieces. And then a couple more. And then a couple more for breakfast the next day.

By the same time the following night, I knew in my heart that I could never, ever place another bite of pecan pie inside my mouth for the rest of my life. And I haven't since.
It's age-old advice: there is such thing as too much of a good thing. If I'd given up that pecan pie after the second or third slice, I would have it to look forward to for next year, instead of dreading the smell of it permeating my mom's kitchen.

This is a lesson prime time television must be taught.

Movies that don't deserve sequels get a lot of criticism for plowing on with them anyways (Spy Kids 3D and Batman and Robin come to mind here), but why do prime time TV shows that have too many unnecessary seasons get cut so much slack? Why is it okay for Grey's Anatomy to have eight seasons, but it's not okay for there to be twenty five American Pies? Somewhere in the past, the makers of television were granted permission from the Prime Time Gods to run perfectly good characters and plot lines into the ground.

The secret is to cement your fan base early on. Like pimps get their hoes addicted to crack cocaine, writers and producers create amazing characters that become part of our lives, become precious to us. Take The Office for an obvious example, the show that made several incredibly stupid things extremely popular simply because lovable people were doing them. Now, Office fans are following these characters to their inevitable downfall. They're still tuning in at 9/8 central every Thursday night to watch, even though the character who made them fall in love with the show is gone. WHY?

What is wrong with this picture?

Shows like Gossip Girl and Desperate Housewives are also guilty of this. They start off with two or three strong seasons, get their hooks into people, and then take them down with them into the swirling waters of sucky-ness. It just isn't fair, because even if the show does eventually end, it ends with a bit of awkwardness, like a sentence trailing off at the end of conversation. The people watching it don't feel satisfied; they have a bad taste in their mouth.

Even though it's sad to see your favorite shows go off the air, it's worse to watch them until they become unwatchable. Arrested Development, for example, ended much too early, but at least its cult following looks back on it with fondness and a firm belief that it was one of the best shows to grace TV with its presence. When people look back on Scrubs, they'll remember how bad it got towards the end, not how genius it was at the beginning.

Bottom line: If something is good, it is okay to cut it short. Forty-seven-year-old Brad Pitt just announced he plans on retiring around the age of fifty. Christopher Nolan will never make another Batman movie after The Dark Knight Rises. And when I get the urge to overdose on something rich and savory, I tell myself, "It's okay to stop. If I stop, I won't have a stomachache to deal with and I'll look back on this eating experience with joy and contentment, instead of nausea."