H8R was never going to get off the ground. It was a reality TV show where the host paired famous people together with their biggest “anti-fans.” The host was none other than Mario Lopez, who isn’t terrible, but he’s not the guy you want hosting your TV show. In fact, he hasn’t really been popular since he was on Saved by the Bell.
At the end of the day, real celebs didn’t want to meet up with their “haters,” and even the anti-fans seemed like they were told what to do and say. Audiences hated it, and critics couldn’t say enough terrible things about it. The Daily News reported, “In the end, it doesn’t feel much more enduring than a tweet.”
Did you know there was an attempt at a Charlie’s Angels TV reboot in 2011? First of all, you’ll never beat the original girls (no one can beat Farrah Fawcett). Second, the source material must be considered. What we mean by that is that Charlie’s Angels seemed more like James Bond meets The Bionic Woman. It was about three superwomen who solved cases that law enforcement couldn’t figure out.
The women regularly beat guys that are twice their size, knew multiple languages, were excellent hackers, and could save the day without messing up their makeup. Fans of the original series despised it, and new audiences weren’t having it. One TV Guide critic said, “It's not just a lazy idea, [sic] it’s atrociously executed, pathetically acted and cynically conceived.”
The Last Templar was a TV mini-series that starred Scott Foley, Mira Sorvino, and Victor Garber – all people you recognize, but probably don’t know the names of. The show was a New York archaeologist who was trying to discover the secrets of the Knights Templar. All in all, it seemed like a pretty decent synopsis, but there were so many things wrong that audiences felt punished.
The overall quality is terrible, as made obvious by the screen cap. The writing was equally as bad, with the shoehorned romance being beyond sloppy. A critic at Time went on to say that, "The Last Templar is hobbled by an uneven tone; it's not frightening enough to work as a conspiracy-adventure, not funny enough to work as light romantic comedy."
Maybe this one is cheating since “annoying” is in the title but hear us out. The original Annoying Orange TV show was a disaster, but this spin-off was truly one of the worst things that ever hit TV. There’s nothing creative about it and even a toddler would become bored pretty quickly. Our real question is how it got big names like Gabriel Iglesias, Jane Lynch, and Eddie Izzard.
The TV shows biggest achievement is that it was televisions number one “Telecast of the Day Among Boys 6-11,” if that's an achievement. One IMDb reviewer said, “Horrible isn't enough to describe how bad this piece of crap is...The characters are so one-dimensional, that they're painful to watch. Orange is a character that will make a person want to rip his or her ears out and scream.” Kid's shows can be bad, but this should be downright illegal.
Criminal Minds did well, so a spin-off will surely do just as well, right? Wrong! This series was about an international unit of the FBI charged with helping and solving crimes involving American citizens in foreign countries. Audiences didn’t hate it, but they didn’t love it either. It was lukewarm at best and only lasted a single season. Critics, however? Oof!
It featured familiar faces, which is part of the reason some fans stuck around, but it wasn't enough to keep the show going. It had some serious problems that audiences couldn’t look past. One Hollywood Reporter said it perfectly, reporting, “moving on from the prevalent misogyny of the original Criminal Minds, CBS' new spinoff Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders is a pure distillation of xenophobia. A shameless combination of international b-roll and [xenophobic] paranoia.” Well said, Dan Feinberg.
There seemed to be a time when Marvel could do no wrong. In the last decade, we watched the rise of superhero movies and TV shows, particularly those characters with Marvel. Inhumans didn’t follow the same high-ratings pattern. It was either loved or hated by audiences, although we do have to admit there was more hate than love. One fan even claimed it was an “insult to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby!” -- two creators of famous Marvel characters.
The show about superhero oddities was panned by nearly every critic. It was disappointing on every level, and this gave critics plenty of ammo. One critic at Variety claimed, “Its only superpower is its sheer ineptitude.” Another at Boston Herald said, “The dialogue is so poor, even Tyler Perry would wince.” The show ended after one season because those comments aren’t something you can come back from.
Nobody puts Baby in – okay, that joke is overdone and mentioned any time Dirty Dancing is brought up. The real fact of the matter is that Dirty Dancing the TV show belonged in the corner of shame. The series was a continuation of the film, which released a year prior, but the original stars avoided this shameless cash grab.
Considering the high bar the movie set, the series never had a chance. It didn’t have the same flair, partially since Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze weren’t in it. One critic at Los Angeles Times said, “Play[s] like an extended shampoo commercial and lacking the edge and joyful vigor of the movie on which it is based....The premiere of the TV series is a static bore, mismanaged and miscast.” That’s because no one can capture the same energy as the original actors and actresses.
What can we say about Here Comes Honey Boo Boo that hasn’t said before? It is an embarrassment to call it television, and that’s saying something since Keeping Up with the Kardashians is still airing. This series followed a competitor named Alana who appeared in Toddlers and Tiaras. The show is unique because while critics didn’t like it, audiences loathed it.
Audiences were claiming that child services ought to be called on the mother, while others couldn’t help but say that this show is what’s wrong with America. Some of our favorite reviews include one person who said, “I would literally prefer to watch a 1 hour PBS special on how grass grows.” Another chimed in by posting, “This is perhaps the most terrible show ever the grace the airwaves. Pure exploitation of children. The glorification of a terrible lifestyle.”
Truth Be Told was supposed to be a comedy that follows a meek ethics professor and his easy-going friend. Notice how we said, “supposed.” The TV show wasn’t funny in the least bit. Considering the high-quality television on in 2015, Truth Be Told had a high bar that it didn’t reach, and it was canceled after season one.
One reviewer on IMDb stated, “writers are clearly trying to seem cutting edge but end up digging a hole. Jokes (if you want to call them that) are few and far between.” This seems to be one critics and audiences agreed on, with one critic at New York Times saying the show “reduces the conversation about diversity to an endless string of uncomfortable gags.” A comedy shouldn’t be this uncomfortable.
Dr. Ken starred Ken Jeong, who is actually pretty funny. Unfortunately, the show was not. It followed the same old formula sitcoms used for years, but that just doesn’t cut it anymore. It featured the horrible fake laugh track that told audiences when to laugh. After one episode, people felt like the show was something they’d already seen a million times.
Somehow the series lasted two seasons, which is pretty remarkable. Viewers on IMDb said, “The pilot was painful. I couldn't get thru [sic] it. Typical sitcom shtick that I am not a fan.” Then there are the critics, which despised this show. One at Vulture said, “It's a show that confuses loudness with funniness. Jeong himself screams every line, and the studio audience howls back…It's crass and phony, and everything people say they hate about multi-camera comedies.”
Cop shows have done really well for the last decade or two, and so NBC thought they would have a hit on their hands with Hawaii. It was about a group of detectives, led by a seasoned cop, as they attempt to solve cases. Pretty straight forward, but audiences really didn’t like it. It was trying to be like Hawaii Five-O (before the Five-0 reboot).
For that reason, it was compared to Hawaii Five-O, but Hawaii lacked everything we liked about the original series. One critic said at the Los Angeles Times claimed, “It's bad in all the old usual ways. Indeed, with scarcely an original thought from beginning to end, it has been made to be like other things whose badness has proved no bar to popularity.” Thankfully, six years later, we got Hawaii Five-0, which is so much better than this disaster.
Tucker was about a family, but it followed specific about a kid named Tucker. He was just a simple kiddo, who was trying to just make his way through puberty. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Tucker was nothing more than a rip-off of Malcom in the Middle, which did much, much better on television. That wasn’t the biggest issue, however.
The characters were terrible. It was impossible to be sympathetic to any of them, particularly the obnoxious titular character. A critic at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hilariously said, “The worst of the new season's sitcom crop, Tucker is crude, unfunny and mean-spirited. The only appropriate response is an urge to call child services and have the young star taken into custody.”
Here’s the thing about Rob Schneider: he is only funny when paired with others that are hilarious or when he’s given excellent direction. Rob didn’t really have either of those. The show was another one of those series that played off of the extremely attractive wife who was married to a dopey guy. This one almost came off a rip off of George Lopez, which audiences loved.
Rob was boring at its core and featured stereotypes that made things more uncomfortable than anything else. Furthermore, the family Rob marries into is actually pretty terrible. One critic at Redeye hit the nail on the head by saying, “Rob is clumsy and uncomfortable, not to mention completely devoid of chemistry among its actors or subtlety in their diversity of ‘jokes.’”
Unan1mous was a reality TV show about nine strangers that were locked in a bunker. Their goal was to figure out which one of them would get a $1.5 million-dollar reward – quite a bit of money for a 2006 game show. You’re probably wondering what they had to do to get the money, but that’s the thing, they didn’t have to do anything besides talk it out.
Unan1mous had zero competitions and zero goals, which made it incredibly boring to watch. One reviewer on IMDb stated, “The contestants on "Unan1mous" appeared to be made physically ill from life in the "underground bunker,” which is a pretty apt description of watching the show. Critics didn’t like it much better, calling it overproduced and overbearing.
This is an older one, but it's pretty bad. Woops! is about a group of kids who accidentally set off a nuclear missile and basically end the world, leaving only the six of them alive. Some say it was doomed from the get-go due to a bad time slot, but others see the light. The show was just terrible.
The premise was basically a teenage Gilligan’s Island, which wasn’t something anyone wanted, especially in the ‘90s. One critic in the Houston Chronical defined the show perfectly, “It's just about as huge a bomb as might have been expected.” It was supposed to be funny, but it just rubbed the audience wrong.
Modern Men was about three single men who hire a woman life coach to help them romance women. Nothing could go wrong here, right? It may shock you to hear that it was actually terrible (notice our sarcasm?). The characters didn’t really fit, and it came off super misogynistic. While some people liked it, the majority of the audience were left scrambling for their remote.
The major offense was the fact that the characters were all incredibly attractive, obviously confident people that were supposed to be shy and timid. The dialogue just didn’t fit. A critic at San Francisco Chronicle said, “It’s stupid and annoying and a retread of countless other stupid and annoying, totally unoriginal WB sitcoms.” We’re gonna have to agree.
The early 2000s was a great time for epic disaster films and TV series, possibly because of the whole Y2K scare that most of us forgot about a year later. That being said, that’s no excuse for this monstrosity to exist. This TV show, 10.5 Apocalypse, followed the same premise as any other show of its kind – earthquakes set off volcanos and threaten nuclear facilities, and the world may end.
The show lasted two episodes, and after watching one, the reason is obvious. First, it zooms in and out all the time. It’s like a home movie, except worse (somehow). Second, the acting is absolutely terrible. Finally, the writing is so bad, it’s like it was done on purpose. One critic at Orlando Sentinel said, “The sheer cheesiness of it all is astounding, and it’s bad cheese, not the campy variety that can offer guilty pleasures.”
I Wanna Marry Harry was a dating show where women competed to date a guy that looked like Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. The thing is, the women didn’t know it wasn’t the actual Prince Harry. Already, you can see how it’s pretty cruel, but also, how did they ever get fooled in the first place? The guy is barely passable.
Looking past that, you see the truly terrible parts of the show. The casting is misogynistic by choosing women that fit stereotypes we’ve all seen for ages, and furthermore, it has no sense of shame. It was Joe Millionaire, but worse (as if that’s possible). One critic at People Weekly said, “The premiere hour is abysmal, and the women’s cluelessness is profound.”
Identity was a reality TV show no one asked for, hosted by Penn and Teller. Contestants followed their own judgment and gut feelings in order to match up strangers using a list of unique characteristics. These characteristics were things like their shoe size, weight, and career. You can see how this was a mess waiting to happen.
Identity became the gleaming example of how reality TV and game shows had taken over, and the quality didn’t matter to networks. One Metacritic user reviewed, “my biggest complaint is that they missed the chance to make it interesting by having people who didn't fit the stereotypes. Everyone was dressed in keeping with standard expectations for their job.”
Do Not Disturb was a comedy about a group of “kooky” hotel employees and their daily duties. Not really an original idea, but shows started out with less and turned out to be something amazing. Do Not Disturb wasn’t one of those. Audiences and critics agreed that it was absolute trash, and it was promptly canceled.
Somehow, it managed to be offensive toward hotel staff, especially when it came to the supposed “comedy.” A Chicago Tribune critic wrote about the series saying, “a program so bad that it's not only unpleasant to watch, but it makes you fear for the future of network television.”
This is another one that critics and audiences agreed on – it was absolutely terrible. The series was a “real-life” take on HBO’s Entourage and followed sons of famous celebrities who were trying to make a name for themselves in Hollywood. Considering it was on A&E, no one had high hopes, but Sons of Hollywood literally shocked people.
As expected, it was about spoiled, bratty rich kids who thought they were hilarious but were annoying and obnoxious at best. For some, that wasn’t even the major issue. It boiled down to the fact it was horribly produced, bad quality, and very clearly staged. Critics at New York Post said, “watching this show was the equivalent of having my face shoved into a toilet.”
The original movie Uncle Buck was amazing, and a lot of that was thanks to comedy legend John Candy. So why on earth would they bother making a TV show if John Candy wasn’t going to play Uncle Buck? Fans really didn’t enjoy the swap out, and the show was canceled after one season.
A critic at Newsday explained, “The jokes are obvious, the situations cliched, the characters obnoxious. Would you believe a lecherous insurance agent named Doreen Douche?” No, we can’t believe it. Even after this disaster, networks attempted to reboot the TV series recently, but John Candy’s and John Hughes’s estates quickly shot it down.
The original Knight Rider with David Hasselhoff was a hit and made everyone want a car like KITT. The remake made a Subaru look better. They tried to remake the show but didn’t bother making it anything like the ‘80s version. What was the point of calling it Knight Rider if the only thing that carried over was the name “KITT?”
One IMDb reviewer reflects audiences’ views by saying, “They could just as easily have called it "Fast and Furious Transforming Rider" and it wouldn't have made a difference. There's more to Knight Rider than a name and a red light on the front of a car.”
Momma's Boys was something else. It was a reality TV show about a group of bachelors that live in the same house as their prospective bride. However, before they get to wed, the women have to gain their soon-to-be mother-in-law’s approval. Basically, it’s anyone’s worst nightmare. The cherry on top of the sundae? It was produced by none other than Ryan Seacrest, the OG momma’s boy.
Ryan Seacrest is an acceptable host at best, but this TV show displayed all of his faults – he isn’t creative. Don’t believe us? He created Keeping Up with the Kardashians. A critic at The Hollywood Reporter said, “Seacrest and his cohorts do everything they can to ratchet up the artificial tension and drama, following in the footsteps of so many primetime abominations that have preceded Momma’s.”
Wedding Crashers was a movie starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and it was an acceptably funny film. So, Ashton Kutcher decided to make a reality TV show about it. Surprise! It bombed. The show followed engaged couples who had spent thousands on their weddings, only to have five improv actors crash their wedding to make it “memorable.”
Thankfully, the pranks were harmless, but that wasn't what audiences wanted. After seeing reality TV shows like Scare Tactics, people wanted things that were malicious. Critics wanted the opposite. One at the Boston Globe said the show was “juvenile, disappointing, disastrous, hollow, devoid, desperate” and “disingenuous.” What we’re saying is that no one was happy with the show.
Here’s an idea! Let’s take an insurance mascot and create a TV show around them. The commercials were entertaining, but the TV show was far from it. Cavemen revolved around a group of Neanderthals as they try to solve modern-day problems in the pursuit of the American Dream.
The characters were essentially boring everyday guys, which didn’t lead to an enjoyable show. Some people claimed that the show had potential to be something funny, but we disagree. A critic at Boston Globe said, “Cavemen is pretty bad. It's definitely among the stalest pieces of bread in the loaf.” It was merely a show about everyday life where the characters happened to be cavemen.
So, we have to get the obvious out of the way. Work It is incredibly offensive on a number of levels. It was about two car salesmen who felt like they couldn't get a job due to living in a “woman's world.” They decide to dress up like women so they could get jobs as pharmaceutical representatives. Going in, we knew it was going to be garbage, but we never expected this absolute trash.
The pilot made it clear that the show was going to be misogynistic and racially insensitive, but it’s even worse than that. The characters are one-dimensional, the worst being the actual women in the show because they had no real development or emotions. A critic at USA Today takes the words out of our mouths saying, “Work It is dreadful almost beyond comprehension: witless, tasteless, poorly acted, abominably written, clumsily directed, hideously lit and badly costumed.”
Another apocalypse TV show! Who would have guessed it? Category 7 is about a deadly "category seven" storm (that's not how that scale works) that wreaks havoc on the world. As if that wasn’t enough, there are dastardly kidnappers running around trying to make things worse. This sounds like a kid’s show due to how much ridiculousness is going on, but we promise you that it is not.
As per usual, you have tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters destroying things, and part of us wish it were real so the production crew would be taken away, too. It’s painfully clear none of them have ever been in a natural disaster considering people were apparently walking around in 200 mph wind. A Washington Post critic stated the show was about as enjoyable as “toenail fungus or that sickening commercial for its cure.” Agreed, sir.
Who ever thought Seth Green was funny? The sad part about Dads is that it dragged down Giovanni Ribisi with it. The show is about two successful guys in their 30s whose lives are turned upside-down when their dads move in with them. Their dads are about as miserable as you’ll be when watching the show.
One of the worst sins is the fact that the laugh track is activated after every line, which is beyond unnecessary especially since the show isn’t funny. The laugh track only makes that fact clearer. A critic at Washington Post explained the show perfectly by saying, “the actors look like they’re serving mandatory sentences for the creators' crimes of laziness.”
Oh boy, where do we start with this? First of all, the 1/2 Hour News Hour is the worst-rated TV show of all time. After watching the first five minutes, the reason is painfully obvious. It featured “comedians” (using that word to describe those involved feels like an insult to anyone that cracked a joke) that tried to follow the same format as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, only with a laugh track and very little actual comedy.
The content just isn’t funny no matter where you sit politically. A Boston Globe critic reported, “In truth, there's nothing wrong with partisan humor, as long as it's actually funny. But here, even the less-political jokes are hopelessly obvious or old.” We totally agree, and this show was so unfunny it physically hurt.
