When You've Decided to Move On

When you've decided to let go of a show you've liked for ages, you would think that it would come with a great deal of trouble. That you'd fight against it, I suppose - try to find the good in the new episodes, even though you can tell it's past the point of no return for you.

Logical as that is, it just hasn't been my experience. I'll admit, I even liked Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I had been watching since the third grade. If you've been watching something for the better part of you elementary school experience, it does become somewhat iconic in nature. For instance, teens watching The Smurfs or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has more to do with nostalgia than quality (with the exception of WW. You can't not love Gene Wilder). Yet when the fifth season hit, I took one look at Dawn, or as Jump the Shark likes to say, "The New Kid on the Block", and I tuned out. It was as simple as that. I had lost interest.

And I was invested. I bought the books, started websites, bought the VHS tapes (yes, people - VHS. It was the second season, after all), I watched it every single week, I checked websites to look for the synopses of the episodes, looked at pictures... short of joining chat rooms, I was part of the "community", as most fanbases like to call themselves.

But it was as easy as that - I just stopped watching. And I stopped caring.

Once in a while, I'd flick over, and I found I couldn't even watch a whole episode. Now, naturally I tuned in for the finale, but by that point the whole thing seemed so mangled that I was sad that it had to end on that note, even though it was a decent episode.

But since this is a CSI: blog, I'll get to my point.

Yes, the antis.

I've spoken to a few people who generally say the same thing - once a show went somewhere they didn't want to follow, they just cut themselves out of the fanbase. During "Heathergate" at YTDAW, there were a number of people who stopped posting and were going to stop watching, until the episode aired and it turned out to be "not that bad".

So I guess the question is: is this the same experience for most people? And if so, why would people who claim to hate the show now still be watching it and devoting their time to boards about that program that they now so loathe?

I don't want to say "just move on", because everyone's allowed to be pissed about a storyline. It's just that I don't believe that anyone who really hates something would still be devoting lots of their time to it. No matter how invested they once were.

So is it, perhaps, simply for the benefit of TPTB, should they stumble on these comments and decide to reverse the changes?

I don't know.

But I can only really compare it to past experience, and my past experience has told me that when my ship goes bust (Willow/Oz), or a character I hate is introduced (Dawn, Glory), I have to tune out because it's just no longer worth the watch.