What book, game, movie, or television series started out really good but then devolved to the point that you couldn't even finish them?

I recently had to give up on the Maximum Ride novels by James Patterson. I read the Fugitives trilogy as a teenager (as that was all that was out at the time) and loved them. They weren't works of art, but thoroughly enjoyable. I picked the series up again from the beginning last week and got up to book six (2/3rds through it) before having to give up on it. It devolved into an in-your-face pro-environmental propaganda. I don't mind it being touched on, but spending pages and pages preaching about Global Warming just doesn't do it for me.

Another pang of hurt was Weeds. Started getting bored of it by season five and by the end of season six found it unbearable. Lost interest in Heroes also.

Fatal Frame comes to mind. It got rediculous starting with Fatal Frame III. I didn't bother getting a Wii to play the others.

The Leprechaun movies stopped being good after the second one, and I didn't care to see the 4th and 5th one. Apparently there was a 6th one O_o

I end up not finishing most media that's a series, I just get over the novelty of certain elements, and then get over the series itself. By the end, it's typically out of the sheer will to finish the damn thing instead of enjoying it. Game of Thrones seems to be the exception here. Three seasons deep, and I'm still as invested as the first.

In before Mass Effect

Fringe has gotten pretty boring for me

For me, Saints Row. I finished it, but III was so bad I refuse vehemently to buy IV or any future ones until they stop being a manchild's game. Saints Row and Saints Row 2 were great, but 3 was awful.

I hope it didnt get that bad. Last one i read was Maximum Ride Max , have yet to getting round to reading Fang.

Personally, the only series i couldnt finish was indeed Mass Effect. 1st Game was Brilliant , loved it. Second was good , but the RPG elements had dimished. But the 3rd ruined it. Glad i didnt have money at release to buy it.

The US version of 'The Office' and 'How I Met Your Mother'.

It didn't get bad necessarily, but Mad Men got so repetitive for me halfway through the fourth season that I just stopped watching a few minutes into an episode and never looked back.

Ah yes. I tried to watch the US 'Office' and didn't care for it at all.

Books:

The left behind series: (completely disregarding all religious stuff, the series was very badly written and the plot never changed, it only repeated it self).

The sword of truth series: the first book was really really good and the fact that i liked it even though it was almost as much a romance as a fantasy novel says a something. but the plot structure never changed and heavily relied upon the protagonist being a wizard with messiah level natural abilities that he would spend each book trying to tap into and at the end he accidentally casts a spell that kills the new evil bad guy. rinse and repeat... except add ultra biased political themes that pretty much devolves the series into propaganda towards the end.

TV Shows:

Heroes: started off good, the plots were different enough for me each season. However the themes stayed the same, despite how much all the characters would develop they ended up interacting the same, discounting the random switch up with which heroes were fighting who each season.

Bleach: (anime) actually my issue with bleach is a wipespread issue with anime as a trope, once the anime catches up to the graphic novel's plot lines they do a few different things to continue to pump out the same number of episodes with no official frame of reference to the plot line. Some anime will just make up their own plot lines and completely contradict the official one, essentially killing the anime. Some make side plot lines that end up being crappy filler seasons. However, Bleach decides to take the last 4 to 8 minutes of the last episode and tack it onto the begining of the next. kind of like a recap, except one third of the show is a recap every episode. Oh... and after that bleach still ends up making terrible filler episodes so it wasn't worth it to me to wade through an ocean of fecal media to watch what was other wise an excellent anime.

X files, Ego Draconis, Dragon 'we're so darn politically progressive' Age. Barely got through ME3.

Metal Gear Solid comes to mind. I really really enjoyed MGS1, and then MGS2 was one of the biggest gaming disappointments of my life, and it's doubtful I will ever play MGS4 or MGS5, even though I did buy MGS4 cheap some years ago on a sale.

Assassin's Creed comes to mind too, I played the first two games and I will probably never ever play an AC game again. Ubisoft kinda made me lose interest in Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell too.

There are some other series I've lost interest in too, but can't really rule out the possibility I might still buy and play the next game in the series when they are cheap, like Mass Effect and Dragon's Age.

As for TV series, I barely watch TV, so I can't really tell I do prefer mini-series though with a proper ending, instead of series that just continue for X seasons until the suits decide to cancel it.

I still say if they stuck with Phillipe Loren, that game would have been badass.

havent and I for a fact know that I wont come across anything too bad to finish to cocky a statement no

its needs to be more why well when you start something you invest your trust in it trust that it will be of benefit to you giving up not only makes you loose your time it also makes you despondent about the source of your interest

I gave up on Lost pretty early on. The whole "answer 1 question and ask 3 more" per episode shtick really got old for me.

MAX was good, not as great as the first three but not as "SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT" as The Final Warning. Fang is just boring. Lots of melodrama and standing around talking about what should be happening (instead of actually doing something). My friend told me she gave up on ANGEL, because a majority of it was focused on the angsty love triangle between Max, Fang, and Dylan which FANG (the novel) is setting up for. Give up while you still can.

Mass Effect (There, I said it)
When Mass Effect 3 turned out to basically be yet another 'save the world from the aliens' game, I gave up. I'm so sick of sci-fi games where you have to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion. The only Mass Effect game I really played and beat was Mass Effect 2. Now THAT was a good game. Well-balanced, and no 'save the Earth' plot.

Doctor Who.
I'm sorry, but the whole 'universe flowing through the head of a little girl who somehow magically reboots said universe like it was a computer program' just threw me off. 11 was my first Doctor, and his first season held me on until the climix...and then I gave up. Sorry, Doctor, but Amy svcked. Hope you have fun with the new companion, Clara or whatever her name is. Tried watching a recent episode with her as the companion, and her annoying behavior made me write the whole thing off for good. Until he can find a companion that's another Martha or Donna, I'm not going back.

Call of Duty
Yes, I was a Call of Duty fan. Loved the hell out of Call of Duty 2, when it was still doing the WWII thing. Gave Call of Duty 4 a chance, but got turned off on the second one.

Tomb Raider- The classical games
Lara's self-important attitude just...ERGH!! I couldn't stand another minute. Her games and adventures may have been interesting, but her pesonality was just too grating for me. I don't care how well-written the plot is. If I can't relate to or connect to the protagonist, I'm not playing the game. I didn't even touch the recent one that just came out. I assume it's the same snotty Lara Croft as before.

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
His cynical outlook on everything got on my nerves. Seriously dude, are you not happy at all? Like, ever? It's like he's not even enjoying what he does.

Harry Potter
AGAIN with the prophecies and 'save the world from an evil dark lord' plot! ARRRGGHH! I liked it better when it was just a fantasy-mystery series like the first four books, and I had figured Voldemort was going to be Harry's Mortimer (the big bad serial killer/criminal Harry had to stop.) I stopped reading the series after Book 5. Didn't even touch Books 6 and 7. From what I hear, Book 7 was the worse, what with Voldemort turning England into a pseudo wizarding equivalent of Nazi Germany.

Chronicles of Narnia
...The prophecy thing. I'm sorry, I don't care it was given to the kids by a couple of talking beavers. I hate prophecies in fantasy stories.

The Inheritance Cycle
Yes, yes, people, I admit, I read this series. I was a young teen at the time, and I really enjoyed the first book, despite the fact it was poorly written. You could sense that a lot of love was put into making that book. The second book, however, was very...different. For starters, Eragon spent the entire book contemplating his naval and [censored]ing about the scar on his back that aches (sounds familiar?) and that he never does anything about. Paolini expected me to give a damned about Roran, a minor character from the first book that I had wholly forgotten about, but Paolini made him carry most of the action. Oh, and he wrote off my favorite character, Murtagh! And the guy didn't appear until literally the end of the book where, woops! He's a bad guy now, and happens to be Eragon's brother. Needless to say, I did not read the next two books following that one.

Star Wars. I quit after the abomination that was E1.

I have to agree with this one, mainly 'cause of my lack of experience with your other listed ones (I do enjoy some Anthony Bourdain, but I only saw his show once in a blue moon when my sister was watching it. At the expense of sounding like some hipster or elitist, a perfect illustration of what got me turned even more off from watching Doctor Who was this experience at my two years in my previous employer:

- First year there, only one other person in my department (and the whole store) watched Doctor Who. We would discuss episodes from past and present Doctors and have fun with inside jokes. He would bring his Sonic Screwdriver to work and we'd laugh about how no one knew what it was, even older people who had seen Doctor Who growing up.
- Second year there, our boss--who made fun of us for watching it--was wearing "KEEP CALM AND WATCH DOCTOR WHO" shirts, had a TARDIS key chain, etc. The Summer high school kids who came in year after year and looked at us like freaks when they overheard us talking about it (here and there; my co-worker and I were never obsessed) would approach us with, "so i herd u liek dalekz" and "omg! You watch Doctor Who!? I LOVE Matt Smith!" He avoided bringing his Sonic Screwdrivers to work as it got distracting when customers would ask to play with it.

And yeah. Cue the "Well just don't care what other people think and enjoy it" speech that I get every time. By the time this had happened, I wasn't really watching it anyway, so it's kinda a moot point; it just reinforced me not wanting to keep up with it anymore. It was a fun show while it lasted. I'm not averse to watching it and getting caught up again; I just don't have the same desire I did four years ago.

But for now, [censored] YEAH BREAKING BAD.

EDIT: Also, Land Before Time to fit in the theme of the thread, though I'm guessing it's aimed more at games. I liked the first one as a kid but now I'd like to think even kids have standards enough to not have seen past the first one.

Metal Gear Solid. I bought the HD Collection a while ago and started with MGS3, I thought it was pretty good at first, the boss fights in particular were fun and inventive, but I just found there to be more really frustrating moments in it than there were enjoyable moments (but on the other hand, when those good moments show up, they're more fun than most games, but not enough to out-weigh the negatives). I also tried out MGS2, but those camera angles are so garbage for stealth, the game gives me minimal spacial awareness because for some reason, the game only wants me to look North. So I dragged my way to almost the end of MGS3, after suffering through 8 hours of the game sporadically deciding it's doesn't want to be fun anymore, and me frequently giving the game a second chance, I finally encountered some serious bull [censored] that resulted in me completely giving up on the game forever, I stood up, turned off my console and thought to myself "EVA can go [censored] herself."

Gothic, stopped after 3. Arcania got too bad reviews to dare try it.
One Tree Hill, quit after season 2 or during 3, can't remember. Too much loss of quality and too much wasted time with crap 'live' music.

Nope, it's a complete reboot. Both plot-wise and character-wise

What are you talking about? Sonic Screwdriver? Everyone knows that Dr. Who is the lead singer of The Who...

i haven't abandoned dr. who, but some times the writers for it make me so angry. They really are proud how (not good) campy they make it sometimes. classic dr. who wasn't all that campy by its own standards, it only is now because it it out dated. I wish they would do some more stuff that is mystifying for the modern generation like the classic series did for it's generation. But moffat is lazy and bad for the integrity of the show. his interview where he talks about why the weeping angels are a work of master piece level writing is cringe worthy.

I may not be the exact same thing, but Moving Pictures singlehandedly killed the entire Discworld series for me. Up until that point I had been devouring the books. I stopped halfway through Moving Pictures and haven't been able to get back into them since.