The first show I watched in its entirety was Six Feet Under. I watched it on a weekly basis as it was playing out on HBO, and then my friends and I had discussions about the characters and death and the deeper meanings of the show. At first, Six Feet Under was a light and satirical romp through the life of a bizarre family who ran a funeral home. The pilot episode had campy commercials advertising products for funeral homes, and the script was blisteringly sly. As the first season progressed, the show had a sharp tongue-in-cheek quality as it addressed headier topics.

Six Feet Under ran for five seasons, from 2001 to 2005. Each season was a bit darker and more depressing than the last. Though each of the characters were desperately clawing at the edges of sanity, they nonetheless seemed to be sinking deeper into the tar pits of the writers’ imaginations. Unhappy marriages, death, hauntings, and even a traumatic kidnapping brought each episode further down the spiral. By the end, it seemed everybody was trapped by their own suffering and each episode was a miserable slog…until the glorious tear-stained finale, perhaps the best goodbye episode in the history of television.

There are only a small handful of television shows that I’ve seen every episode of as they were airing. Most shows have a jumping the shark moment that I can’t quite make it past. For instance, I’m not sure how many episodes I’ve seen of The Simpsons past Season 11’s E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) back in 1999. And, I never made it past the first episode of season 2 of Heroes. Sometimes shows need to be left alone; sometimes they come back and other times they fade away. Project Runway is, somehow, still running years after it had been abandoned by even The AV Club (despite a very active commenting community there), but I quit it after I became obsessed with a piece of blue fabric and compared the faux construction of an announcement to The Triumph of The Will.

So, why can’t I quit The Big Bang Theory. It’s a stupid, mean-spirited, and frequently unfunny sitcom that I’ve been watching since Season One. I still watch it out of…I don’t even know why anymore. It’s so boring and tacky, yet I can’t help myself. Are there any shows that you still watch despite knowing that it’s bad? How easily do you give up on television shows? What are some notable jumping the shark moments for you?