There’s only so much room on our DVRs…and in our hearts.
1. The Affair
Showtime
To be fair, I fell in loathe with this series, which debuted on Showtime last year, after loving the "he said, she said" structure in the first episode. I grew beyond bored and increasingly frustrated with the writers' attempt to make me feel empathy for Noah (Dominic West) — who was cheating on his wife, Helen (Maura Tierney), with whom he has four children — and Alison (Ruth Wilson) — who was cheating on her husband, Cole (Joshua Jackson), with whom she'd lost a child. (Yes, of course, that latter element is fucking terrible.) I certainly wasn't rooting for them, their courtship wasn't romantic, and after a while, I really was only in it to find out why the series was interspersed with glimpses of Noah and Alison being questioned at a police station. The answer, we learned way too many episodes later, was because Cole's brother Scott (Colin Donnell), a character the audience barely knew and certainly did not care about, was murdered. When Noah got arrested for said homicide in the Season 1 finale, I laughed, but sadistically stuck around for the Season 2 premiere. It opened with a dream sequence, and we had to wait 25 minutes to find out Noah and Alison were still together. Then, they danced to Damien Rice. I barely made it through the end of the episode — and I have no regrets. Farewell, Noah. Farewell, Alison. Farewell, theme song, aka worst use of Fiona Apple ever. —Jaimie Etkin
2. American Horror Story: Hotel
Suzanne Tenner/FX
When Jessica Lange revealed she really wasn't coming back to AHS after four seasons as its centerpiece, I knew it was the end of an era. And at the risk of the wrath of Little Monsters everywhere, I wasn't too thrilled to hear Lady Gaga would be taking her place. (I mean, give it to the Supreme, for god's sake!) But AHS is one of my favorite series, and I didn't think twice about giving it a chance. That first bloody AF orgy scene between Gaga and Matt Bomer's characters was promising, and Denis O'Hare's fabulously bedazzled Elizabeth Taylor gave me life, but after four episodes, nothing else gripped me: not vampire children, not blonde tourists in their underwear, not Sarah Paulson's character's teeth falling out in a recreation of the nightmare everyone's had. Usually, I have FOMO about missing out on a show I know everyone's talking about, but it didn't seem like it this season. So those episodes are still sitting on my DVR, but not even Bomer's "Hotline Bling" moves are enough to reel me back in. —J.E.
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