We all have those shows we used to love that just don’t hold up on repeat viewings. Maybe our tastes have changed, or maybe the show wasn’t really that good in the first place, but managed to come around during a time in our lives when we were still receptive to it. We’re often nostalgic for these shows without the desire to revisit them, but they remain an important part of our lives and continue to shape our taste.
And then, there are the shows that are so genuinely, unavoidably, perhaps shockingly bad when we look back at them now we wonder why we were ever into them in the first place. Shows that we used to be huge fans of at the time, but are now unwatchable, even cringe. It’s sad when this happens, but it’s also fascinating — how did something we once thought was so great turn into something we have to watch through our fingers?
And yet, we do watch them. We watch them because we must, because we need to know what it was that drew us in, and what it was that ultimately turned us off. Maybe the show was good for its time, and now that culture has evolved, we’ve left it behind. Maybe we were more cringe in our youth and more likely to pick up something that wasn’t great, but hit a nerve we didn’t yet know we had. Or, maybe, the show was always bad, and will always be bad, and despite that we still found something in it to enjoy. Join us as we revisit some of the shows we almost can’t bring ourselves to admit that we used to love.
TV Shows We Used to Love That Are Cringe Now
We can’t say why we liked these shows, but we can certainly say why we can’t watch them now.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
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