Again, examples?  There are many shows that got cancelled quickly after a few awful episodes.  The Playboy Club only lasted three episodes.  But if you take the poor grades awarded to that show over those three episodes, it still has a better GPA than this show did, whether over these last 8 awful episodes, or over…

Then what's the point of having a grade if nothing is ever worthy of it?  Whatever the minimum on your preferred scale would be, that's where The Following would score.  I'd have no beef with Two and a Half Men being rated lower than it is - I didn't think it was especially funny when Sheen was on it.  But at least…

"You don't even know good writing - I mean, those who can do, and those who can't teach… I know all the trigger words - second-rate, no talent, wanna-be, pretentious, overwrought, flop… I'm so bored with you, I'm so bored with you and with Edgar Allen Poe, what a trumped up piece of nothing talent he was, loser…

Have you been reading cabspaintedyellow's "edits" of Sims reviews to make them sound positive?  Funny stuff.

You call a 25% drop in audience and 15% drop in the 18-49 demographic a "resounding fuck you it's awesome shut up?"  Clearly we have different definitions for that phrase.

Do tell, other than the guy at IGN (who has some fairly negative criticism despite the high numerical score) and the folks at EW (which has aspirations of being worthy to line a bird cage), which critics continue to champion the show as its developed?

I note that IMDB's complete cast and crew list for The Following doesn't include any consultants. ;)

Very Bauer - except even more tedious and dull.  I think I recall Williamson saying that 24 was his favorite TV show a little while back. Can't say I was surprised.

That was rather poor, and likely benefitted from/coasted on the fumes of past good will.  But this?  No, this was just dreadful - it's hard to kill of not one but two major characters and not have it leave the slightest emotional dent.  It's bloody difficult to make a torture scene boring.  The only season finale I…

It went downhill well before that.  The first four seasons were easily the best, and season 5 was still relatively strong, but the "psychosis" twist and the mental institution at the end of that season was a bit of a clunker, and the show never fully got its groove back (except possibly for hardcore House/Cuddy…

That's also a crap show, but then, its on a minor network, has a fraction of the budget and acting talent, gets a fraction of the ratings, and is at least a serviceable piece of pulp for women and religious types - exactly the way it advertises itself.  The Following fails to pass muster in pretty much any genre, and…

Better yet, it turns out that Poe didn't die in a gutter, he discovered time travel, and Poe is (DUH DUH DUH!!!) Joe Carroll.  When the boathouse caught fire, he activated his time travel device, went back to 1849, dug up his own freshly buried corpse, brought it back to the boathouse, and left it there to convince…

I'll miss these. ;)

2.4 and a 6 share among the 18-49 set?  Decent but not terribly impressive (it doesn't crack the Top 10), especially given the production costs thanks to the cast and crew.  And the week they renewed it it was at a 2.8 and a 7, which means it's dropped 15% in the key demo (total viewers dropped by roughly 25%).

They renewed it right as episode 7 aired, and at that point the audience was still in the 8 to 9 million range.  It's hovering around the mix 6 million range now, and if you go back to the main site page for the following, you'll note the grades shifted from C/C- to solid Ds and Fs through the second half of the…

To be fair most of the reviews on Metacritic are just based off the pilot.  It's sort of the inverse of the first season of Spartacus - the pilot was lackluster and the critics held it in low regard.  By the time the first season wrapped up, a lot of them had changed their tune, because the show proved to be somewhat…

Can you point to a worse 8-episode run for comparison's sake?  I'll wait.

By the numbers?  This is more a case of somebody saying "this show is totally not going to be by the numbers," but they're only saying that because they don't know what numbers are or understand the basics of mathematics.

I'm curious, what qualifies as an "F" worthy show in your book?

Yeah. They didn't really bother to bounce the emotions of it around the room: