The Show Everyone Loves to Hate: Finding Value in Television’s Most Maligned Series

There’s a particular, guilty kind of buzz that comes from pressing play on a show the internet has universally condemned. It’s 2025, and after scrolling past the hundredth social media post mocking a new Hulu series to oblivion, I decided to dive in. I watched “All’s Fair,” the legal drama that debuted with a crushing 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and was dubbed a “crime against television”. What I found wasn’t a masterpiece, but it also wasn’t the unwatchable atrocity my timeline promised. It was something more complicated—a perfectly mediocre show caught in the brutal crossfire of our modern cultural discourse.

My experience made me wonder: in an era where a show can be declared “the worst” before most people have even seen it, what are we really hating? The actual content on screen, or the idea of it? This year, as critics compiled their “best and worst” lists, I found myself drawn to the latter category, embarking on a journey through television’s most maligned offerings. What I discovered was that the story behind a hated show is often more revealing than the show itself.

The Anatomy of a “Worst” Show

The reasons a show becomes a cultural punching bag are varied, but they often follow familiar patterns. Looking at 2025’s most criticized series and others from recent years, a few clear categories emerge.

The following table breaks down the common types of shows that attract widespread criticism, along with what that criticism often misses.

Shows like “The Regime” on HBO and “Citadel: Diana” on Prime Video were criticized for being expensive but hollow, with storylines that felt forgettable and without clear purpose. A critic argued that some modern shows suffer from a need to “see both sides,” creating conflict where everyone is “well-meaning but misunderstood,” which can drain stories of compelling heroes and villains. This was a noted flaw in series like The Abandons, which was critiqued for artificially equalizing a vicious mining baron and a defending landowner.

Meanwhile, a show like “Velma” represents a different path to infamy. By its third season, what began as an attempt at subversion had, according to critics, curdled into cynicism. The satire lost its direction, and provocation seemed to replace genuine humor or heart. It’s a cautionary tale that irony and shock value are poor substitutes for character and coherent storytelling.

Beyond the Bandwagon: When Critics and Audiences Split

Sometimes, the hate isn’t universal. A fascinating television phenomenon is the show that critics champion but general audiences reject—or vice versa. This divide can be more insightful than uniform praise or condemnation.

Take “Dear White People.” The Netflix series was praised for its smart writing and fearless approach to uncomfortable topics. However, it lost a portion of its audience with a bold, divisive creative choice: turning its entire fourth season into a musical. The backlash wasn’t necessarily about the show’s core themes, but about a jarring shift in format that alienated viewers who had signed up for a straightforward comedy-drama.

This split highlights a tension at the heart of modern viewing. Critics often reward ambition, formal daring, and a distinct directorial voice. Audiences, however, frequently crave consistency, satisfying narrative, and characters they can connect with. A show that serves the former can fail the latter, leading to a confusing Rotten Tomatoes score where the “Tomatometer” and audience rating tell two completely different stories.

The Engine of Hate: Social Media and the Instant Verdict

The velocity of cultural judgment has accelerated. A decade ago, a poorly reviewed show might languish in low ratings for a season before being quietly canceled. Today, a narrative of failure can cement within hours of a premiere, fueled by viral clips, meme-able moments, and the potent dynamics of “digital moral policing”.

This online discourse doesn’t just describe opinion; it can create it. A show becomes a symbol—of corporate laziness, of misguided politics, of a studio misunderstanding its audience. Watching it becomes less about entertainment and more about gathering evidence for a pre-formed verdict. The actual texture of the show—a well-delivered line, a compelling performance, an interesting visual choice—gets lost in the noise. We see this in the stark contrast between critic and audience scores for shows like “Moonlight” (2007), which was panned by reviewers but developed a devoted fanbase that praised its format and atmosphere.

Finding the Glimmer in the Gloom

So, is there value in watching the show everyone hates? I’d argue yes, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.

You’re probably not going to discover a secret masterpiece. More likely, you’ll find a flawed, sometimes messy, sometimes boring piece of work. But in those flaws, you see the boundaries of taste, the risks of ambition, and the fascinating ways a creative vision can misfire. You witness the performance in a doomed project, like the “strong cast” struggling to lift “The Regime”, or the impressive animation wasted on “Citadel: Diana’s” hollow story.

More importantly, you reclaim your own judgment from the crowd. You learn to differentiate between a show that is legitimately poorly made and one that is simply not made for you, or one that has become a proxy for a larger cultural argument. In an age of algorithmic recommendations and curated watch-parties, there’s a rebellious, personal agency in deciding for yourself.

As I finished the last episode of “All’s Fair,” I didn’t feel anger or wasted time. I felt a curious sense of clarity. The show was, as advertised, not very good—its characters were thin, its messaging clumsy. But the apocalyptic hatred surrounding it felt disproportionate, a wave that had absorbed every minor sin into a tsunami of disdain.

Television is a conversation. The shows we love advance it, but the shows we hate define its boundaries. They show us what we will and won’t tolerate, what bores us, what insults our intelligence, and what touches a cultural nerve. Before you join the chorus of hate for the next viral target, consider giving it an hour of your own time. You might just hate it for the right reasons. Or, in the quiet away from the crowd, you might find something else entirely—not a masterpiece, but a human, flawed attempt at storytelling that deserves more than a pre-fabricated dunking. In the end, that’s a more interesting story than any “worst show” list could ever provide.