Why I hate rating TV shows

It's easy when it's a show that you dislike from the start and never gets better, but oftentimes it tends to be more complicated...

For instance, I may rate a short show 10/10 because I found it extremely entertaining for the time I watched it, but a longer one I give 9/10 will often still have more impact since I get more time to absorb the characters and it becomes a part of my life.

Then there are the shows which start off great, but then decline badly. These are the trickiest of the entire bunch. Do I only count the years where it was at the top, or do I factor in the decline as well? The Simpsons for example is worth a 10/10 for the golden years, but the worst years I would give as low as 3/10, maybe even 2. Yet I can't bring myself to rate it any lower than 10/10 because I'm so attached to the time where it was top-notch comedy. Is this fair or not?

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Well, you could always average out your ratings, come up with a number, then explain how you've come about your rating.

I know what you mean. Some series start out with a bang, then decline from there. OTOH still other series take all you can muster to make it through the first couple of eps, then surprisingly the show gets better.

It's pretty tough. It's not a movie, there's different writers and directors, even different showrunners. In some cases it's a different show in most of the ways that really matter.

The OP begs the question why rate then?

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I've never given it much thought, if only because it doesn't seem right to rate shows where I haven't seen every episode (and that actually includes a lot of shows I call favourites). It would be like rating a movie I haven't finished or have only seen clips of on YouTube. In any case, Stirchley has a point - how much does giving an entire show a numerical rating really matter when the quality can vary so wildly between episodes/seasons?

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For the purposes of something like IMDb where you have to give a cumulative rating, I often will rate it for its best season, then maybe drop a star if it has "off" seasons.

But if it's in the context of a discussion or on a personal list, I say rate season-by-season. Something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great example of a show with some 10/10 seasons and some 6/10 seasons, and the rest somewhere in the middle.

The main reason I rate things is (1) to keep track of what I've seen and roughly what I thought of it and (2) to be able to quickly give recommendations. And if you're recommending something, you can easily say "Hey, this show has a rocky first season, then two great seasons, and then the last season is just okay."