The perfect time to quit a TV show, according to science

By Pune Media On Jun 14, 2025

(Credits: Far Out / Aleks Dorohovich)

Sat 14 June 2025 17:26, UK

In this modern age of peak content, where every streaming service competes for our attention and money by offering a brand new TV show every few days, choosing what to watch has become no small feat. With so many shows constantly coming out of the woodwork, there’s more pressure than ever to decide which one to devote your time and effort to. After all, there are only so many hours in the day; if you pick a bad one, chances are you’ll miss out on something better.

Of course, this multitude of options has another side effect: we’re more likely than ever to give up on something quickly if it doesn’t immediately grab our attention. However, is this always the right thing to do? Sure, you may think a show should have started to pick up steam after two or three episodes, but if it hasn’t, should you really give up on it entirely?

In truth, a number of beloved shows from TV’s rich history took a while to truly find their feet. For example, Breaking Bad, Seinfeld, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn’t start out as the classics they evolved into. Luckily, though, they were being watched by an audience who saw enough potential in their early episodes to believe great things lay in their future. If you gave up on those seminal efforts early, as you may be inclined to do with new shows today, you’d have denied yourself the joy of watching three of the greats.

So, it all begs the question: what is the perfect time to quit watching a TV show? How many episodes is it reasonable to give something before you think, “It ain’t getting any better than this?” Well, luckily, our old friend science can help us out with this conundrum.

Daniel Parris of Stat Significant began pondering this very question in 2025 and decided to crunch the numbers. In order to define when it is best to cut bait with a show, he decided to enlist the help of IMDB’s trusty user ratings. To illustrate his method, he used Friends as an example, and discovered that across the beloved sitcom’s ten-season run, the average user rating was 8.34 out of 10. Then he analysed the ratings of the show’s first season to determine which episode first equalled or exceeded this average number, and found that episode seven was the winner, with a rating of 8.8.

Parris subsequently analysed 11 other shows, including the three classics mentioned above, plus the likes of Doctor Who, South Park, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Amazingly, Seinfeld took 16 episodes to eclipse its overall average rating, while Buffy and South Park did it in half that time. However, when looking at all the shows as a whole, Parris concluded that Seinfeld was an unusually slow starter, and most shows took six or seven episodes to get up to par.

So, there you have it: if you’re struggling through a dodgy show but don’t want to risk abandoning a future classic, science says you should give it six or seven episodes before making a decision. If it hasn’t impressed you by then, it’s probably unlikely to improve any further.

However, because Parris always covers all his bases, he also looked at another dilemma that can arise as a loyal TV viewer. How long should you keep watching a show you’ve sunk years into when you realise you no longer like it? Game of Thrones and House of Cards are the best-known examples of this phenomenon in recent years, as those formerly high-quality productions seemed to fall off a cliff at a certain point.

While human beings are often conditioned to stick with things they’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to, Parris found that science says there is a point where diminishing returns set in, and we can bow out gracefully, if we are inclined to do so. In his search for a tipping point—the average number of seasons it takes long-running shows to decline in quality—he discovered it occurs around the transition from season five to six.