Redditor u/gammafission00's compilation of IMDB rankings of popular TV shows caught our eye, because it combines two things we love: TV shows and data. This snapshot shows how fans reacted to different seasons over the years, and how they rated them. Not all of them follow the presumed patterns — sayings like "this show got worse over time," or "it's not as good as the early years!" that you might have heard — and a few actually got better with age too.

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While most of the shows picked for this data viz are comedies, you can see that it's hard to maintain a high level of quality that brings together your entire audience over the span of a show's life. While most shows faded away, only shows like "Seinfeld" or "Friends" got higher ratings over time. The starkest (no pun intended) drop-off in enthusiasm happened with "Game of Thrones" and "Two and a Half Men," which went from blue (high ratings) to a dark shade of red (low ratings) on the rating scale.

'The Simpsons' Breakdown

Of course, the most online discourse historically has been surrounded around one of the longest running shows "The Simpsons," so the show had its own chart, showing a more in-depth look at season ratings. We could go into a whole debate about if the show really fell off after Season eight — and if the current run of the show is worthwhile.

[Image: YouTube]