No wonder it was canceled.

only saw the first season

5 is when I quit. It lost its "Hollywood fixit guy" theme and became the "crooked and/or stupid family drama" over time.

Showtime shows are great anyway

It was great in season seven. A lot of back-story filled in.

Season 4's finale felt like such an ending for the show I stopped watching there for a while so I could enjoy the moment.

Season 5 was incredibly different, as was the whole show from that point forward. The writing, the production, everything about the show. It had almost become its own spinoff. While I still appreciated the good television I was watching, I never really loved the show again this point forward. That said, I very much enjoyed the content of season 5, but the way it was presented with all the time jumps and mystery box unfolding was insufferably annoying.

As we got into seasons 6 and 7, what was once a gritty drama started to feel more and more like a silly tv show, where crazy things were happening just because. Lots of convenient crazy things as stars aligned, just to propel our characters along in their stories. Characters started having things to do just to have things to do. Nothing felt organic anymore. The show also got very repetitive of themes, executing the same ideas and ending up back in the same default positions over and over again. Just spinning its wheels. It also got slower and slower. And more and more absurd.

Toward the end, even I was saying "no wonder this was cancelled". It picked up some steam with the flashback sequences, an element that should have been introduced sooner. All in all, it was very much a show of two halves. It's a shame it didn't get its last full season. It's a little incomplete.