Do yourself a favor and quit after Season 2 (or earlier)

The cast is powerhouse (obviously). Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti are at the top of their game, and they make an excellent pairing (at first). The show starts off creating a perfect balance between the handsome, charismatic, likeable criminal billionaire played by Damian Lewis and the unattractive, distasteful (in some ways contemptible) but honest and justice-seeking United States Attorney played by Paul Giamatti. It's brilliantly playing with our unconscious and conscious biases.

The bad guy started out as the underdog, came from nothing, built it all himself, is handsome, charismatic, strong, likeable, loyal, faithful to his wife, has a great marriage/partnership, etc.

The good guy started out with a diamond-encrusted platinum spoon in his mouth, almost certainly got his position by family connections, is unattractive, distasteful, weak, and has bizarre sexual tastes that emphasize these qualities, is disloyal, backstabbing, conniving, has a contentious and distrustful marriage, etc.

It's a brilliant way to tell a story, setting these two against each other and tugging the audience's loyalty and enthusiasm back and forth between them.

Unfortunately, that balance is very delicate, and the show quickly topples it with some of the choices the writers make, particularly for Paul Giamatti's character. It doesn't take long before we see that the "good guy" interested in truth and justice from the first few episodes was either a fake to begin with, or more likely was simply written out to be replaced with a ruthless scumbag and criminal who is in many ways worse that the "bad guy."

So instead of an unlikable good guy versus a likeable bad guy, we end up with an extremely unlikable bad guy versus a likeable bad guy. That's where the winning formula starts to fall apart, but it's not the end, because you still have great performances and some fun storytelling, even as you begin to find yourself fully rooting for one side.

But then in an apparent effort to return to balance, the show starts making Damian Lewis' bad guy unlikable as well, and suddenly you have a show about two unlikable jerks throwing their lives away to destroy each other, and not only have we seen that a million times before, but it wears thin pretty quickly.

I was already losing interest due to the dynamics described above, but the the death-knell for me was the insertion of over the top political garbage by season 3. For the record, I'm not talking about Taylor, although that became an issue as well.

I actually enjoyed Taylor as a supporting character in season 2. I even give the show credit for portraying most people dealing with the character realistically. Weird people (for whatever makes them weird) are off-putting at first, make others uncomfortable, and provoke negative and hostile reactions. That's basic human nature. But if those same weird people demonstrate their value to those around them, the overwhelming majority, even those initially strongly inclined against their personal weirdness, will set aside petty prejudices and welcome them into the fold. That's also human nature. We recognize and reward value. And particularly in a business like the one in the show, it is all about demonstrating value. I felt the show handled that well.

Unfortunately as the character's role ballooned, the character became less and less believable, which did start to become a problem for the show. And I gather this gets much worse in the later seasons I won't be watching.

But my issues largely began in season 3, when the writers, obviously reacting to the election of President Trump, began inserting a bunch of overtly political garbage into the previously politically neutral (for Hollyweird) plots. Suddenly instead of being baseline political and money-grubbing, the Attorney General is a ridiculous caricature of a character, and is pushing an equally ridiculous caricature of a political agenda on the characters. This quickly begins bleeding over into every aspect of the plot, which is where I turned things off.

It's unfortunate. The show could have been brought back around with some good writing, but no one wants idiotic politics crammed down their throats while they're trying to be entertained. The fact that so many other reviewers noted the exact same problems and confirmed that they only get worse just tells me I made the right decision.