Season 1s are great, setup, some payoff, a bit of lead into the overarching story. Then season 2 to X. The heroes win and then lose in the final episode, cliffhanger to next season. People get bored. Final season is announced and they wrap up the show.
It can certainly seem that way sometimes. Shows like The Handmaid’s Tale have been circling the drain of their own premise for a few years now. A big part of it, I think, is that they want to keep their main cast for as long as possible, which limits the options of what can happen.
Give me a mini-series, or even an anthology series, any day.
I love the limited scope of British TV series. They even managed to do only a few seasons of Law & Order, for crying out loud.
It’s not a creative or artistic choice; British channels simply have minuscule budgets compared to their American counterparts.
And yet it often leads to more satisfying narratives.
Look at Black Mirror. The British seasons are some of the best TV ever made. The American (Netflix) seasons have often been meh or downright awful, and derivative of the original seasons.
I think it’s for the best. Too much money in the US is spent on bullshit.
In any case, US versions of British series are almost certainly worse.
Shows like The Handmaid’s Tale have been circling the drain of their own premise for a few years now.
As far as I’m concerned, that show ended when the first season did (which corresponded with the ending of the book).
When I heard a season 2 was happening, I thought it might be based around the book’s epilogue. Instead, it’s the same story dragged out long past where it was supposed to end.
I still don’t get why so many were relating handmaids tale to real life. Just as annoying as those who think everything is 1984. Its a YA series, and not a particularly great one at that.
Not sure about the show, but Margaret Atwood has been at pains to point out that pretty much everything in her books has a real life precedent (albeit in different places at different times).
Child appropriations under the military juntas in Latin America, for one.
Do you really not see the parallels to real life of a religiously-ruled country who has enshrined in law ways to take control of fertile women’s reproductive rights? Really?
The US is becoming more and more Giléad with every passing day.
I don’t see anyone taking away rights of women, and America is secular.
You can draw parallels between anything, thats not really pertinent.
Do ya remember Roe vs. Wade or the recent decision that overturned it, thus removing the rights of a woman to decide whether or not she will continue a pregnancy?
I think the shows with long term success either have multiple independent or semi-independent story arcs or they have a well defined story arc that lasts for the entire run of the show. The characters grow and change as the show progresses which keeps the audience interested.
Where they run into trouble is when the constraints built into the structure of the show limit the number of possible stories, but success leads to them trying to keep the show running after all possibilities have been used. At that point, the show becomes repetitive and boring.
Writing this, I’m reminded of the show, Scrubs.
Scrubs was an excellent show for the entirety of it’s 8 season run. The concept allowed for a story arc that lasted the whole run, specifically the story of JD and his friends learning and developing as doctors from first year residents to attendings. There is a natural progression during that process that allows for individual growth of the characters and accommodates natural shifts in storylines to allow for new topics for episodes. In addition there are countless opportunities for different individual smaller story arcs to make each episode able to stand alone as it’s own tale.
Because there was a built-in plan creating a structure for the life of the show, they were able to maintain quality and audience interest for all 8 seasons.
If the producers had foolishly tried to squeeze more seasons out of the show after they had exhausted the original concept, they would have inevitably failed. The result would have been a weak and pathetic shadow of the previous seasons and would have rapidly lost the patience of the audience.
Eh, Scrubs suffered a lot from trying to find ways of keeping the characters somewhat together and on the hospital. Also, even if not relevant to the topic, flanderization utterly fucked Scrubs from season 5ish onwards.
Flanderization? And in what way regarding Scrubs? Genuinely intrigued by your point.
I’ll leave you with two links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Flanderization/LiveActionTV (search for Scrubs there)
Careful, don’t get sucked into the TVTropes website, it’s a black hole.
I think they’re asking for examples of it. Not what it means.
I can think of a few with Dr Cox and Dr Kelso in the later seasons.
@delitomatoes @NABDad @danielbln @fartsparkles
There are examples in the second link, but I can paste them here for you:
Scrubs:
J.D. started as fairly emotionally needy due to him wanting a father figure to replace his own dysfunctional family. Fast forward to season five where J.D. is an appletini (light on the tini)-swilling “sensey” (that’s “sensitive person”) who can’t hold on to his “man cards” (which would be taken away from him if he did something girly) for a full day. This is lampshaded by Zach Braff in the bloopers to Season 8.
“You haven’t been here in a while, my character’s really gay now.”
Carla was initially a tough cookie Team Mom. As the seasons went on, the writers Flanderised her obsession with gossip and her domineering tendencies over Turk. She also went from giving advice to forcing her opinions on everyone else and admitting that taking the moral high ground “is like crack for me”.
Elliot went from being a pretty normal, slightly quirky, girl with no interest in kids and a high degree of efficiency coupled with no personal skills to highly neurotic, obsessed with getting married and having kids, and the most compassionate doctor in the hospital that was only there because she wanted to help people. The family part is at least somewhat justified by the fact that she as she got old she had a stronger desire to settle down.I don’t agree with the example of Kelso. In the latter seasons he goes from being a horrible human to a somewhat empathetic and cool sage. I love it
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My second link shows a bunch of Scrubs examples.
Man, Scrubs was great. Still one of my favorite shows ever
Scrubs had its problems too. It just didn’t matter as much because its a comedy first.
For example: Elliott took like 6 seasons to gain confidence. Probably because JD kept trying to get with her then being an idiot and breaking up.
Hot take: Scrubs Season 8 was weak. Dr. Cox as chief was lame, the new interns were lame, the Janitor’s wedding was lame.
Season 9 was actually a bit of a dead cat bounce.
I think the point of the question is that the producers get greedy midway. And stop the progress so they can go indefinitely. Then when the show is cancelled the finish the story arcs in the final season.
Once they realize they have a potential cash cow on their hands they do whatever they can to ensure that they can milk it as long as possible. S1 has no gaurentee of being a hit when its made so show producers put their all into crafting an enjoyable show. Once it becomes purely about extending its life as much as possible. Usually turning the story to crap in the process. I call this 'the Dexter effect"
Sounds like enshittyfication for series.
You see it pretty clearly with Stranger Things. In S1 each character has a specific purpose or role they fill in the story to back up the themes the show wants to explore, and they excel at that role. S1 is great, and they weren’t expecting to get an S2. But they did.
Now those same characters, with their specific roles? Well now they need to change (because you’re telling a different story), and they aren’t a super great fit for the new roles they have to play. It still kinda works, but the show’s themes become muddled and you’re banking a lot on the audience’s love of the characters now. Still a success.
Now we get to S3 and we have to change the characters’ roles even more! Entire storylines from S2 have now gone to waste, and many characters are far from their initial roles and don’t feel as interesting or compelling as they used to be - because they were never meant to get this far. They’re cogs jammed into new and unfamiliar spaces to try and get this machine to keep running. And it lurches and jerks its way forward, but it’s a far cry from the efficient, effective show it was in S1.
Some of my favorite tv shows’ first season is usually the worse. Then the plotlines get better until the second to last season and things resolve. By the final season, the last few threads get resolved and the story ends.
And then just think about how many fantastic shows get cancelled in their first or second seasons. I’m still bitter and upset by Almost Human.
I’m here to second the bitterness about Almost Human (the casting was perfect for the two main characters).
I’m also sad about Journeyman.
What are these shows? :)
Star trek is notorious for having bad first seasons.
The first season of Parks and Recreation was so bad compared to the rest. They didn’t seem to know what to do with the characters. They really gelled in the second season. The rest of the run was great and the final episode was inspired.
P&R continues to be in my mind what happens when you let a show with talented actors and smart writers marinate a bit. Everyone on the show became a bigger star/household name afterwards.
So many shows get cancelled after a season. And I wonder how many shows, if they got that P&R treatment, would be amazing today.
You see that a lot for sure. One show that stands out in my mind of continually moving the plot forward is Breaking Bad. The ‘villain’ changes throughout the show, Walt has an evolving relationship with Skylar and Walt Jr, and motives change as well for Walt and Jesse. Completely different show from beginning to end.
SPOILER: it’s a well known fact that season 1 was shortened due to the last writers strike and had that not happened Jesse would have been killed off at the end of the season. This show very well could have suffered the same fate OP prescribes to most shows since Jesse is so pivotal to the shows overall success. So maybe we should look for shows who’s first season is currently being cut short by this writer’s strike and that will be the next great show.
“final season is announced and they wrap up the show”
Bro must be from 1995 or some shit. Since when does a show get an actual ending these days?
- Breaking Bad
- Better Call Saul
- Titans
- The Good Place
- Barry
Ted Lasso (announced it would be three seasons at the beginning and stuck with it)
Succession
Even Supernatural has actual ending after 15 seasons
And like every good story oriented cartoon. We’re in the actual golden age for cartoons right now and more people need to take advantage.
Really great shows have a broader plot premise and are free to build new storylines and character arcs each season. As YoBuckStopsHere said, some great shows build up and grow overtime - think Breaking Bad, Parks and Rec. Both shows start off slower, focus on character building in the earlier seasons. Then they become plot focused later on.
Other shows have the flexibility to create new story arcs so each season almost stands on its own but they still stay within the larger overarching premise, example - The Great, Game of thrones (although they really gave up at the end)
I think good shows have a plan for how to get to the end and mediocre shows do as OP described - have a beginning and end planned and not much in the middle. I don’t think all shows are stuck in Act 2, but it does say something that the ones that aren’t stuck there stand out that much more
capitalism baby,they need to milk it
Ultimately, the primary satisfaction of storytelling comes from the story ending.
You can do that episode to episode, season to season, etc. I feel like the best shows balance by having plot archs and character archs that can happen independently of each other. That way each episode or two can close one kind of arch while opening another. Because they are different kinds of problems, they’re less likely to conflict, giving you the sense of closure you crave while also creating a sort of cliffhanger.
That’s really hard to do well though, especially over time. And usually expensive.
A lot of shows start with 2-3 seasons of concepts in mind, and hope to get picked up for more. At that point it gets exponentially harder to go on without detracting from what you’ve already built.
I’m glad that most streaming platforms are starting to see value in shows with a fixed ending in mind, it just makes for better storytelling.
I suppose it’s the natural result of wanting to keep the show on as long as possible, when you’ve only got one good idea for the story arc. You need a lot of filler.
I’d like to see more shows done in the style of Babylon 5, where the creator had the whole 5 years written out from day 1. There was very little in the show that felt like filler or treading water.
Which also may explain why books are being brought to TV more frequently these days. But, TV showrunners have a bad habit of taking a good novel and totally mangling it in the translation to TV, so it’s not a guaranteed win.
I like the idea that a lot of series are repeating Act II over and over. I had never thought of it that way, but it makes a lot of sense.
I always found East Bound and Down jarring in some respects, the jump from the US, to Mexico, to Myrtle beach at the time felt all over the place, but in retrospect it gave every season of the show a different world to play in. I rewatched it during Covid and really enjoyed it moving around and even though some people like different venues for the show as a whole I feel it made the shower stronger.
Is that the mullet baseball guy? I didn’t realize there was more than one season of that!
Friend, you are in for a treat
Awesome, I could use one.
It depends on the show.
In some cases, shows are written to be anthologies of stories. The characters stay similar across episodes and seasons, but the isn’t really an overarching plot. Sitcoms are known to use this a lot. Plot across episodes is mainly done to give writers something new to write.
In other cases, several plot lines are happening at once which resolve at different times. That way, there is always a plot having something happening even if other plots end or hit a resting point. A lot of soap operas did this.
Finally, there can be one overarching plot that gets resolved, but then another plot starts to take its place or the show ends. A lot of modern science fiction is written that way.
@delitomatoes Many sitcoms have an overarching romance arc between two leads that gets stretched out for eternity. I don’t know how much I can vouch for “The Office” handling other storylines, but the getting Pam and Jim together 1/3rd of the way through the series, and then not having them constantly breaking up and dating other people and then getting back together (like Friends) was a real breath of fresh air. The show really proved they could survive as an anthology without having the main romantic arc to fall back on. Of course, later on they introduce serious romantic arcs for other characters.
A good show will treat each season as a new story within the over all series, with 3 acts in a season.
I’m confused by your question.
Is your objection cliffhanger endings? Those are more common in American media. Or is it lack of plot progression, which is common across all media? Even shows famous for moving the plot forward never stray too far from the start.
