The problem is that there’s a fundamental divide between having long, regularly running shows and high quality story-driven stories. IMO they should stick to having long runners with the more old school format, one season a year, possibly more episodes per season, even if the quality suffers from it, and then go all out on limited series that wrap in a single season, and treat those more like extra long movies cut into parts. Now they’re trying to be somewhere in the middle and that’s the result.
Shows overstaying their welcome has always been such a massive issue. Execs see how popular a show becomes and demand more ASAP, even if the show was never meant for it. It’s pretty old now, but Heroes is such a good example. The writers wanted the show to follow an anthology format, mostly new characters and stories every season, but seeing the cult following, NBC wanted more of the same, despite the writing not being there to support it and it went downhill fast.
It was a shitstorm of things that hit it from multiple sides. NBC wanted more episodes asap, writers strike, a show that was never intended for multiple seasons of the same story, and a massively squeezed production timeline absolutely demolished that show.
Yeah things need to have an end with these kinds of stories. Conversely though, there’s definitely stories or concepts which work great in the long term, it’s just that we need to accept maybe they won’t feel like movies and just roll with the formulaic nature, nothing wrong with the monster of the week IMO.
The problem is that there’s a fundamental divide between having long, regularly running shows and high quality story-driven stories. IMO they should stick to having long runners with the more old school format, one season a year, possibly more episodes per season, even if the quality suffers from it, and then go all out on limited series that wrap in a single season, and treat those more like extra long movies cut into parts. Now they’re trying to be somewhere in the middle and that’s the result.
Shows overstaying their welcome has always been such a massive issue. Execs see how popular a show becomes and demand more ASAP, even if the show was never meant for it. It’s pretty old now, but Heroes is such a good example. The writers wanted the show to follow an anthology format, mostly new characters and stories every season, but seeing the cult following, NBC wanted more of the same, despite the writing not being there to support it and it went downhill fast.
I thought it was the writers’ strike that ruined it?
It was a shitstorm of things that hit it from multiple sides. NBC wanted more episodes asap, writers strike, a show that was never intended for multiple seasons of the same story, and a massively squeezed production timeline absolutely demolished that show.
Yeah things need to have an end with these kinds of stories. Conversely though, there’s definitely stories or concepts which work great in the long term, it’s just that we need to accept maybe they won’t feel like movies and just roll with the formulaic nature, nothing wrong with the monster of the week IMO.