It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The second series of your top TV show premieres online, and optimism runs high. The initial run ended so perfectly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with other hardcores to find some Easter egg clues pointing toward upcoming twists.
Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. In episode two, your favorite cast member has done something that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. Halfway through the season, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. By the lackluster conclusion, you long for an earlier termination.
The Pitfall of Too Many Seasons
Wishing for cancellation can only be retrospective; most fans protest when their favorite shows are canned before they can get off the ground. Consider Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. Yet audiences can console themselves that the show's quality wasn't tarnished by a weak follow-up.
Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, and every episode hit the right marks. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Top-notch cast members (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. There were multiple award nominations, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to develop the plot thoroughly. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. This news brought me relief.
The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.
Story decisions have weakened the core. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their coping with awful experiences, the story grew padded and excessive. This involved a wearying pattern of bringing in and focusing on new characters (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's disappointing, and watching a beloved program become tedious is sad.
An Increasing Pattern
However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and fallen headfirst into expected or comfortable cliches. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.
Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. Looking at Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, initially a one-season story, return repeatedly with declining quality. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.
The Perfect Example
I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, occupying our minds endlessly, mysteries intact. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. My So-Called Life, the ideal adolescent show, concluded after a single run but was cinematic in its scope: the roles were challenging and multifaceted, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. The ending left questions unanswered, yet this mirrors real life accurately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to address unfinished business. It might only live on an old hard drive, it shows how series resonate profoundly.
The Special Relationship
When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.
- The author writes about the arts, music and fashion.
