One my good friend's and his wife usually do a cookout and have a little party for every season of Stranger Things. He asked if I would be going this year and I said no. He actually has gotten tired of the show but his wife still wants to watch. I thought the second season was worse but still didn't annoy me until the third season. I have reached a point of being so tired of the "girls who are much better than men" trope that is in everything and to top it off, they have the "insert unnecessary lgbt character"
I remember reading that she was supposed to be added as a romantic subplot for the reformed jock (makes sense for a show paying homage to the 80s) but then they decided to subvert expectations. So I would imagine the next season the four original boys will be background characters so the girls can shine. Also, that little sister was annoying, but of course the critics raved and said that lesbian character was the best one.
Too many shows these days outstay their welcome, even if they start out good. Westworld, True Detective, etc. even ignoring the encroaching wokeness shows like this just run out of ideas.
I think it should be more like they do with British shows; plan it out, just have the whole series be only one or two seasons and then end it at the right time, nobody wants to see a show that used to be good shuffle off and become a zombie.
Breaking Bad is the only drama I can think of that doesn't either get canceled or crawl up its own ass.
I feel like season 5 Breaking Bad did kind of suck though.
S01-S04 Walt could be seen as pretty much justified in his choices; it was him or them, he was providing for his family and that's what a man does - a man provides.
But even back in 2013 it wasn't acceptable for a man to provide so he has to ham-handedly say it was never for them, he's working with literal nazis, and nobody can profit from drugs (because drugs bad) so they have to needlessly kill side-character Andrea, and so on.
You can say that's just a continuing evolution of his character, but it seems like a mad scramble to unwrite the previous four seasons to post-hoc remove justifications for his actions because people had accepted those as positives (self-defense, david vs goliath, guile/ingenuity).
I agree, they later said that the whole series was always meant to be a case study of how an audience can be conditioned to support an immoral character, and the producers wanted to test how far they could push him before most of the audience stops supporting him - with S5 being when most people broke. Walt was always the bad guy.
I found that hard to believe with some of the story beats, and the unpredictable nature of TV productions.
Breaking Bad needed to end the second Hank learned. The song and dance after had a few great moments, but if the show ended right there, it would have been a pretty kino final shot.
I think I read somewhere that Breaking Bad was written in it's entirety, with the ending already planned before the pilot ever even aired, and they stuck to it. That's why it was so good.
They made lots of big changes. Jesse was supposed to be killed by Tuco in the first season for instance.
I think it was good because of smart writers, but also because it was at the time the only thing AMC had going for it (still the crown jewel after Walking Dead). The show had all the power and the network couldn't step in and make bullshit hollywood changes. Gilligan really had them over a barrel. "Make Walt have a gay sex scene with Jesse" and Vince is like "fuck off" - probably happened hundreds of times.
Dr Who has always been shitty due to it's shoestring budgets.
They need to get rid of the concept of series, PERIOD. If you have a long story to tell, just pitch how many episodes you want to do it in, and none of this cancelling in mid-story bullshit. I'm getting seriously sick of that.
Unfortunately money talks, so even in countries were series aren't common, like Japan, a super-popular story will get the producers insisting on a season two or at least a special. Even when it doesn't make sense in context of the story. At least it's rare. That's still better than what we get here where multiple seasons are expected.
Good point. I love British shows. They used to know good writing
I didn't even bother with S2 even though it looked ok. I could already see how they were trying to hook the audience in with the sorta cliffhanger in S1 and noped outta that. I prefer my stories one and done.
The good news is if you've seen season 1 you've already seen most of season 2 and just about all of season 3 already
Nothing shocked me more than watching an anime and the show being only 20 episodes long. Especially a massive hit anime that's widely regarded as one of the best. And what was more shocking is that wasn't an outlier, sure some animes go on for 40-60 episodes, and others plod along to triple digits of filler, but that a show can tell its story, move through its characters plotlines, and then just simply conclude at the peak...