What Show Should Have Only Had One Season?

[Atomoctba]

Which brings up a tangent, when a series starts relying on flashbacks to stuff already well tread (or to retcon in stuff they didnt think of then) a show is about to take a turn for the worse.

This is the case with Lost. Damon Lindelof said once in an interview that some mysteries from 1st and 2nd seasons were not thought beforehanded, but just cast off as part of building a legendary. Troubles started to come when they needed explain that mysteries and retcon most of them in a messy way.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think it can if it's either:

A) Enough of a stinker that it's actually kind of horrid. Because now whenever you think of the show you think of that (which isn't true of a one-off bad episode, generally).

or

B) Recontextualizes the entire show in a really annoying or stupid way.

The main reason I think people object to the nuBSG ending/last season is that it does B. It takes a show that had vague religious allusions, but was fundamentally a pretty straightforward SF series, and the ending recontextualizes it a very vague-yet-annoying faux-religious, faux-scientific way, turning it from somewhat towards the harder end of sci-fi (for the most part) to essentially pure fantasy. Had the show always been fantasy I don't think an ending like that would have been remotely as off-putting. The ending also features characters acting very well... out of character.


I mean, pretty much every reality TV show by that logic, even the few I like.

Actually though an awful lot would genuinely have been better with only one season - Big Brother springs immediately to mind.


I mean, there is a very clear point when it got bad, which is about/after S10.

It's pretty widely agreed (nothing is agreed by everyone, not even the colour of the sky):

I know I kept watching past that for a year or three, but it was noticeable that even "okay" episodes were thin on the ground after that, and you might get one "good" one per season - and zero "classics". In fact as far as I know, there hasn't been a single like classic-tier Simpsons episode in the last 15 years, maybe more like 25.

And believe me I've asked! In the post-pandemic I really wanted some new Simpsons. I tried just watching it, but it was like, dreadful. Unwatchable. But I figured with over 20 years of episodes I hadn't seen, there had to be some good ones. I looked for guides, and asked on forums and Reddit and just no-one had any episodes after the early 2000s that they recommended except some Treehouse of Horrors (for whatever reasons, a few more recent ones of those have worked).

I was actually shocked. I expected to be bombarded with lists of episodes that people were just too snobby to watch. I expected people to have bunches of favourite episodes from the last 20 years.

But they didn't. Not even the people who were still watching it. It was weird, like profoundly weird to me. How do you watch a show for 30 years and only have favourite episodes from like the first 10? Which is what I was getting told, again, by people who were still watching it! Talk about a living death!

I went through imdb similar idea. Most scores are below 7. A good episode now is 8.

Family guy similar problem but you can still find an occasional gem.

 

[Gradine]

This is the case with Lost. Damon Lindelof said once in an interview that some mysteries from 1st and 2nd seasons were not thought beforehanded, but just cast off as part of building a legendary. Troubles started to come when they needed explain that mysteries and retcon most of them in a messy way.

I would say that the lesson learned from this is that it's perfectly fine to just... not answer the mysteries.

I mean people got pissed off at Lost for that too, but at least in that case they were wrong

 

[The Soloist]

Travellers should have had a satisfying resolution at the end of season one.

 

[MarkB]

I would say that the lesson learned from this is that it's perfectly fine to just... not answer the mysteries.

I mean people got pissed off at Lost for that too, but at least in that case they were wrong

The issue with Lost is that in a lot of their marketing, their after shows and their social media they were actively challenging the audience to try and put things together and see if they could work it all out. Which implies that there is a specific "it" to be worked out, and that the clues being given were accurate.

 

[payn]

Travellers should have had a satisfying resolution at the end of season one.

The reset was pretty cool tho.

 

[trappedslider]

Travellers should have had a satisfying resolution at the end of season one.

It still had a satisfying ending imo

 

[Spectral Anomaly]

I would say that the lesson learned from this is that it's perfectly fine to just... not answer the mysteries.

I mean people got pissed off at Lost for that too, but at least in that case they were wrong

Or if you're in the business of writing stories that you have some sort of plan/idea where that story might go instead of just throwing all sorts of random crap out there with the thinking that someone else will figure it out for you later.

 

[Gradine]

Or if you're in the business of writing stories that you have some sort of plan/idea where that story might go instead of just throwing all sorts of random crap out there with the thinking that someone else will figure it out for you later.

<shrug> It worked for Chris Carter

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I would say that the lesson learned from this is that it's perfectly fine to just... not answer the mysteries.

I mean people got pissed off at Lost for that too, but at least in that case they were wrong

That's true, and Lindelof has done really well with that in other works (he's actually a good writer, contrary my beliefs prior to The Leftovers).

But you have to pick a lane.

Either, you're open with the audience that not everything is going to be explained or make sense, and that they shouldn't try to - in which case, you're not really making a "mystery box" show, you're making a "mysterious" show - which is a different thing, and appeals to a slightly different audience.

Or you're saying that you have a plan, that mysteries will all have answers, at least in your head/plan, and that you're going to stick to that plan and gradually reveal stuff, and thus it's cool to speculate on it and trying and work out what's going on. This is how "mystery box" shows tend to operate now - they do actually pre-plan.

Lost's problem was that, because it was still developing the format, they kind of tried to have their cake and eat it, as it were. It really didn't help that the writers were clearly enjoying their sudden fame and did a lot of interviews and talked a lot of smack. In S2 or S3 one of them even said what amounted to "We changed the plot because the audience guessed too close to what we were doing", which like, ugh. That's not what people want to hear!