What Show Should Have Only Had One Season?

[Ruin Explorer]

<shrug> It worked for Chris Carter

Counterpoint: It didn't work for him.

The X-Files was a hit because it was incredibly zeitgeist-y, and was cool and featured two very attractive leads and snappy dialogue. Cool.

But every single show Carter tried since, was cancelled "early" or flopped - Millennium, Harsh Realm, Lone Gunmen, and he's basically been unemployed in Hollywood since 2001 as a result, and hasn't worked, except to make a 2014 pilot for Amazon, which didn't lead to a series.

I guess there was the brief and awful X-Files revival too. I had put that out of my mind.

 

[Gradine]

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!

Yeah, that's where you end up making mistakes. Not to say that you shouldn't change up what you're planning based on feedback on earlier entries to the story; that's pretty fundamental. That's not even to say "Oh crap, I've made this too obvious, maybe I think I should think of something different" is necessarily bad. But that's the one thing you should never, ever admit.