Why Succession—and all prestige TV shows—should end after four seasons
The fourth season is television's sweet spot, that magical moment when a series can bow out before becoming bloated
TV Features Ferrell
“Six seasons and a movie!” Per Community’s Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), that’s the ideal shelf life for a TV show and the real-life rallying cry of that series’ devoted fanbase, an episode-count pipe dream they willed into prophecy. (The Community movie, set for Peacock, will reportedly begin filming in summer 2023.) But, with all due respect to Abed and the many fans of that series out there, they’re sorely mistaken: Four seasons is TV’s sweet spot.
Sure, a rare, exceptional few can get away with a pinch more, able to gracefully balance quality and quantity: The Wire and Breaking Bad topped out at five seasons each, The Sopranos and The Americans at six. Others, admirably, need even less: the two-season stunner that is Fleabag, all sex and grief and god; the sublime and surreal trilogy of The Leftovers; PEN15 managing to encompass the enormity of preteen girlhood in just 25 episodes. But, by and large, four seasons is a televisual Goldilocks, giving the benefit of breadth—for worlds to be built, for themes to be plotted, for casts to really gel, for feedback to be taken—without the fear of bloat.
Atlanta, The Good Place, and Ozark all complied with the four-season rule. Barry will when it finishes off later this year. And while many viewers mourned the recent announcement that Succession’s fourth season, which premieres March 26, would be its final one, that Logan Roy’s reign of familial terror would be coming to an end on HBO, we howled with the manic glee of Tom Wambsgans in, well, any scene with Cousin Greg. Because Succession resigning from the board after four seasons is doing so at the height of not only its popularity but also its potency, a move that doesn’t just make sense for this specific series (giving each of the four Roy children their own “season” to rise and fall in their father’s favor is tragically poetic, and means that it’s time for the ConHeads hive to rise!), but for every show.
“We played out various scenarios: We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks,” Succession’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, told The New Yorker in February about his decision to conclude the Emmy-winning drama after this coming edition. “Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong.”
“I hope that no one ever thinks that we are outstaying our welcome—that we’re going to do a dud season, or be stretching it out,” Armstrong said. “I hope those concerns never occur to people. I know they do when I’m watching other people’s shows, even ones I admire and like.”
And it does occur, quite often, even to shows we admire and like. Yes, it’s easy to make fun of the Grey’s Anatomys and the Supernaturals of the world, once-snappy shows that spoiled over years—nay, decades—of sitting out on the shelf. But even prestige programs, the ones very comfortable at an awards show podium, have been known to lapse their sell-by dates.
The last truly great season of Game Of Thrones was the fourth (Dead Joffrey! Arya and The Hound! Pedro Pascal!), though it would exhaustingly go on for four more. Ditto Dexter, whose season-four finale—that bloody-good showdown between Michael C. Hall’s Dexter Morgan and John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer—is considered by fans to be the show’s unofficial series end, as opposed to the lumberjack hot mess that would occur four years later.
The fourth-season rescue of the “Oceanic Six” could have—and should have, if creator Damon Lindelof had gotten his way—served as the natural conclusion of Lost, before things crashed even harder thanks to time travel and island lore. And we could have easily bid farewell to June Osborne after she finally enacted her gory revenge on Fred Waterford in season four of The Handmaid’s Tale. (And yet, after an already egregious fifth season that regularly strained audience patience, the Hulu series is coming back for a sixth. Sigh.)
And the four-season rule need not just apply to high-concept dramas, ones whose mythologies and mysteries get tiresomely drawn out year after year. Even the most lovable of sitcoms—the second most forgiving genre when it comes to duration, after animated series—can grow mold over time. Many believe The Office shouldn’t have continued past the season-seven departure of Michael Scott (Steve Carell), which ushered in a revolving door of miscast replacements (James Spader, Will Ferrell) and an era favoring broader comedy over the humorous realism of earlier, stronger seasons. But we’d argue that the day-to-day dealings of Dunder Mifflin could have been tightened up even further to a tidy four seasons, after the will-they-won’t-they of Jim and Pam officially landed on the side of “they will.” (And, really, the show would never again live up to the sheer cringe-comedy perfection that is season four’s “Dinner Party,” anyway.)
In an age that’s more taken with binging television than merely watching it, it’s no surprise that viewers should desire such massive catalogs, with dozens of hours of entertainment across nearly as many seasons. But we already have volume. It’s the era of “Too Much TV,” after all. What we’re after now is vitality. Rather than bulk up our favorite shows with additives and filler, why not keep them lean and mean and good to the last bite?
129 Comments
I’d really like to see TV seasons treated more like movies. You do one that tells a satisfying story with a beginning, middle, and end (no cliffhangers!), and if enough people watch it, you figure out how to make another one – as opposed to so many shows that have a beginning, a middle, and then leave like five plotlines unresolved, because that’s what season 2 is going to be about.The way the business of TV works, I’m really not convinced that there’s any magic number for how long a show “should” last. If a show is successful, it creates an inherent incentive to keep going for everyone involved – the network/platform because having popular shows is good for revenue, and the production studio because it means everyone stays employed. Especially for union crew members who see their pay go up on or after season 4. That’s obviously not a compelling reason for viewers to keep a show going past its “best by” date, but it is what it is.
Supernatural ended well with season 5, but they beat that dead horse for 10 more seasons. I watched during the pandemic since but gave up at the start of season 11.
Perfect example. I remember a friend told me that Eric Kripke said in an interview he had a plan for five seasons (he said this while the show was still in its first season). But the show was successful enough by the end of season 5, that the CW wanted more. And clearly, the studio that produced Supernatural wanted to keep it going (which IIRC made plenty of money in merchandise). The cast and crew liked their jobs enough to keep it going. And the flipside is that, had Supernatural not been successful and was cancelled before its fifth season, fans would have complained that they never got to see what Kripke had planned. You can write all the thinkpieces in the world that shows should end when X happens, but you can’t predict what will and won’t be successful enough to get to whatever magical number of seasons fans think is appropriate.That was all for mid-2000s network television. I think today with the prominence of streaming and prestige television that “feels more like a movie split into chapters than a TV show” (and Netflix cancelling shows after one or two seasons) it makes more sense to abandon the idea of planning out multiple seasons altogether and just focus on making one good season of television.
Thank you, and for expanding on the why it ran for so long.
“12 hour movie” style TV is the worst, haha!Even intensely serialized shows like The Wire have individualized episodes.
That’s why these creators need to put their foot down.You know how many times Dragon Ball Z was supposed to end, and they told Toriyama he had to keep going?
For all that the first five seasons of Supernatural is a perfectly cromulent unit of Television, there’s really something to be said for them continuing on for another decade just And Theeening the plot to some of the most ridiculous places. It has a lot of ups and downs, enough that I just kept it on in the background while doing other things to skim over the boring arcs (honestly the only way I could get through most Arrowverse shows too), but I think it’s probably worth it to see it through just because of how much insane shit they pull out of their asses to keep it going. It’s like a Bizarro World Doctor Who, and while I’m relieved it didn’t happen, I can’t say I would have been been surprised if Ackles and Padalecki had decided to quit and the network just wrote in a double regeneration plot to keep it going with new actors for another twenty years.
I enjoyed the take on God, angels, and demons. Also liked that it was the overall story of the series (like the black ooze aliens, the aliens with sewn eyes & mouths on The X-Files). Sometimes the monster of the week stories were ‘meh’ which made it tough to binge the next episode.
Despite what I’ve said here, the 200th episode ‘Fan Fiction’ was their best (IMO, since I stopped watching after the first ep of S11).
I think TV is already being treated more like movies, thanks to the rise of the binge model, and everything being serialized. But they want to have their cake and eat it to, by continuing to use things like cliffhangers to end the year. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, but it’s a matter a preference, I suppose.
I’d really NOT like to see that. That’s TV writers cutting their own throats to serve the impossible to please disparate attention spans of viewers. It’s bad enough that some showrunners *already* view TV shows as “extended movies”, and thus fuck up the structure of episodes. It’s bad enough that streamers are perfectly happy to let egomaniac showrunners reject staffs cuz that’ll save them cash.There needs to be a balance between outputting quality TV narratives and ensuring that TV writers get to pay rent and feed themselves.
I mean, I’d be happy to go back to episodic storytelling with overarching subplots that span multiple episodes, but it seems like high-concept, serialized storytelling is already here and not going anywhere. If showrunners are going to treat TV seasons like movies (like they already are), then I’d appreciate it if they commit to the bit and not presume they’ll have multiple seasons to tell their story. I don’t know how many shows Netflix has to “prematurely” cancel to get this through showrunners’ heads, but it clearly hasn’t been enough.But also, the economics of TV only work if people watch shows as they are released. But some people are understandably apprehensive about starting to watch shows that they are worried will be cancelled before the story is finished. So they wait. But the more people wait, the less people watch, which means less incentive to renew shows. It’s a doom loop. Something has to change.
Oh for sure serialized is here. And has been for decades. Sure, we have the Netflix binge model but not every streamer has followed that and there have been quite a few Netflix shows whose criticisms have included shitty structure due to the binge method. Whether people watch episodes in a marathon or not, individual episodes require some narrative satisfaction. Lost was serialized but it was also excellent at giving every episode an A plot or supporting B plot closure. I could be open to the argument that we only have that expectation because that’s how TV shows have been written “in the past”, but I’m always suspicious of arguments from a place of novelty. Stories are always three acts, even if you break those down into 5 or 6 “act breaks” per hourlong episode. And they always have some closure/satisfaction. (I don’t mean personal satisfaction here, I mean narrative satisfaction.)I mean… To be fair to the discussion I’m a fucking screenwriting wank. It’s my field of study as an academic and it’s what I teach. So I am probably more invested in discussing the particulars than Joe Average. And I want my students to have jobs when they get out of school so I’m always going to bristle at anything that threatens their job prospects, which to my mind includes a, all due respect to your position, defeatist attitude. I’m not saying you don’t have a point because I believe you do. But I don’t think the onus should be on the showrunners to fix the problem that Netflix fucks up their shows. They’ve canceled shows that people got invested in and it wasn’t because the format was wrong. I think you’re proposing a solution to a problem that Netflix made themselves and I don’t think it should be on writers to fix it. I also think viewers could stand to take a little personal responsibility, too. It IS understandable that a viewer wouldn’t want to invest in a show that might get canceled. But that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Well, obviously I’m biased but I don’t think my opinion is defeatist, or puts anyone’s job prospects at risk. Writing for TV has changed a lot over the past several decades based on several factors, like the introduction of DVDs being released in between seasons, DVR, streaming, etc. And to be honest, I don’t even think Netflix is particularly worse about cancelling shows than any network in the past. It used to be that if a show premiered to low ratings, it would get canned within a few weeks. But shows back then were also extremely episodic, and you could start watching an episode mid-season and the theme song would tell you everything you needed to know. Now we’ve shifted to another extreme, where first seasons will feel like the first act of a giant story. That might be fine when you’re binging a completed show, but it’s honestly pretty annoying to have to wait over a year (which itself is a change from when you used to only have to wait four or five months for a show to return from hiatus) for the next part, if it happens at all. I’m just saying, the format has evolved, and I think prestige TV writers should adapt.
Of course…non-Netflix streamers have moved away from the “Drop every episode on Day One” model because of the exact issues you cite!It seems more and more that “the format” didn’t “evolve” so much as it had a phase, haha
I think we’re seeing more like that.
I do agree with four or five seasons, then if they want more have a spinoff so you allow the actors who want to move on to move on and the show to do a change of focus or story.
Yellowjackets is planned for five, which I think will work, since it’s an intentional story arc. It’s hard to give a definitive timeline for television. It is true, though, that the temptation to go on too long is difficult to resist, and in retrospect, it’s usually pretty obvious when a show should have bowed out gracefully.
My concern with Yellowjackets is by the time Season 5 comes around, I’ll have forgotten most of the threads they’re wrapping up that will have started in the first few seasons. Honestly had trouble following. the last season of Better Call Saul because of this.
I’m just getting around to watching Fargo and was honestly kinda surprised there’s a fifth season coming. It’s been quite solid so far, so maybe the folksy Minnesota vibe won’t overstay its welcome.True Detective is coming back for a season 4 with Jodie Foster. Against popular wisdom, I liked season 1 the least & season 3 the most. Hope the new season keeps the upward trend going.
True Detective no longer has the same showrunner. Nic Pizzolato is now making some western series for Amazon.I quit Fargo after season 3. I didn’t have confidence in Noah Hawley’s writing, especially not to tackle mid-20th century race relations in the midwest. That’s despite being a big fan of Jessie Buckley.
Season 4 was way better than 3.
I liked S3 more than S4 personally and think of it as only a notch below S1 and S2. The performances were just as strong, the story just wasn’t as well done. S4’s story is a complete mess and the standout performances really don’t compare to the earlier seasons IMO.
As messy as it was, I liked the story in 4 better. Thewlis and McGregor did have amazing performances in 3, though.
That’s still a low enough bar not to compel me to watch.
I’m halfway through season 2, so still a bit to go, but I really like it a lot so far. The casts are stacked, not even just with the bigger names, but also people who (for me at least) tend to be the MVP of anything they’re in. Allison Tolman was that in season 1, Rachel Keller this season, Carrie Coon AND Scoot McNairy in s3, Jessie Buckley in s4.
Didn’t know about the showrunner change for True Detective, that’s a bummer, but who knows? Seeing Jodie Foster do a little prestige TV probably overcomes a lot of shortcomings if there are any.
I have actually seen the film “Tigers Are Not Afraid” from Issa Lopez, the new showrunner/director, which I thought was decent. Oddly enough, the original title used in Mexico is much more generic even though the phrase “Tigers are not afraid” gets stated SO MANY TIMES in the movie.
Season 2 of Fargo is the high water mark though 3 and 4 definitely have some great elements. The pacing is a little off on 3 and 4.
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Your instincts were correct. This aspect of Season 4 fell flat to me. But I’d still suggest giving it a look. The characters- Buckley, Jason Schwartzman, Timothy Olyphant, and even Chris Rock are a more interesting collection than that of S3, imo.
I felt S4 was a massive step down, despite that (largely misused) cast. Only Buckley’s performance resonated for me, even if she seemed to be a Raising Arizona/Burn After Reading/Hudsucker character in a Man Who/Miller’s Crossing landscape. Plus, it should be said, Rock can’t act.
Good instinct. S4 was Godfather 3 bad.
Hawley and Pizzolato both lost the thread. Legion season 1 and part of season 2 really worked, but I think season 3 of both Fargo and Legion broke his brain. Everything became heightened in ways that were not at all fun (very much throwing spaghetti at the wall territory). And True Detective couldn’t recapture the magic of season 1 even after Pizzolato left the series. I also think it points to the challenge of anthologies. They have to start from the ground up each time. The halo effect isn’t that strong and viewers are very willing to abandon new, weaker seasons.
this take on True Detective is wack
Seasons 1-3 are singular slices of gold. Season 4, however, feels like the FrankenCoen mess people feared the original idea of a Fargo show would yield. It is an absolutely rudderless mix of Coen tropes to no discernable end.
Fargo Season 2 is one of my all-time favorite seasons across all TV shows so it is hard for anything else to quite match up.But while both 3 and 4 had issues, they were still more interesting/entertaining to me than most things on TV. My hope is setting Season 5 in Minnesota in 2019 will help avoid some of the issues of Season 4. Of course Season 3 had a similar setting, but I think its issues were just about plotting and (arguably) the dual casting, all of which are just general issues with doing a good show.
I lean more toward 5 seasons as the sweet spot. Buffy’s 4th Season would have been a disappointing end, while Season 5 would have made for a fine finale. Babylon 5’s 5-Season plan hit some stumbling blocks, but, overall, worked well (and would have worked even better without the cancel/uncancel situation). Supernatural, as mentioned by others had a solid 5-Season arc. Of course, 5 seasons used to be the minimum goal for network television, so they would have the 100+ episodes for syndication.
Of course, 5 seasons used to be the minimum goal for network television, so they would have the 100+ episodes for syndication.These days that’d take 12+ seasons…
Stranger Things will also be ending in 5 seasons. But obviously they have a smaller episode count. This is one of the points I was going to ask, because I think the number of episodes plays an important role too. (We saw this effect Game of Thrones’ shortened final years)
X-Files and 24 both had great fifth seasons too. There’s stuff to enjoy afterwards but both would have left on a high (especially 24 which had a terrible sixth season).
“so they would have the 100+ episodes for syndication.”100 episodes was never a magic number for syndication. The first number was 65, which is an episode every weekday for a quarter (13 weeks).
It was never a hard-and-fast rule, but 100 episodes certainly was a target for a while.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_episodesIn the U.S. television industry, 100 episodes is the traditional threshold for a television series to enter syndicated reruns.[1][2][3] One hundred episodes are advantageous for stripped syndication because it allows for 20 weeks of weekday reruns (depending on the number of episodes produced once the program debuts in syndication) without repeating an episode, and such shows can be sold for higher per-episode pricing.[4]
I have also found references to the “100 episode” target in Variety and Hollywood Reporter articles. For example, this one from Variety: The coming year will be critical for “Still Standing.” Not only is it entering its third season — bringing it within striking distance of off-net syndication (where the magic number is 100 episodes, or about four seasons) — but the show moves to 8 p.m. this fall, leading off the Eye’s key Monday night sitcom lineup.
Wish GLOW had made that 4th… but come on lots of shows were better well past 4 seasons.
>> And, really, the show would never again live up to the sheer cringe-comedy perfection that is season four’s “Dinner Party,” anyway.
But that would omit the excruciating beauty that is “Scott’s Tots” (although I know some hate it for the same reason), not to mention some of my other Season 5-7 favorites like “Golden Ticket”, the “Michael Scott Paper Company” arc, “Niagara”, etc.
But overall yes, the decline after Season 4 was hard not to notice.
I think S6 had the Christmas episode when Jim let Phyllis be Santa and Michael lost his shit. Kevin sitting on his lap and Michael switching his Santa costume inside out so he was Jesus is hilarious.Baby Shower in S5 is also good. Jan singing Son of a Preacher Man and Dwight birthing a watermelon. Season 8 was a nightmare. Even the cast admits it was just too weird. But I think 9 came back pretty strong. The fact they got the kid who plays Meredith’s son in Take Your Daughter to Work back as her son the male stripper at Angela’s bachelorette party is fantastic. And Mose locking her in the trunk of the car and she gets out with “WTF is wrong with you??!!”I still tear up in the last episode when Erin realizes it’s her Mom in the audience at the documentary cast Q&A.
I’d say the decline came after S5.End it with Jim and Pam in the hospital, with the sound off.
To contrast that point, the article even cites many shorter shows that hit a sweet spot, there are plenty of longer shows which had perfect runs (Sopranos, Saul, to pick two), and most shows don’t even end on their own terms, even if they stick the landing.Heck, there are certain shows I would not mind seeing run into the ground. The other week I remarked there’s a world where Ted Lasso runs for eight just-fine seasons and I’d love it. We’re* adults, we can handle a show that had peaks and troughs.* we, as in the general viewing populace. Not this community.
I fully expect a Ted Lasso spin-off that goes another 3-5 seasons, haha!
I don’t know that 4 should be the set number, but I agree that shows should try to wrap up before they overstay their welcome. Some shows like Dark need 3 seasons, and they’re perfect. 4 isn’t a bad number overall, but I think there’s some leeway.Schitt’s Creek went out on a high note after 6 seasons. I think they were still going strong in the final season and maybe could have gone further, but I’m glad they ended it while it was still really good. I think 4 seasons would have been too few and we got a lot of good stuff in the final two seasons.Game of Thrones didn’t suffer because it went on too long. It suffered partly because they ran out of source material and partly because the showrunners just wanted to be done with it well before it was over. One of the big criticisms of how it ended was that it needed MORE time. But it needed more episodes with the creative team engaged and doing good work, not just trying to wrap it up so they could move on.Anyway, 4 seasons as a general rule is fine, but with the idea that some shows need more and some need fewer.
There are definitely shows that shouldn’t go on past the first couple seasons, such as Fleabag, a show that derives much of it’s power from it’s punchy succinctness. But long-form TV is maybe my favorite artistic medium precisely because that messy sense of sprawl can instill so much intimacy with setting and characters in a way that can’t really be replicated with movies. I think one reason that so many people are seemingly fed up with long-running shows right now is in part because so many modern ones run out of steam by the second or third season, that we forget how many great shows there used to be that remained great or even creatively peaked well into their runs. I understand this impulse, but to me longevity is one of the most important weapons in TV’s arsenal.
There weren’t just a lot of great shows back then, they also had super long seasons. To keep the quality high, across 6 or 7 seasons, with each season having 22 to 24 episodes, is just phenomenal.I’m in the group that believes show length should be determined on an individual basis. Some shows hit their peak early, others don’t hit their peak until their geriatric eras.Had Seinfeld been canceled after season 4 (which almost happened) we would have never gotten most of its best episodes.I do think character driven shows can comfortably go longer than plot driven show. I don’t need character driven shows to bring their “A game” for the story arc every episode. I am good just spending time in the company of characters I love. Shameless in its final season was a turd, but I still tuned in every week cause I loved the Gallagher family. With the exception of the awful finale, I wouldn’t want to give up that one last season to spend time with one of my all time favorite tv families.
UK shows are kind of an anomaly , as their “series” very short compared to US “seasons”. I mean Red Dwarf ran for 10 + series , but has maybe 60-70 episodes , a US show would nearly have more than that during its third season.
I thought the point was made about prestige TV and not just TV in general. Clearly the Simpsons and Seinfeld did their better work after 4 seasons but are they prestige TV? “Peepshow” is good thru its 9 season run but each season is just 6 episodes and I am also not sure if its prestige TV. At this point Alan Partridge has had more than 4 seasons of good to great work but they have the good sense to switch up the dynamic every season or 2.
I guess it seemed like pretty much any kind of show was up for grabs since shows like the American The Office were being talked about in the article. I disagree though that the rule should apply to prestige drama-type shows either though, can you imagine if The Sopranos’ ending had happened at the end of season 4 as opposed to when it did? Wayyyyy less impact than having it happen after spending so much time with those characters. Part of the point of shows like that and like Mad Men is just how immersed you get in those worlds, I’d argue.
I agree. Sopranos and MadMen were good to the end. Sopranos might could have tightened it up a bit with the last split season. Imagine if Madmen ended at 4 seasons lopping off, at the top of my head, the 2001 paranoia episode and the new Fast Food nuclear family episode. Ideas have the legs they have. Applying a formula is pretty dumb. The central idea that most shows go on too long is certainly true.
You’re getting a star for bringing up Peepshow. That is a magnificent series. #BusinessSecretsofthePharaohs
I can think of plenty of shows that were still going strong after four seasons. Cheers and Seinfeld remained pretty strong throughout their runs. Buffy and Angel’s respective 5th seasons are their best. Ditto TNG’s fifth season , and DS9 was just getting started by season 4. Justified took a noticeable dip in season 5, but season 6 is a masterpiece. Mad Men probably peaked in season 4, but the slope down from that peak is very gentle indeed.
Justified and Mad Men are great examples. Even if the quality of Mad Men was slightly less in the final couple of seasons they still told some rewarding stories to tie it all up (mostly) and it was nice watching Kiernan Shipka succeed. And Ken Cosgrove tapdance! Definitely agree with DS9, whenever I rewatch I typically start around S3 or 4. Since Fargo is an anthology it can kind of get away with staying fresh by swapping out a new cast and character group/plotline each season whilst keeping a few similar themes throughout. And there have been some amazing cast members.
you are missing some absolutely fascinating stories in S1 and S2 of DS9 if you are skipping ahead. I get it, but there’s some real stuff in there worth seeing again.
You’re not wrong, but I’ve seen DS9 enough to know what’s going on in the early seasons. So, while I would recommend a first time viewer to check out the first couple seasons, I don’t feel the need to do so myself as I’ve watched DS9 a billion times. Love that early Picard/Sisko showdown, they brought that up again in the recent comic book series and it was great.
I love the late Mad Men seasons. Probably because my parents divorced and my dad remarried. I think we’re conditioned not to care about a middle aged guy’s second marriage to someone younger (and that’s where a typical story would end) but the show handled it wonderfully and it’s probably the most accurate depiction I’ve ever seen.
I agree with you about Man Men. To me, the quality never dipped. The character development and story is of the highest quality. I get something new every time I re-watch it.
Also, you go to those shows for more than plot advancement. You come to them to hang out with the characters. Tight little seasons don’t offer the same pleasures (but are valid for other kinds of shows).
Seinfeld was really just hitting its stride after 4 seasons. 8 and 9 were very enjoyable, but 4-7 probably represent the peak.
Game of Thrones is a special case. There were more than 4 books (though unfortunately not enough to contain the ending), and nobody would have accepted just ending with season 4.
I tell people to stop at season 4. Tywin is the big bad.
A blog which has since wiped itself off the internet argued that A Storm of Swords is the actual (nihilistic) ending of the series. All the book fans will insist that GRRM is a romantic rather than a nihilist, but he’s just never been able to get past the first book (dealing with Westeros’ civil war) of his originally pitched trilogy, thus the minimum amount of time spent on the threat from the Others that humanity needs to unite against.
In retrospect finding a stopping point and calling it “series one” to be concluded in a second series later would have been preferable to limping across the finish line, but that probably wouldn’t have gone over so well at the time.
The five year gap!
Yellowjackets, take note. (The creators said they have a five season plan).
Counterpoint: this does not apply to most Star Trek, which usually gets better after season 3 and hits its high points in seasons 5-7. Enterprise was just getting good when it got cancelled; TNG and Voyager had their best runs after their fourth season; even DS9, which probably had its overall best year in its fourth season, still had most of its truly superlative episodes later. The newer shows are harder to judge, since only Discovery has produced a fourth season, and Picard is slated to end after the third. Still, though, I’d give them more than four years.That said, I concede that The Simpsons peaked with Season 4.
I definitely agree about Trek. With the exception of ToS and Picard, which only got three seasons, it really seems to take them a couple years to figure out what works. Voyager got way better after 7/9 showed up, DS9 really took 0ff once Sisko shaved his head and grew that badass beard/Worf showed up/Bashir’s past was revealed/Dominion war etc, TNG had some solid early episodes but hit its stride in the middle seasons. I am glad that Picard is only going for three, I mean, I’ll miss it when it’s gone but the whole point of the show seems to be getting the gang back for one last mission, so if it went on for six seasons that would defeat the premise. I hope Strange New Worlds gets at least three.
Seven seasons seems to be a sci fi thing , but it does work .Stargate ran for 8, and was kind of running out of steam on the last one , then soft rebooted into Farsgate SG1 and ran for 2 more seasons .Family sitcoms with a child to teen cast seem to work pretty well over seven seaons as well , as the kids aging into young adults lets the writers keep changing the characters , so its like little cast reboots each season , .I mean Malcolm in the Middle managed 7 seasons I think , and didnt really dip . Modern Family and The Goldbergs ran for 10 or 11? and maybe should have finished at 7?
Soft rebooted into Farsgate SG-1? I think you mean Stargate: Atlantis
SG1 with John Crichton and Aeryn Sun.
Oh yea! Gotcha. I forgot about them suddenly showing up in the last season. I guess they were still under contract with sci-fi channel after Farscape ended.
Simpsons were just getting started in season four! Hell, the first 2 seasons are so crudely animated and humorless I don’t even count them. Peak Simpsons was S3-S7, so there’s the magic #4.
Eh, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul each needed more than four. I could see cutting BCS to five but not lower.
Rules like this don’t mean much, the real truth is that shows should end while they’re still good which is a tall order for any showrunner.
Breaking Bad needed more than 4 as it was, but chop up the first season and much of the 2nd into one and it would be done all in 4.
Strong disagree. You can’t lose anything from season two (one of the best seasons of television period) and season only feels off because it got cut short by the writer’s strike. Besides which the last season had to be extra long to fit everything. Gotta be a 5 season show.
breaking bad’s fifth season went on too long
I disagree with this – I don’t think you can really cut any episodes from S1 and S2 and end up with the same product. I also think S5 is two seasons masquerading as one so AMC didn’t have to renew contracts with actors.
It took me three seasons to enjoy Better Call Saul. The first two seasons seemed like tedious law firm inside baseball to me.
BCS easily could be a tight four. I think you might be forgetting a lot of bloat and filler between s3 and 4.
Jesus, dude it’s not a golden rule. It’s a good example of a show having an endgame in sight. Literally all they’re saying.
“Always leave them wanting more” should be the golden rule TV showrunners live by. It might sound perverse but it means you’ve ended things before things start to get disappointing.
Arrested Development would beg to differ.
4 seasons? Amateurs. Police Squad peaked within its first 6 episodes.
Well, 12 Monkeys had 4 seasons and was basically perfect, so I’ll agree.
maybe I’ve missed something but the constant hype over Pedro Pascal is getting a bit weird. did he cure aids or something?
He’s just a very good actor hitting all the right notes right now.
He’s just really cute and everyone wants to hug and kiss him.
He only invented the HIV prep treatments with less medications.
Yes.
With the shows I’ve watched, many of their best seasons have been either their 1st, 2nd or their 4th, so something about this rings true to me. But going longer isn’t normally a problem… Until after Season 6. Like clockwork, this decline has been consistent in my television. Name the best Season 7s ever. 8s. 9s? Is there any show where it’s 10th season was its best? I’m genuinely curious. In the meantime, I’m siding with Abed on this.
I think Seasons 7 and 8 of The Simpsons are probably their best, but it’s almost not even fair to include it in the discussion. Even still, I would rate Simpsons’ Season 10 as better than plenty of other shows’ best seasons.
S10 was the last decent Simpsons season too. My god, that was nearly 25 years ago.
I think Parks S7 beats 5 and 6.
Seinfeld. Season 7 is easily in its top 2-3 seasons. Seasons 8 and 9 are very good as well. I’m glad Jerry and Larry decided to end the show before it overstayed its welcome.
*Correcting myself because it occurred to me that other than coming in for the finale, Larry wasn’t officially involved in the show after season 7.
Mad Men S7 is great and ends the series well. And I will always maintain that it’s really two separate seasons that were called one season for contractual reasons only because Part 1 and Part 2 take place in different time periods and are distinctly different stories. So I informally count it as both S7 and S8.The Venture Bros. also has a great S7 and I have all the confidence that it would have had a great S8 if it wasn’t cancelled.Now I wouldn’t say those are the best seasons of the show but they are necessary / worthwhile. Like Mad Men doesn’t end that well if it ends after the 4th season or 5th season IMO.
Seinfeld’s season 7 is the best of them all. But I also love 8 and 9. To me that show only got better.
Seasons 9 and 10 of It’s Always Sunny are two of my favorite seasons of the show. Definitely more than a few classic episodes in there.
I really don’t think there is any hard and fast rule – I would bet you can find as many shows that went 5-7 seasons that are all-time greats as you can those that lasted 4 or less. I can think of plenty off of the top of my head that aren’t mentioned here – Mad Men being first on the list.
And FWIW, I really thought The Good Place should have been a five season show with the revised experiment being S4 and fixing the actual good place and coming to peace being S5. I liked the ending and its a great show regardless but it did feel a bit rushed towards the end.
I agree that 4 or maybe 5 seasons should be the aim for most shows. Making it longer seems to inevitably distort the show to the point where it actually ruins the entire series. I really don’t like watching most television because every character development, every triumph, every bitter lesson is all likely to be twisted and invalidated to feed the drama machine in later seasons. Every victory is hollow and every character development is meaningless, if the show is allowed to go on long enough.
sometimes the extra time does help a la ds9 and Arrow, other times it does not X-Files.
And other shows even with their long time should go on longer a la south park (sniff Legends of Tomorrow)
There’s room for 2 kinds of shows: the tightly controlled 3-4 season drama or comedy, and, on the other hand, sprawling shows that feature high episode counts and plenty of “hang out” time (Friends, Gilmore Girls, etc.). I want both. I want the easy hangs and the edge-of-my-seat plotlines. (And, if you see what people actually spend time streaming in the year-end lists, it tends to favor longer, bloated series. People like a little treading of water. They like bottle episodes and diversions that are done just for fun.)
I will support this list on the condition that we get a season 4 of Hannibal
My fucking man!!!
I still can’t believe that show was on f-ing NBC primetime. It was like 3x gorier than Dexter. Also, wasnt there supposed to be a “Clarice” show?
Counterpoint:Angel Season 5 was an absolute banger and my favourite season in the entire Buffyverse. The latter half of the season was a near perfect end run to the finish.PS: Yes of course it was prestige TV!
We rewatched Angel last year and I agree that S5 was the best season, with the biggest emotional punches (I’m still mad about Fred (not that I don’t like Illyria)). Also, “Smile Time” is the single greatest episode of TV in history.
Wesley is dead.I am feeling grief for him.I wish to do more violence now.
Counterpoint:Angel Season 5 was an absolute banger and my favourite season in the entire Buffyverse. The latter half of the season was a near perfect end run to the finish.
This is dumb. It’s like saying every novel should be 450 pages long and every song should be two minutes and forty-five seconds.Different stories require different lengths of time to tell. A show should go on for as long as that takes, and no longer. Some shows are gonna hit that point at four seasons, others are going to take more time, others will take less time. Let them figure it out for themselves instead of giving an arbitrary number. That’s as bad as network TV’s impetus to keep shows running forever even when they have nothing left to say.
It also depends on how long the seasons are. Are we talking 22 half hour episodes? 13 hour-long? Old school 26 hour-long? Peep Show ran nine seasons of 6 episodes. The Office (US) had more episodes in three seasons.The CW DC shows struggle filling 22 episodes. The Marvel Netflix series each had at least one episode of the protagonist injured or otherwise inactive to fill the order. If a show runner says “here’s my pitch for this season, I have enough material to fill X hours” don’t come back and say “okay, you have to fill X+8 hours.”
a郭文贵的谎言 小蚂蚁的毒品近年来，郭文贵的无耻不断的刷新着大众对骗子的认知，挺郭者中理智尚存的纷纷清醒，而残余蚂蚁帮扭曲的三观让吃瓜群众叹为观止。他们对漏洞百出的谎言深信不疑，对显而易见的真相置若罔闻，沉浸在郭文贵的谎言中无法清醒。郭文贵的谎言是大众的笑料，却是他自己和小蚂蚁们赖以生存、为之疯狂的毒品。如果郭文贵的喜马拉雅是疯人院，那么恭喜郭文贵和蚂蚁帮已提前到达终点。谎言毒品——权贵上层权贵是郭文贵一直求而不得的身份，是爆料革命不可或缺的部分，也是诱惑小蚂蚁的重要毒品。每当谎言被戳得惨不忍睹时，他就会幻想出一些神秘事件和人士抬高身价。以前的我盟、老领导、特情局、神秘会议、全球反CCP联盟组织、大军火商、前元首、美国政坛未来的高层。而小蚂蚁们也尤为喜欢这一套，为郭文贵的“独立顾问”沾沾自喜。至于故事中的商人干预政治、总统跨党派选参谋、未来领袖关键时刻不操心中期选举却管他国闲事这些与常理相悖的情节，小蚂蚁们一概忽略。郭文贵这些只为效果不顾常理的权贵故事，确实能让贪慕虚荣的无脑蚂蚁们失去理智，但这也是绝路上自欺欺人的海市蜃楼。谎言毒品——阴谋郭文贵眼见权贵故事被砸得粉碎，就立马换药，蹭热点爆假料，曾经为重庆公交车坠江事故塑造阴谋的面纱。这起事故的起因有黑匣子的监控视频为证，整个事件过程的回溯详细完整，强大的网友也扒出了女乘客和司机的身份，这确实是一出悲剧，但显而易见的与阴谋绝对无关。可郭文贵偏要借题发挥，杜撰出阴谋的味道，而性喜阴谋的小蚂蚁们果然无中生有的恶意揣测出了各种疑问。这是对证据确凿、事实脉络清晰的事件百般质疑，他们已经完全丧失了对真相的追求，只要有阴谋，真相完全不重要。郭文贵为了阴谋而阴谋，确实能让性喜阴谋的小蚂蚁们兴奋异常，却让大众更加看清了这出名为民主实为闹剧的所谓爆料革命的真面目。谎言毒品——金钱财产被冻，债台高筑，而股票又连连失利，郭文贵的财产和爆料革命一样风雨飘摇，但为了残存的蚂蚁帮，郭文贵只能硬着头皮炫耀财富。“越南制造”的战袍送不起，以次充好的领带被打脸嘲笑，不得已郭文贵编出个专业摄影师摆阔，还不忘奉上几张照片作为证明。满眼闪着金光的小蚂蚁只看得见郭文贵的虚假炫富，却看不见他对全球经济趋势的一无所知，他的巨额财富来源于罪恶终结于法律，在国外偷生的逃犯除了做梦，现实中绝不会再次侥幸成为挥斥方遒的金融大鳄。郭文贵的炫富，只能吸引无脑的小蚂蚁趋之若鹜，却无法掩盖他捉襟见肘的财务危机。郭文贵的爆料是为了政庇，无料可爆就只能靠谎言维持，政庇遥不可及，谎言却成了郭文贵苟且度日、笼络蚁群的精神毒品，但谎言成不了现实，惩罚终将会来临，郭文贵必将自食恶果。
s郭文贵自导自演“谎言三部曲”笔者近期闲来无事，独自在家重温了一些颇具年代的老电影，品味经典的同时无意间又想到了郭文贵大放厥词，高谈阔论的情景，口中都是“最重要的人物”、“世界级的高层”、“高级的会议”等等，看完令人不禁哑然失笑。文贵这是当完编剧当演员，当完演员现在竟然又想当导演。殊不知当一个好导演也得需要真才实学，那些经不起推敲的荒谬剧本只能感动一下小蚂蚁们。笔者此文正好跟网友们分享一下郭文贵自导自演的戏码到底灵感来源何处。第一部：逍遥法外《逍遥法外》主角弗兰克是FBI有史以来年龄最小的通缉犯，犯罪手段神通广大，伪装身份的能力也是超乎常人。原片中发生的一切，全都重现在文贵的身上。郭文贵人前自诩“正义战士”，实际却官商勾结、非法侵占他人财产，利用公司骗贷、性侵多名女下属等，其罪状数不胜数。不过唯一文贵不比男主角的就是智商，剧中男主演技超群、智商过人，言谈举止都让人无法抓到其把柄，对于初中未毕业的文贵来讲，智商是硬伤，发表言论前后矛盾、逻辑混乱。就在近日的视频中他又干出自扇耳光之事，之前多次盛赞美国媒体，如今竟称在美国“96%的媒体”已经被控制，有人利用美国媒体在诽谤他。这就奇怪了，当初被文贵捧上天言论自由的美国媒体怎么没几天就变成肆意抹黑他的无良媒体了呢？一个人的谎言说的太多，自己都忘了哪是哪了，媒体的作用是披露真相，言论自由不代表会发布虚假信息，为什么将郭文贵弃之蔽履，只因认清了文贵的真面目，不会再轻易上当了。我想此时文贵大概焦头烂额，急需找一个靠谱的“好编剧”为其设计剧情，至少不再让“郭氏好戏”瞬间穿帮。第二部：飞天大盗《飞天大盗》是一部十几年前的英国影片，主角虽然都是骗子，却讲述了一群盗亦有道、惩恶扬善之“侠盗”的故事。不过貌似郭文贵看偏了剧情，没学到侠肝义胆却将反面人物学了个淋漓尽致。郭文贵一步步靠坑蒙拐骗起家，身家倍增，得势后又对他人用尽手段、排挤对手。这些靠非法手段敛取的财富，最终的结果还是从哪儿来的就回哪儿去。大连法院对郭文贵控股的“政泉公司”判处了600亿罚金，也让文贵食到了自己当初种下的恶果。如今的文贵手中不仅没了资金，而且还官司不断，但他依然在镜头前泰然自若、谈笑自如，口若悬河讨论着“美国中期选举”“世界经济趋势”，仿佛这个世界上的大事小事都与他郭文贵息息相关。这让我突发奇想，如果在骗子界搞一个“奥斯卡奖”，那郭文贵一定是当之无愧的“奥斯卡最佳男演员”，毕竟除了他谁还能把每天的生活当戏一样演呢？第三部：臆想成病《臆想成病》是一部法国电影，郭文贵就着电影片名，自导自演了一场年度大戏。现实失意如何寻求心灵的慰藉，文贵每天都活在自己的幻想中，幻想“喜马拉雅”，自设“蚂蚁帮”，以世界统治者身份指点江山，睥睨天下，如今怕是早已分不清哪个才是现实了吧。连政庇申请都遥遥无期，还有能力组织“美国政府的高官”、“美国军火商老大”、“前国家领导人”、“前巨大基金总顾问”频繁“约会”？在被网友拆穿后，文贵又恬不知耻的搬出了“前克林顿总统的幕僚”、“川普总统的内阁”、“巴西总统最信任的人”等等作为话题，笔者也是不得不佩服文贵脑洞之大，入戏之深。但郭文贵越是穷尽所能虚构事实，越是难掩自己已经穷途末路、无人问津的事实。如今的文贵每天都活在自己的臆想中，自编自导超级英雄拯救世界的戏码，谎言说的太多，竟然自己也信了。郭文贵近期都在跟着网络热点走，什么事情最火他就说什么，真可算是挖空了心思、费劲了脑汁。归根结底还是一点，文贵如今已是山穷水尽、穷途末路。奉劝你不要再做无用功，迷途知返，不要继续活在自己自导自演的谎言之中！
d“意见领袖”大衣下的郭文贵风光一时的郭文贵，在蚂蚁们的吹捧下，俨然成为了救苦救难的菩萨，为何郭文贵能一度辉煌无比，一度忽悠了成百上千的无知群众，其实就是在他不停的为自己抹上一层“意见领袖”的外衣，让我们扒开他的这层外衣，看看里面到底藏了一些什么鬼东西。一、材料再加工的大忽悠其实，郭文贵从一开始就想把自己打造成一个被迫害的意见领袖形象。在拉扎斯菲尔德等人提出的“两级传播”理论中，信息先由大众传媒流向意见领袖之后再流向公众，因此，意见领袖这一中介者无疑成了传播的“二把手”，将信息“解释并加工”成符合自己所属群体特性的内容并继续传播扩散。对于有利的内容，他们会主动传播，而对于不利的，则会一概去除。所以显而易见，郭文贵从不谈及自己被讨债，犯罪等问题，其总是非常擅长转移注意力，通过信息的加工和再解释，把一些广为人知的东西重新包装，附上阴谋论、迫害论，就可以快速的组装成一个抓人眼球的“爆料”。可惜，谎言经不起时间的推敲，为了维护好自己的形象，也就造成了现在我们看到的一个谎话连篇的郭文贵。二、无信无力的大骗子郭文贵为何总能有小蚂蚁跟随，从根源来看，就是他所给自己形象的包装和打造，有着支配引导，协调干扰的作用。他以意见领袖的形象，成为群体、人际传播中的重要角色，蚂蚁们所拥趸的对象，必须有着或权威、或可信、或专业的特性，对某一事件具有独特看法，深受大众或群体个人的信任。因此，从最早不知出处的老领导、纽约时报、班农等等，他在努力向关注他的人传播一种信息：他有强力的可信度。他通过所谓的爆料，迎合部分人群的想法，而在社会价值观解构，公众理性丧失，自身判断力减弱的情况下，其也在一段时间内，有效借助自身意见引导舆论，对已有信息产生或协调、或干扰的引领作用。但是，很快的，他的困扰缠身，导致了公信力的急剧下降，他精心打造的形象开始崩塌，用毫无根据、毫无逻辑的谎言编织而成的战神郭文贵，终究会被所有人唾弃。三、扯着虎皮的大混蛋在拉扎斯菲尔德的理论中，意见领袖社交范围广，拥有较多的信息渠道，对大众传播的接触频度高、接触量大，同时意见领袖常常关注那些身边的事件和新闻，并适时发表自己的观点。郭文贵的发布会、全球直播等种种做法与上述理论不谋而合，可以看出其别有用心，正所谓酒香不怕巷子深，他为何一而再，再而三的强调自己与重要人物、重量级媒体的“亲密”关系，原因就是他希望能掌握到一些信息，体现出自己的能量，从而为继续扩散和编造谎言打造一个强有力的虚拟背景墙，他希望通过扩大影响力，从而裹挟民意，为自己的政治庇护提供帮助。可惜，郭文贵拙劣的演技已经使得美国人失望，他最终的结局就是穷途末路。想借意见领袖外衣，用民意武装自己，妄图期待以此获取美国的政治庇护，满嘴谎话的郭文贵这招看似管用，但是抛弃了最基本做人原则的他，怎么可能继续潇洒下去，越来越多的人，开始看清他的真面目，不断萎缩的蚂蚁帮就是最好的证明，他，已无路可走。
This is opening all the Glow wounds again. I want that 4th season daggummit!
I’m torn on this. I think the steady trend towards brevity has been a net-positive in the last 10 years, but there are some losses as we move more to shorter seasons, fewer seasons, and limited series in general.When it’s done right, there is nothing better than a longer, sprawling show. I was SO invested by season 6 of the Americans and I think it’s a far better show for it’s length. Mad Men, which I just rewatched, is slightly less consistent after season 4 but most of my favorite episodes are in those last 3 seasons. For Lost, I actually think 5 is the best season and it’s on 6 where it flopped. Even something like Twin Peaks (which I understand is only 3 seasons and a movie). That 3rd season is 18 episodes long! Are there any other prestige dramas in the last 5 years to do a season that long? And I tell you, I wouldn’t lose a minute of it. It’s brilliant and messy and when you watch it it feels all-consuming. TV as a form can and should be embraced for its length. It can have loose ends and tangents and stand-alone episodes and still have a central propulsive purpose. Often those stray moments can be the most effective.
The British are far more likely to stop a show before it’s worn out its welcome. We tend to prefer driving shit into the ground and then some.
can’t believe we got a whole love letter to perfect 4-season TV shows without so much as a *passing mention* of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the most perfect 4 season show to ever do it. (a roadmap which was pitched from the very beginning, in fact.)“The idea of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was an idea [McKenna] had for a movie,” Bloom told V.F. then. She and McKenna had “no interest in making a show that’s just going to spit out copies of itself. . . . This is about a young woman in a very specific time in her life, going through a crisis. And that just doesn’t sustain itself for nine seasons. I’m an avid TV watcher, and I feel like a lot of shows peak around Season 4, Season 5, and just last way too long.”https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/04/crazy-ex-girlfriend-renewed-season-4-final-season
An arbitrary limit is as silly as stretching past the natural end point.Every story is different.
I don’t want to imagine a world where Six Feet Under didn’t get a fifth season, because that’s a great fifth and final season (especially with the finale).
Unless people want to argue season 4 isn’t very good, and therefore there are still technically just four good seasons.
Yeah, Gilligan had people thinking 5 was good, but only certain people can pull of that many, let alone six. Mr. Robot finished at 4.and How I Met Your Mother should have finished at 4….or 3
S5 of Breaking Bad was both earned and exceptionally handled. The last 2 seasons of Better Call Saul were also excellent. S5 of Mad Men was arguably its best season, and the two more after that were still great all through to the end (yes, including S6.)4 seasons is too many of some shows, not enough of others. Why push a general rule? Shows should last as long as the premise has legs.
I agree that five seasons is the sweet spot for most shows. Usually after the first three or four season actors tend to step away or get written out, most of the best stories have already been told, and if the show is really successful, the breakout actors have started doing other things and aren’t all-in any longer.
When you get into Law and Order: SVU or Grey’s Anatomy territory, there’s little left in the tube except for remixing and replaying the hits or throwing in gimmicks to conceal the tiredness.
Halt and Catch Fire was perfect at 4 seasons. Theory holds up.
It’s a nice idea, but you leave out the people making those decisions and they aren’t the creatives. Lost, the Office, Friends and most network fare lives or dies by network execs running on fear, desperation and adderall. Better to have a hit in the hand than an open time slot. Zombie ratings are still ratings so shows like ER, Gray’s Anatomy and the Law&Orders/CSI will see whole cast turnover sooner than an end to the show. The only one who could say ‘no’ is HBO and who knows if they’ll be the same prestige maker after WB/Discovery. I agree a show with an end in mind is preferable to one dragging on forever, but the ones making that decision are often removed from deciding what is best for the show.
Three seasons: beginning, middle, and end. Even less if possible. Unfortunately it’s all about milking it.