Programs Including The Duffer Brothers' Hit and The Survival Drama Are Turning Bloated. I Advocate For the Single-Season Series

Many viewers know this disappointment. Season two of your beloved TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended flawlessly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. During the hiatus, you scoured online forums with dedicated fans to uncover hidden hints shedding light on future developments.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. In episode two, your favorite cast member has done something that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. Halfway through the season, the writers appear to have memory loss around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. And by the disappointing finale, you long for an earlier termination.

The Pitfall of Too Many Seasons

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Look at Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. 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 first season boasted an inventive concept, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) depicted the survivors in dual eras. Numerous awards recognition occurred, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. This news brought me relief.

Young actors prepare for Stranger Things' next chapter.

Story decisions have weakened the core. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their struggle with traumatic memories, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. That included the show’s tiring habit of introducing peripheral figures (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, 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 have lost the shock of the new, and settled into familiar patterns. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. But the game is over when shows such as Big Little Lies, initially a one-season story, extend endlessly with reduced impact. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Supreme Instance

I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, living rent-free in our imaginations, mysteries intact. My top series ever followed this pattern. The classic teen series, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, concluded after a single run but was cinematic in its scope: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the scripts transcended typical youth dialogue. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Though stored on outdated technology, it shows how series resonate profoundly.

The Sacred Bond

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more shows can end gracefully.

• The author focuses on cultural topics.