My go to reference for this is Search Party. The first season is the most engaging TV I’ve ever seen, the second season is still pretty damn good, but then the show got picked up by HBO and became total shit for 2 seasons. Like god I fucking hated season 4 of that show.
As far as movies go, I gotta go with Shrek the Third. 1,2 & 4 are all great, but what the fuck was 3?
The first season of game of thrones was mostly excellent (even if a bit SA-ey)
Stranger Things season 1 is really good and has great MKUltra theming. The show goes downward each following season though.
Arrested Development, but it’s obvious why. The first 3 seasons are perfect and then the quality suffers significantly, but that’s somewhat understandable because seasons 4 onwards were filmed a decade later.
I’m of the minority opinion that season 4 is still pretty good, at least in it’s original cut, but season 5 somehow manages to be a comedy show without a single funny joke in it.
I have to hand it to Season 4 of Arrested Development simply because they were on a new medium (streaming) and tried to do something different because of it. They made it work despite of the main cast not being able to shoot together for most of the shoot.
Fringe, and similarly basically any high concept drama without a defined endpoint. Weeds is another one of these. Shows like this can go approximately 3 seasons before self-destructing when they either run out of coherent ideas, exhaust their ability to believably raise the stakes, or a writer shakeup detonates the narrative thread.
Lost is a show that I watched that kind of fits this description.
The last season of Deep Space 9 got really rough with the pah wraiths and how quickly they had to close the story. Still hit some beautiful highs, but I find how quickly they had to end Dukat’s story almost comical.
I think a TV show has a set story in mind, and roughly how that will play out over 3 seasons or so, then it gets wildly popular and the network says “yeah we’re gonna need 9 seasons out of this IP” and then the writers have to figure out how to add some rake kickflips and unnecessary characters when they really don’t have anything more to say with them.
Definitely Dexter. First five seasons are fantastic (although three isn’t as good as people think). Then it’s just “what the fuck were they thinking?” with the rest. New Blood was okay. I still think it should have ended with Dexter getting caught and we find out his narration is him confessing to his crimes before getting executed.
Also, holy shit? Someone else who’s seen Search Party?
I’ve never watched Dexter but I’ve heard ranged things about when to stop. Is it worth picking up for the first few seasons?
Yes I loved Search Party. Seasons 1,2,&5 are great, 3 isn’t that good but 4 is literally the most annoyed I’ve ever been with a show ever
I think the og “canon” was season 1-4, but idk if it’s really aged well. Absolutely banger opening theme tho
I always watch the opening and end credits. Probably the GOAT intro followed by True Blood.
Yeah the first five seasons are great, with season 3 being the weakest. Season 4 is regarded as one of the best seasons in television history. Personally I think 5 is underrated and often people stop at 4 because of the ending. I think if 5 was wedged in earlier, people would have liked it more. It was just overshadowed by 4 and Trinity being a fantastic villain.
Season 6 is where things really start to fall off. The show was still on 12 episode seasons and season 6 could have been condensed to less than 10. It goes on for a bit too long. Otherwise, it would have been a good season.
Seasons 7 and 8 are really bad. A lot of filler, the villains don’t compare to earlier seasons, etc. It was the worst series finale until Game of Thrones. It’s worth watching to set up New Blood, but you wouldn’t lose much just by skimming Wikipedia for plot summaries and watching only a few of the important episodes.
Despite its ending, it’s still one of the best brother and sister stories ever told on TV. It avoids copaganda, depicting cops as corrupt and incompetent. The depictions of forensics, however, are problematic and contributed to the CSI Effect.
I actually liked all of Search Party’s seasons, but I can see why some people wouldn’t. The roundabout chase scene made me completely lose my shit laughing. They probably should have killed Dori off and ended the show after 3 seasons, though.
Silicon Valley on HBO. First 2-3 seasons are fantastic, ignore the rest.
It was schlock, but I thought Sons of Anarchy was fun until the end when it just devolved into concentrated misery porn.
Westworld Season 1 was very promising everything after was just Jonathan Nolan rehashing memento with robots and Jessie Pinkman with a toupee.
Mr Robot was a thrill ride but suffered from the boundaries of liberal thought as it tried to explain the outcome of its political choices and actions, leaning heavily on the surreal to fill in the gaps.
Stargate SG1 and Atlantis are great, then they decided to copy BSG’s tone for Universe and it was dogshit
The first 6 episodes of Ugly Americans were pretty damn good and then it fell off immediately after it went to a full first season
The Bear season 3. Season 1 was all about the working class and the conflicts of gentrification as demanded by capitalism and authenticity. Season 2 was similar themes plus struggling with maintianing a healthy life outside of work when you have crazy ambitions. And then season 3 was just… about how if you dont bend your will to capitalism and be a good cog in the machine of a fine dining establishment then you’re a shit human being? Idk man it really lost the plot
Agreed. Angie’s episode was fantastic though
I agree. And it was the only one of the season that seemed to revisit the original themes of the series
Probably Heroes. First season was good, second sorta had potential but fell off pretty hard fast during it.
Heroes is the classic answer
Supernatural after season 3-ish became a fandom show rather the novel monster of the week with dysfunctional and poor brothers traveling the us and a larger world of monster Hunter that sorta reminded me of Hunter The Reckoning.
I would argue 4, with the addition of Castiel, is where it really hits its stride as a scooby-doo type monster of the week beat with a full cast outside of the family to cut through some of the melodrama. But that’s the hard cut-off for me because after that’s when they start dying and bringing each other back from hell over and over again and their sibling drama is super played out at this point etc. They could have done something interesting 7 and onward, but they didn’t. IDK I stopped at the end of 7, except to catch the Scooby-Doo crossover episode which was alot of fun.
