Kim O'Hara wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:34 pm
That looks like a classic case of “Series Rot”. I know it best from SF and fantasy book series: Book 1 is great, Book 2 is okay, Book 3 is good and pulls together the stories begun in Book 1, Book 4 is an afterthought, and Books 5 and beyond are pot-boilers. At some point the series may become a franchise, continued by another (and lesser) author.
It happens to movies and TV series, too, perhaps even faster. It's so common that it's hard to think of an exception to the rule. Can anyone suggest exceptions?
Kim
The best if not one of the strongest candidates for a TV series including its spinoff, that was strong from beginning till end, is Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul.
Breaking Bad is regarded by viewers and critics as one of the best TV series / dramas ever made. It had five seasons, and it only increased in quality with each season. Then at one time its spinoff Better Call Saul was announced, as a prequel to Breaking Bad, in which viewers would follow the well-known (and much liked) lawyer from Breaking Bad, set some years before the story of Breaking Bad. When it was announced, a lot of people thought it would be a comedy, due to the lawyer character, and some also thought that it couldn't possibly reach the heights of Breaking Bad.
What we got was a slow-burn drama, that focused on slightly different aspects than what Breaking Bad did, but managed to create an incredibly gripping emotional rollercoaster with each season. Not only did Better Call Saul do what Breaking Bad did, by having each season be better than the previous one, it also somehow topped Breaking Bad, in terms of heights reached, and moreover, also changed how people viewed and considered some of the characters in Breaking Bad. People who have no idea what these shows are about, should watch it in this order: 1) Breaking Bad, 2) Better Call Saul. There is also El Camino, a Breaking Bad character spin-off movie, which can be watched after Breaking Bad. It's also good, but it's a movie and not a series.
A series that ran at the same time of Breaking Bad, that of Game of Thrones, was the complete opposite. With each new season, people felt it lost quality, and a number of things happening in the series, related to plot, or so, were viewed as ridiculous. Then it had one of the worst final seasons of any series ever, with a final episode so appalling, that it managed the incredible feat of erasing references to itself in people's collective consciousness, to use such a phrase. On the Internet, anything that is popular in some way, will have pop-culture references and memes, and these references and memes can last a long time after something has ended. But with Game of Thrones, people just cold turkey quit all of it. Nobody uses Game of Thrones memes anymore. People just want to forget that it even existed. And GRRM is mad about it, because his books that he'll likely never publish, are the same in content as the final season of Game of Thrones.
I have to say we're lucky though, in that a lot of TV these days is quite high in quality compared to some decades ago. Not everything is good of course, as there's a lot of useless duds.
Recently I've enjoyed Severance, and The Last of Us.