Which do you prefer for a TV show? - Insert Simpsons meme here

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BrunoMattei

BrunoMattei

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What if you have a fucking amazingly good TV show (it could be a comedy, horror, action, whatever) and you have a choice of having it get cancelled after 1-2 seasons OR it goes on and on and on for like... 30+ seasons like the Simpsons and has fully worn out it's welcome.

What do you pick?

I'd have to vote on something being short and sweet. There's plenty of shows I love that lasted 1-2 seasons like The Critic, 3 South, Hannibal (3 seasons), Brimstone, and not counting limited anime series I'm glad they ended when they did. I think it's preferable than to have something that was was formerly great that just turns to shit and when you do recommend it to someone you have to give them instructions (I.E. "Watch the first 8 seasons and stop there, check out this movie or TV special but that's it.").
 
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Jason Wynn said:
If they’re able to wrap things up and not leave on a cliffhanger (still salty about how Carnivale ended) I’d much prefer a good 1-2 seasons over a 30+ year show that overstays its welcome. Quality over quantity
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Nope. You don't get to wish it wrapped up all nice and tidy. It either ends suddenly or goes on forever. I'm still pissed about how the Spawn anime ended but you can't have it both ways, mang.
 
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I'd rather choose a show abruptly stopping on a high note compared to watching it slowly die and fade into mediocrity. The ones that suddenly stop are more memorable to me in a good way than the ones that slowly die a poorly written death.
 
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Are we assuming a slow decrease in quality over those 30+ seasons?
Personally I'd prefer the series to go on and on, that way I get the maximum enjoyment out of it and as the quality slowly goes down I enjoy it less and it can fade from my collection of shows I enjoy. A show that gets cancelled after a season or two I'm always left with the "what could have been feeling".
If the show gets cancelled after 2 great seasons or drops off after 2 great seasons either way there's going to be a point where I'm not getting the good stuff anymore, with a show carrying on at least the "what if" gets answered.
 
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Three seasons max, then have spin-offs of the same length to dwell on popular characters or to get more of the setting without mudding up the main series.

And when they inevitably fail and make some slop, you can always write the fuck up as a non-canon spin-off without tainting the original.
 
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You say you don't like episodes where they inexplicably play baseball or go to a beach, coma episodes where the character lies in a hospital and replays past episodes in dream and then they gotta take out the defibrillator cos he starts to fibrillate, or holodeck episodes in a far future sci-fi series, that for some reason take place on late 20th century Earth?

Well, neither do I.
 
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2mm and 99 others said:
You say you don't like episodes where they inexplicably play baseball or go to a beach, coma episodes where the character lies in a hospital and replays past episodes in dream and then they gotta take out the defibrillator cos he starts to fibrillate, or holodeck episodes in a far future sci-fi series, that for some reason take place on late 20th century Earth?

Well, neither do I.
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What about when they play baseball on the holodeck?
 
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Honestly I'd rather have a show that's run into the ground.

The problem with this question is even the best examples for shows that outstayed their welcome you're using really aren't that bad.
Simpsons still had almost TEN seasons of decent content before it started stagnating. And even then I'm sure there's people who can find decent episodes in each season afterwards until after a certain point it was noticeable how bad the decline was.
If you take the sheer amount of good of something like that and compare it to a one-season show, there's still at least triple the amount of entertainment in sheer volume over a one-n-done. Unless those two seasons are in the absolute best of television, I don't see how it can balance out to something that took a decent while to suck.

That and sometimes routine is good. A lot of people might not like later seasons of The Simpsons, Family Guy, ect. but enough people do that they've stayed around for a while. Just having a show consistently air for normal people to get enough enjoyment out of for a couple decades is an important thing in society.

One more point, sometimes a show gains a legendary status just from being cancelled early. Could Firefly have been one of the greatest series ever? Possibly. But it also could've sucked or had a lackluster ending like... every other sci-fi television series ever made. I feel like shows that end too early get an unfair amount of love because people extract the first seasons' quality onto what it could've been instead of thinking honestly about what it probably would've turned into had it run it's course.

The honest third option is every show that was considered perfect had 7 seasons at most. So 5-6 is usually your happy medium for having a classic that wraps up well without living a bittersweet feeling or malaise afterwards.
 
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