🔗 Share this article Series Such As The Duffer Brothers' Hit and Yellowjackets Are Growing Bloated. I'm All For the Single-Season Show This scenario is painfully common. The second series of your top TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The initial run ended so perfectly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with fellow enthusiasts to decode subtle references illuminating what would happen next. Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. It seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. By the next installment, your favorite cast member has done something that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. By episode five, it becomes obvious the creators forgot concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. By the lackluster conclusion, you long for an earlier termination. The Curse of Overextension Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Consider Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody with Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. Yet audiences can console themselves that their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump. Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, with ten flawless installments. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Top-notch cast members (with Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to tell the story in necessary detail. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. This news brought me relief. Young actors prepare for Stranger Things' next chapter. Plot twists have diluted the essence. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their coping with awful experiences, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. This involved a wearying pattern of introducing peripheral figures (including the flat character Callie) who did nothing for the broader story. It’s frustrating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch. A Growing Trend Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Series like Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things no longer surprise audiences, and embraced predictable tropes. At times, programs must stop while successful. Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, initially a one-season story, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing. The Supreme Instance I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, occupying our minds endlessly, mysteries intact. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. My So-Called Life, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, concluded after a single run yet felt epic in scale: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the visuals were beautifully seasonal, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. The ending left questions unanswered, yet this mirrors real life accurately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to address unfinished business. Though stored on outdated technology, it shows how series resonate profoundly. The Sacred Bond If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more shows can end gracefully. Priya Elan covers entertainment and style.