Glow is one of the latest instances. They paid the actors for season 4, but never produced season 4. It left with a very unsatisfying ending.
Will I ever recommend anyone with Glow on Netflix? no, because I can't tell them "Hey, watch this show on Netflix, but it doesn't have an ending and likely never will"
It's similar to how I'll never recommend The Kingkiller Chronicles or a Song of Ice and Fire. Because doing so would mean that someone reading those would probably never have an ending.
This is where I feel Netflix is hurting themselves. They're producing all this content and then never finishing it. Their catalog is going to start looking like a bunch of incomplete shows.
I think it's fine if you have a show with a short run. One season that finishes properly? Great! Two seasons? Great! but ending before it finishes is just as bad as continuing on forever with no end goal.
I think I've only watched season 1 of Glow, really liked it, and for whatever reason never watched the rest. I remember the season finale served as an ending of sorts. I'm sure season 2 opens more arcs to resolve, but season 1 ended satisfactorily enough for me. Anyone not watching because Netflix cancelled the show will miss something cool.
But I would still recommend it, or Song of Ice and Fire, because there are a lot of good parts for both. Same for Stranger Things. Is * really dead? It's not that important compared to how well it nails 80s kids horror fantasia.
Stranger Things season 1 would have been a fantastic show if it just ended there (without the final cliffhanger scene). I'd recommend it to everybody. If Stranger Things just ended now, I might still recommend it to everybody, but I'd be decidedly less likely to do so, and it would always come with the caveat "They didn't actually finish it." So not only am I less likely to recommend it, but the caveat means the other person is less likely to watch it based on the recommendation if I do. (I might also say, "Don't bother watching past season X," which is still bad for Netflix.)
They all grow up to 65 and become feminist writers, after having gone to the LEO as the first all-female space crew?
Not everything needs an ending.
His editor posted on social media that they haven't seen even a draft of the third book.
If you have hope that book 3 exists, I would caution you to reign in your expectations a bit.
The TV show started in 2011.
Kingkiller Chronicles is only 3 books, hardly epic. It's a trilogy. The first book came out in 2007, second in 2011, and nothing has been seen of the third, and presumably, final book.
Brandon Sanderson treats writing books as a job, thus he writes every day. Now you could argue that his books aren't as entertaining to you (subjective) or that his prose isn't as good (a bit less subjective), but he does treat his job like a job. Whereas Rothfuss and GRRM seem to try to do literally anything but continue writing their books.
Sanderson isn't a bot but he has something a lot of people lack, work ethic.
GRRM on the other hand agonizes over writing out perfect rough draft pages and thus never gets anything done.
Those that outline and plan ahead of time using the outline
Those that write the story as they write
Sanderson is very much an outliner, I think GRRM is more a it'll come together as I write it kind of person. He probably has some sort of plan, but it isn't as fine tuned as Sanderson's I suspect. Sanderson does multiple drafts as well, which works with how I write. My first draft may be complete trash, but getting it on paper helps me a lot in at least getting the ideas out and then I can fine tune or start over if I'm not happy at all.
But yes, I think Sanderson is very much a "I write regardless and I'll refine it over time" type of person and doesn't agonize over the little details until it's time to actually do that.
I am very annoyed with shows dragging on endlessly though. I very much like Babylon 5 for precisely this reason: it told the story it intended to, and when the audience asked for more content they spun it off into other shows/movies.
In general, I would say that 5 seasons is a good maximum, and that you better have a good reason for going longer (e.g. adapting a book series to TV, where each book is a season).
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine went 7 seasons. They could have done it in 3-4; especially if they could have had modern 50-60 HBO-style shows, rather than 35-40 minute network television shows.
I'd like to see creators target 3-4 seasons and contracts be written for them to create all those seasons. The really good, fan-centric ones could then do the Babylon 5 style post-seasons or a contract could be written for additional seasons to cover the next story arc. (I'm sure this is impossible for some reason, but I can dream.)
As things stand, I generally don't watch any new show that doesn't already have a few seasons under its belt. I really dislike watching a season of a show, falling in love with it, and then finding out its already gotten the axe.
It's also an oddball because even JMS hasn't been able to replicate it with nearly the same degree of success. B5 follow-up Crusade was pitched with a 3-5 year plan and barely survived a half season. (Supposedly B5: Legend of the Rangers was pitched as a 5 year plan including cleaning up Crusade plot-lines at least "sideways" and that barely got a pilot movie.) Sense8 was pitched to Netflix (appropriate to consider for this overall thread) as a 5 year plan and got 2 seasons and wrap-up movie (though seemingly had a lot fewer contingency problems than B5's early seasons in the 2 seasons and a movie that it did get).
When shows become popular, the arc suddenly becomes longer until it loses popularity and they cancel it. There are a ton of shows that have this pattern of having a really interesting premise followed by a pretty fast paced plot moving first season. Then they get renewed for 3 more season and the show slows to a crawl and gets cancelled after season 2.
Often it’s the most creative and least formulaic shows that get cancelled :(
Not a huge fan of SW but Mando gave me the feeling of wonder about the universe that the OT gave 11 yr old me when it ran on a Sunday special. So there is at least one point I beg to differ on.
If cancellation is an unacceptable outcome, they need to have a higher bar up front before launching, and fewer things will launch.
I switched over to watching shows from Asia where the format is basically only one season by default, it rarely goes to two, and there is a logical beginning, middle and end that follows a proper story arc. If the show was good when it ended then watching it remains a great memory. I've enjoyed so much stuff over the years and it's never let me down like the Western model does.
There's a difference between stories told with a self-contained timeline on their own terms (a la Fleabag), and having the rug pulled out from under something that isn't resolved.
It succeeded so well because it was one season. The novelty held it up.
I really liked Undeclared. It I could have seen doing a second season.
My complaint is that adding another season doesn't enhance a begging-middle-end story arc that's already done, especially when it clearly was tacked on and not part of the original story.
What I'd prefer? Give the creator a blank slate and let them make another amazing story, rather than saying "this Ducati is great–keep adding wheels!"
Check out the notes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_OA#Production which make clear that the season 1 story was a cohesive, beginning to end story that the creators refined over a series of years (and it shows). Then "hey lets add a season 2."
I guess it was before things like "Melancholia" and "Interstellar".
This guys is a genius.
These three I've seen personally are all good and have a lot of overlapping themes and premises, like mysterious charismatic figures in a slightly off kilter, ambiguously fantastical world convincing people to believe and follow them and their reality.
It's almost comforting to know that The OA is a third or fourth shot at that kind of premise by Brit and her collaborators. Maybe that's why it felt so beautiful and out of nowhere and perfectly formed.
Weeds Season 1 was amazing, the rest not so much. Dexter, season 1 should have just been a single season, sooo good, after a while you wonder how many serial killers reside in Florida. Billions, season 1 amazing, it hasn't been too bad after, but after a while it just starts to seem forced.
Season 1 was amazing. After that, bleh. At least in that case it sounds like executive meddling was the culprit.
On the other hand, The Expanse keeps opening whole new everythings that make what came before tiny but also essential. No second of plot is wasted. They could loosen it up a bit with a bottle episode or two to develop the characters more though. I could go any number of seasons if they could maintain the quality.
And then there's the new Lost In Space. They're going to end it in the next season at exactly the right time. Pacing-wise, it feels like a three-part miniseries. Just enough room to build a world and develop the characters without overstaying its welcome.
Season 1 was good and they’ve only gotten better since.
For some reason I cannot phantom, Netflix and others seem to have tons of money to throw at the production, but don't seem to want to spend more than a few pennies on script.
I tried watching Cursed on Netflix, and had to force myself past the first episode due to the horrible writing. It never got better. The pieces were there for a fairly interesting show but it clearly needed more work on the writing side. Instead they pushed it into production and made another predictable flop.
This is probably true if you take the average person, but there have always been people reading their entire lives, and there has been a mass market for bad literature for hundreds of years. Cervantes was decrying the state of literature and the huge amount of poor, samey chivalric books in 1605.
There is no such repeatable mechanism for original writing. You can find great writing for nothing and pay through your nose for terrible writing. You can find a great writer who delivers a great concept but then she has nothing else in the tank. Or she does, but you can't find another one of her.
You see billionaires buy their way into being big-time movie producers but you never see them buy their way into being big-time screenwriters.
You can love just watch just the "production value" and not to be ashamed to like endless repeating of familiar.
Star Wars franchise also provides frequent scenes of characters taking a posture and saying some short sentence that becomes a meme you can share with friends.
Or you can cram a movie full of it and call it Star Wars IX...
i don't see how the OP's take on the mandalorian is at odds with the idea that the people who make it are probably pretty good at their jobs
"Content" is to series, movies and films what "grub" is to good food and fine dining. When creators say "content", they in a way degrade the quality of their own work (they should sell it as the equivalent of good food or fine dining, not as "grub"); when those that watch just call it "content" they probably don't have a very deep connection to it: So much better when the viewers come away from something and think of it as a story, and experience, a show, rather than "content".
Many shows run too long, yes, but that feels orthogonal at best to the reasoning for Netflix cancellations. Especially as they go and do the opposite with many longer shows that they deem "worth" running into the ground.
Basically, your reasoning seems like a discussion to be had, but I simply don't think that's the conversation happening within the Netflix content team.
Like Walking Dead with top-notch production value.
I don't watch Disney content much but I own their stock because they really know how to milk every drop from the franchise. When they can't milk no more, they wait few years and they restart. With young audience it's just endless source of new minds to corrupt. It's like junk food for the mind.
But maybe what Neflix needs to do is add more "100x" developers to make the user interface even more polished, and that will bring the users in... /s
So I don't totally get the "cancelled too soon" argument. The OA should have not run to even 2 seasons.
There's a trend of not producing art or even something original, but producing "content." For example someone asked me if The Mandalorian is good. "It's star wars Content" I replied. "If you like star wars, and want Content, you'll like it." Is the plot novel? Is it original or compelling? No, but boy it's fun to see yoda puppet and more Content from the SW universe you've come to know and love!
A lot of these series may have run their creative course & while megafans want more "Content" it's the same thing as something being cancelled too soon, and most people aren't megafans.