Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

NO SPOILERS FOR ANY SHOW


Why is it every show seems to save their worst season for the last one ?

From Dexter to True Blood to lost to Boardwalk Empire to how i met your mother to the Sopranos

It literally takes a multiple emmy winning writer like Vince Gilligan to do a show justice

No one else is up to the task !

it's obviously hard to write a final season where you are trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible and still have an engaging, exciting last season storyline

It looks like not many writers are upto snuff, maybe some of us should trot off to hollywood to give it a go :)

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

It's because most shows are ridden into the ground. Endings are hard, but how many long running shows had great penultimate seasons? Not that many because they were already running out of juice before they hit the final stretch.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

This sort of reminds me of another recent thread started by, hey, you. :)

Long Running Shows you Didn't quite get to the End of

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Shows should get their crappy season out of the way in year three, then make sure they end on a good season. I'm surprised no show runners have thought of that.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I'm sure there is a litany of reasons including:

*the show was cancelled during the bad season
*the studio "forced" seasons beyond the creator's intention
*f!$# this, we're out of here anyway!

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Plenty have tried having the crappy season in Season 1 ...

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

It's almost always because they are dragged out way beyond their natural conclusion.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Writing for TV is very hard, especially coming up fresh ideas for 12 to 24 episodes per season year after year. I don't think any TV Producer has any clue when their show will end in their mind. They just go with it until the network stops giving them money.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Yes cos i'm bloody peed off

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Because by the time they've reached their last season, they've run out of ideas or clever season-long arcs.. they still try and occasionally come up with an idea that has potential or put together a good episode, but for the most part, by the time a show's on its last legs you wind up with a middling to bad final season.

There are exceptions... just look at the workhorses that are NCIS and Law & Order...

Criminal Minds has gotten pretty stale. tho.. they're restricted in that they do psychos, serials, etc and they've shown so many sadistic killers, you pretty much know what's coming... that show could do with some actual suspense and less gore.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

One reason is if a show's successful, a lot of the writing talent and even the creators move on to greener pastures or different projects. Most shows don't end with the same team that made them successful.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Lost is far worse than some of the recent great shows' last season. The explanation was just retarded.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Most shows start going downhill which triggers a decline in ratings and a "final season". Those final seasons are written by the same groups that wrote the declining seasons and generally think they know what they're doing and don't.

So basically, it's a culmination of just over-extended a premise and not knowing where to go with it.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I think that all four of the modern Star Trek series had very capable final seasons. Not necessarily their best season, but certainly not their worst.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

The final season of TNG had at least six episodes that were terrible and six more that were pretty bad. That's half the season right there.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Even though it was called a 16 episode season, the final season of Breaking Bad was really two separate seasons with the episode order cut by five episodes each.

It also meant that Gilligan and team had a two year advance notice of the series being cancelled.

That resulted in an ending that was MUCH more planned out than anyone could expect from other TV shows, and it accelerated the pace of the storytelling so there were no filler episodes.

Basically, the answer to your question is that all those other, longer-running shows that have weak final seasons are the victims of their own success.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Well AGAIN NO SPOILERS

I was soo peed off by last season of Boardwalk Empire

I'm about to start the last season of Sons of Anarchy, in my Top 5 fav shows of all time

If this season sucks, someone in Hollywood is getting a letterbomb !

TNG was running out of ideas a bit by the time it got to its final season. It's not terrible by any means, there's still some good stuff in it, but for a final season, it frankly should be better, especially after the excellent previous year.

As to the question, it's probably primarily because shows which are that long in the tooth are out of ideas artistically and are hanging around to drag more ratings out and milk something which has run out of gas for more money. Or because so many shows nowadays are plotted out as they go, and the creators don't have an endpoint in mind. But then, I keep watching Supernatural, so what do I know ;).

Incidentally, I am now signed up for Netflix, Prime, and Hulu and still can't stream Babylon 5 :mad:.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I think a lot of shows are created on a really good premise, or single idea, but were never given much thought on how they would end.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Re: Boardwalk Empire
Post-prohibition, the show was not going to follow the true life story of Nucky Johnson, but I don't know what Terence Winter may have had in mind going forward. Obviously, the quality of the final season was COMPLETELY dependent on the fact that the series received a renewal for just eight episodes and cancellation. Winter and crew were basically forced to rush their story to completion, and they had a lot of history and characters to service. No surprise the results were underwhelming to some.

Re: Sons Of Anarchy
Maybe you should just quit before you start. No spoilers. Just saying.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Angel had a solid fifth and final season. It's my favorite and it's still entertaining a decade on. It was able to perfectly balance one-off stories with its overarching story arc.

Star Trek: Enterprise: while not exactly a bastion of good television story-telling overall, has a final season that is the most watchable of its four season run.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

While I liked Buffy more as a series (and it should've ended at the season five finale), the Angel finale was perfect.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

If he's gotten this far and it's still in his "Top 5 fav. shows of all-time!", then I think he's safe going through the train-wreck that was the last season. The show lost any credibility after Season 2 anyway.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

While Star Trek: TNG's final season, overall, is uneven, it still has a great series finale. It's a perfect cap to the entire show.

I would argue that, by design, most shows are created to be open-ended, since networks have typically wanted shows to run as long as possible, and have fought against the concept of a show with a definite end-game. It's only recently that networks have warmed both to the idea of heavy-serialized shows instead of standalone episodes, and with them the idea of a show ending after a pre-set amount of time. Even with Breaking Bad, I think the split final season was a compromise between AMC and Vince Gilligan over AMC wanting it for two more years, and Gilligan wanting to end it after so many episodes.


Something that's recently cropped up is the idea of an abbreviated final season. Both Nikita and White Collar had short final seasons that the show runners knew of ahead of time, and were able to craft a heavy serialized final season that managed to resolve most of the storylines. While neither were the respective show's best seasons, they were solid and by no means the worst.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

This is one of the big reasons. Other than showrunner and a couple of critical producers, hit shows will often churn through writing staffs. Television staff writers are often viewed as disposable and replaceable in Hollywood, they are always the last to get paid when a show becomes a hit. So they will write for a hot show for two years, and then jump to another new series with a better offer and more control. Many times you have junior hacks writing a hit show in its final season. Without a very strong showrunner in that case, the show takes a quality hit. That was definitely evident on Lost.

When a show is in its final season, everyone in the production is scrambling to line up a job after it ends. You get lazy writing, lazy directing, pretty much lazy everything except the actors. I have seen so many shows mail it in when the staff knew it was their final season.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Angels ending was on the annoying side. A cliffhanger done on purpose? At least there are the comics that continue the story.

Season four of Enterprise was quite good, aside from the last episode that can be labled one of the worst in Star Trek History.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

You should probably spoilerize that part of your post.

As for Angel's ending...

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I think its because most great shows don't know when to end, and that is because the creator usually get paid the big $$$ in the latter seasons.

The Soprano's is a perfect example. I remember reading an interview with David Chase during the 2nd season saying he had material for 4 seasons. Then HBO coughed up I believe 25 million for him to extend the show a few more seasons, and you could see the quality dropped after that.

Can I blame David Chase for taking the money? No, as I probably would have done the same thing, but quality always suffers when its met when there is more money to be made by milking something great.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

How I Met Your Mother didn't have a very good last season and had a horrible finale but the season as a whole was better than the 2 or 3 before it.

Along with the reasons that have already been posted, I do think people tend to have overly high expectations for the last season. Either they're expecting a good show to get better or they're expecting a show that hasn't been good for awhile to be good again.

People also tend to link final seasons with the finale. A good season could be completely undone by a bad finale. Shoot, a good show can be completely undone by a bad finale. So if the show doesn't knock the finale out of the park people will look down on the final season as a whole.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I hate to hear the talk about Boardwalk Empire ending poorly. I am behind on it and am only at the beginning of the third season but I thought the first two seasons was some of the best TV ever.

The show that disappointed me most was True Blood. Such a fantastic show and then it just becomes total and utter shit. I still haven't finished it because it got so bad. Don't know if I can.

And I loved the ending of Angel. And as someone else said, Buffy should have ended at Season 5.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

This is very true. Series Finale rarely deliver, as it just creates anger towards the show for years after. I have actually tempered my expecations for Series Finales in the past few years, as I don't expect the ultimate ending anymore. After being let down by The Sopranos, I will never get too excited for a Series Finale, and it has worked for many shows that I have finished in the past few years.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I reject the premise of your assertion (See Breaking Bad)

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I really liked (but didn't unreservedly love) the final Boardwalk Empire season. They obviously had to rush things along to wrap up every storyline -- which they did -- but it felt a bit like too much, too quickly.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

But they cannot compare to how horrible the 1st and 2nd seasons were. Those two are virtually unwatchable.

I've never seen the show but I've read from multiple places that the series finale of Six Feet Under is one of the best tv finales ever.

S2 of TNG actually isn't as bad as I remembered. The first season, yes, but season two saw the show starting to find its feet. "Q Who" and "Measure of a Man" are some of the best episodes of the whole series, "A Matter of Honor," "The Emissary," and "Peak Performance" are all good, and "Where Silence Has Lease" and "Elementary, Dear Data" are solid. The show is still finding its feet, but it's nowhere near as bad as season one.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I really quit watching the show regularly about season 6. The premise was starting to wear really, really thin by that point.

But born out of that is the "Mosby Limit". Which is that shows should be forced to stop at 6 seasons. No more beyond that.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

I assume you're talking about scripted shows? Because there's a lot of shows that run far longer than that (game shows, talk shows, reality, news, sports, etc.)

Even then I don't think 6 seasons is a good hard limit. Seinfeld quit after 9. The Simpsons had 9 to 12 good seasons, depending on who you ask, although many agree it's been on too long now. South Park is still running strong with 18 seasons, and American Dad is at 11 seasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...evision_series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...evision_series


I think a lot of it depends on the situation. South Park, for example, has changed its production schedule to meet the desires of the creators so they don't get burned out on it and can do other things (movies, stage musicals).

How I Met Your Mother suffered from a limited premise that it eventually had to deliver: they built the end-point right into the title. When you do that, going on for too long just seems like you're dragging out the show, wheras a show with a more open-ended premise can shake things up to keep it fresh (see E.R. changing cast a lot over its 15 seasons, although I didn't watch any past the first 3 or so).

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Pokémon and Power Rangers are still going strong and just ended two of their best seasons yet, one after 17 years, one after 21 years. Of course, their last seasons are nowhere to be seen just yet, so we'll have to await the outcome when that comes (hopefully within my lifetime).

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7539/...bd9d22a36b.jpg

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2856/...0519c87b60.jpg

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

Yea. The good ones are the ones that decide to end, instead of being forced to end.

The norm is for a show to start, get really good, run out of ideas, and limp for the last season or two, before being forced into cancellation.

We should have more 4-5 season series.

Re: Saving the Worst for Last, why ?
 

English TV tends to cut a lot if it's best shows short. Only usually a few series at the most and don't milk it. Classic example is the Office. UK version 2 series and a special. US version.....waaaaayyyyy too many.