5 ms·

I don't agree with the article's premise at all. I think it's very rare that shows get better with age. Almost all shows get significantly worse. It cites Game

I don't agree with the article's premise at all. I think it's very rare that shows get better with age. Almost all shows get significantly worse. It cites Game of Thrones as something that got better. Really? Game of Thrones got frustratingly stupid in later seasons. The first few were far superior and the author's comment seems to be around the difficulty of shooting the pilot which is a tangential issue altogether. I haven't seen many of these cancelled titles. I do recall some complaints around Altered Carbon being killed this year. If that's representative, I'm going to guess that a lot of these shows are just bad...

speeder 6y ago
The article didn't say the shows got better. It said that shows sometimes, do not get traction immediately. I suspect that might been the case with "The OA" for example. I watched first season only because my wife wanted it, and to me it was just some weird "mindbending newage" stuff. But second season the show went into a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and started to have interesting mysteries, characters, better plot, and give impression that something was going on after all. SPOILER: first season the show implies the main character maybe, maybe not, is some kind of spiritual entity. second season is clearer in the fact that the main character actually is a person that can travel between dimensions, and the finale make clear the show will be about the protagonists and antagonists chasing each other across dimensions. A "dimension chase" plot sounds much more interesting than "maybe I am an angel" plot. So when the show finally had the chance to bring in a wider audience, it got killed.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  The second season garnered less interest than the first though. How would you run the business if that was the case?
mvanbaak 6y ago
Yes, the beginning of GoT is best, but still it took some time to become popular. That's the point they are trying to make. Not that later seasons are better.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  Eh, I don't think that's especially accurate either. GoT grew pretty steadily in popularity over time. The first season was well received. Controversy about incest and sex scene made it fairly newsworthy. If you want a good analogy you want to pick a show that performed poorly in the initial season. This is a chart of wikipedia page views which is probably a decent proxy for popularity on netflix. https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2015-07-01&end=2020-10-13&pages=The_OA|Stranger_Things|Altered_Carbon_(TV_series)|Orange_Is_the_New_Black|Luke_Cage_(TV_series)|Dark_Crystal:_Age_of_Resistance https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&pl...
silvester23 6y ago
With regard to Game of Thrones, I don't think the article argues that it necessarily got better in quality season by season but that it took a couple of seasons to find a massive viewership and become a cultural phenomenon. That said, I think the quality did improve between season 1 and 5. And I vehemently disagree with the notion that "almost all shows get significantly worse". There are definitely many shows that do jump the shark at some point and significantly drop in quality. On the flip side, there are many examples of shows that needed a couple of seasons to find their tone and really hit their stride which they most likely never would have had the chance to do at Netflix. E.g: Parks and Recreation, Community, Justified, even Breaking Bad imho.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  Having only seen the first two, Parks and Rec and Community definitely suffered towards their later seasons, although I would say they were still good towards the end. Parks and Rec season 1 was just six episodes. Yeah it improved a lot in quality, but viewership appears to have actually declined over time according to wikipedia.

speeder 6y ago

The article didn't say the shows got better. It said that shows sometimes, do not get traction immediately. I suspect that might been the case with "The OA" for example. I watched first season only because my wife wanted it, and to me it was just some weird "mindbending newage" stuff. But second season the show went into a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and started to have interesting mysteries, characters, better plot, and give impression that something was going on after all. SPOILER: first season the show implies the main character maybe, maybe not, is some kind of spiritual entity. second season is clearer in the fact that the main character actually is a person that can travel between dimensions, and the finale make clear the show will be about the protagonists and antagonists chasing each other across dimensions. A "dimension chase" plot sounds much more interesting than "maybe I am an angel" plot. So when the show finally had the chance to bring in a wider audience, it got killed.

klmadfejno 6y ago
The second season garnered less interest than the first though. How would you run the business if that was the case?

mvanbaak 6y ago

Yes, the beginning of GoT is best, but still it took some time to become popular. That's the point they are trying to make. Not that later seasons are better.

klmadfejno 6y ago
Eh, I don't think that's especially accurate either. GoT grew pretty steadily in popularity over time. The first season was well received. Controversy about incest and sex scene made it fairly newsworthy. If you want a good analogy you want to pick a show that performed poorly in the initial season. This is a chart of wikipedia page views which is probably a decent proxy for popularity on netflix. https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2015-07-01&end=2020-10-13&pages=The_OA|Stranger_Things|Altered_Carbon_(TV_series)|Orange_Is_the_New_Black|Luke_Cage_(TV_series)|Dark_Crystal:_Age_of_Resistance https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&pl...

silvester23 6y ago

With regard to Game of Thrones, I don't think the article argues that it necessarily got better in quality season by season but that it took a couple of seasons to find a massive viewership and become a cultural phenomenon. That said, I think the quality did improve between season 1 and 5. And I vehemently disagree with the notion that "almost all shows get significantly worse". There are definitely many shows that do jump the shark at some point and significantly drop in quality. On the flip side, there are many examples of shows that needed a couple of seasons to find their tone and really hit their stride which they most likely never would have had the chance to do at Netflix. E.g: Parks and Recreation, Community, Justified, even Breaking Bad imho.

klmadfejno 6y ago
Having only seen the first two, Parks and Rec and Community definitely suffered towards their later seasons, although I would say they were still good towards the end. Parks and Rec season 1 was just six episodes. Yeah it improved a lot in quality, but viewership appears to have actually declined over time according to wikipedia.