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Comment by greggarious | Hacker News Reader

>Netflix knew that they couldn't remain at the mercy of the content owners. So they leveraged their head start on content delivery by producing their OWN content only available through themselves.

My only concern is they don't seem capable of letting things die. House of Card and Orange is the New Black both went from very good to terrible. If every hit series they make turns into the final season of "Dexter", it will cause issues.

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This isn't unique to Netflix. It's the most common trajectory of a successful show.

Truth. This always struck me about most American TV shows, they always drag on to milk every cent instead of formulating strong coherent stories and always end up very shallow as a result.

>This always struck me about most American TV shows

Let me guess: UK/EU based?

It's easy to make a good season when you only have to write six episodes :)

Maybe American productions should do the same thing.

Though, I guess they're already edging towards it with the ridiculous half-season break...

What I like about the UK/EU model is that:

1. Yes - fewer episodes. In particular one of the main criticisms of things like the Netflix produced Marvel shows (Daredevil, IronFirst, Defenders, etc.) is that they would be much more effective if there were less episodes / season.

2. Actually having endings. If you skip the need to leave things open ended so you can have a 10 season run, you can actually tell a story arc with a beginning middle and end.

3. The UK TV model seem to allow more creativity. If a good producer/director/writer/actor team puts out a good series, they then move ahead and build out a new series with maybe some of the same "bones".

Good and bad with both systems.

On that subject, I've noticed that shows with a 10-13 episode season are a cut above those with the 22-26 episode season. The later ultimately must be padded with ten more garbage episodes even after the writers are spent.

The movie industry is even worse about this. Heaven forbid a studio actually invest money in a new title. I'm so tired of all this shitty superhero crap

They will absolutely invest money in new IP just as soon as shitty superhero crap and Star Wars stop making billions of dollars.

Let me offer you Justified as a rare exception. Possibly the most satisfying ending to any TV show I've watched.

Yeah, IMO ~4-5 seasons or so is usually as long as a show should run (if even that)

I'm currently watching 12 Monkeys on Syfy (currently on it's 4th/last season). IMO this is a great example of a show that goes on just as long as it needed to and nothing more... Solid and tightly plotted all the way through.

A huge portion of the American TV-watching demographic doesn't pay very much attention to shows while they are watching it. So they prefer shows that have predictable rehashing of the same plot each season. Think Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, Once Upon a Time. You don't really need to put effort into remembering previous episodes because you've seen them enough to get the gist without any background.

Shows like NCIS, Law & Order, and Criminal Minds will literally run the same plot each episode. These are some of the most popular TV shows in history.

Studio executives don't want to accept that they have a hit show that doesn't cater to this demographic. Once the main story wraps up, usually after 4-5 seasons, the original creator will get fed up or fired because they are unwilling to drag the story out any longer. Then the studio brings in a generic writing team to transform the show into one of those a predictable rehash shows.

It never works because the people who are into those shows won't get past the first four seasons, and the original fans of the show get tired and stop watching.

I stopped watching both of those shows deep into the later seasons.

However, Netflix has raw, unfiltered data directly from their customers. Keeping both of those shows running must make sense to them when taking the data into account.

>Netflix has raw, unfiltered data directly from their customers. Keeping both of those shows running must make sense to them when taking the data into account.

I mean, yes there is probably a long tail of fans that will follow a show til it's dying breath.

I guess I just feel there's an intangible effect on a property when it's run into the ground.

For example, the second and third matrix movies should have no effect on my enjoyment of the first, but they do - it makes the entire property feel cheapened.

I don't think that's it. I think Netflix keep these headline shows running regardless of data, so they can advertise that show as a benefit of the platform and grow subscriptions. I think they're afraid they won't be able to produce another hit like HOC again.

Have you heard of Stranger Things?

They inverted the typical network TV situation. Instead of shows taking three seasons to warm up, they fall apart within three.

What shows took three seasons to warm up?

Seinfeld started out with poor ratings.

As did Cheers....

I'd be hard pressed to think of a show that didn't take a few seasons to warm up. That's not to say they were bad, but it took some time for the actors and writers to figure out how the characters work.

The problem is less pronounced now that most shows are serials planned out years in advance, but it still happens.

Can't say I felt that with the shows I've watched in the last few years, like Dexter, The Wire, Six Feet Under. Some didn't even last more than three seasons, yet became classics, like Twin Peaks.

I've only seen Dexter from that list. To me, it took a few seasons to warm up. That said, it started out better than a lot of shows.

It's called "Growing the Beard", with Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine getting better around season 3.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard

Dexter was an unbelievable show but that final episode was the worst one I've ever seen. Visually it looked like Sharknado too haha.

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