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Comment by andrelaszlo | Hacker News Reader

Very true. They find something that's kind of amusing, then milk it until it bleeds (gross analogy, sorry...).

"Nailed It", sure, I can watch it from time to time but it doesn't mean I will watch 150 other baking shows.

Same thing with "Jessica Jones". I literally found articles about "The top 30 superhero shows on Netflix this year", trying to remember the name of this one. After a while you realize that the funny premise stops being engaging after a couple of episode and the spell is broken.

I watch almost no Netflix these days but I got excited about the new season of Russian Doll, but despite an original script, it doesn't have the punch of the first season. Perhaps it's not just a money grab, but I would have preferred more risk-taking. Why not let created Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler do something new and crazy instead of a season 2, for example?

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People complain that Netflix kills shows too soon.

People complain that Netflix drags shows on past their prime.

People complain.

If only there was a number between 2 and 7!

People want good stories told to a satisfying conclusion. Both cancellation and dragging on with no end in mind fail at this simple unsurprising wish.

S2 of Russian Doll also fails because S1 felt like a mini-series that nailed it's landing. It was one of the few series Netflix had with some artistic integrity and they bust it open again for a "not as good" attempt to milk it.

The problem is not so much whether shows are killed to early or too late, but when you blindly follow metrics to determine either way.

There are plenty shows pre-streaming that got killed prematurely (Firefly) and plenty that dragged on way past their prime (Simpsons) because of exec idiocy or internal politics or whatever that had little to do with whether the quality of the shows was good or whether they had found an audience or just needed time to grow.

I think Netflix tried to avoid that by using data-driven analysis to determine whether to keep or kill a show, but it turns out you probably need some human in the decision chain with an experienced gut. Another problem is that you don't necessarily know whether a show is going to be popular upfront, so the writers try to have a self-contained story arc within a season. If it gets renewed you end up having to awkwardly start a new arc with characters that were pretty much "done" in terms of development. This is pretty obvious with Jessica Jones and Stranger Things, both of which were arguably much weaker in their second seasons.

One issue is that they don't keep writers and show runners around. Each season gets new writers so any magic there was in season one of lost in season two. The tone is the same but you lose something when you bring on me people. The do this because of the lag between seasons and the fact that they don't hire on writers, but rather contract them on a per season basis.

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