Do series "run off the track" after 2-3 seasons?

I don't watch as much TV as most people so this rant is probably just me . . . but it seems that after 2-3 years of a series they "run off the track." The plot(s) become so branched and weird that I lose interest. Two examples: The Flash and (Green) Arrow. After about the third season I gave up on both of them. Especially Arrow: it seemed that everybody in the series became a super-hero. And I quit watching Breaking Bad somewhere in season 4.

This doesn't happen for series like Law&Order, but that's because each episode is self-contained (beginning-middle-end) and mostly independent of any previous episode.

But these series that go on for 6-7 years and each episode is dependent on the previous episodes -- they lose me. Maybe I just don't have the patience for it. Only on rare occasions have I completed an extended series: Justified, Longmire, Star Trek Enterprise, and even then I was growing pretty tired of them towards the end.

Now Mr Inbetween, at 3 seasons total, was perfect for me.

Sorry, just ranting . . .

Depends on the show. Grey's Anatomy, The Simpsons, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Better Call Saul, Lost, and Friends are examples of shows that were still good for several seasons. I do agree that CW shows like The Flash, Arrow, Nancy Drew, Supergirl, Riverdale, etc. have had a tendency to lose their way after a good couple seasons.

What the...

We watching BB again, and are right in the middle of season 4, which is pretty much pinnacle TV, as in some of the best TV ever written and performed. It doesn't have any of the problems you mentioned in your OP; it's tightly written, focused, and not too spread out across too many plot points at all. I am stunned you would list that, specifically alongside your complaints...

Perhaps you just get bored with shows quickly?

__________________

Probably. I never have been much for "binge" watching. I'm sure that I've only seen about half of the old Law&Order episodes -- and that show ran for 20 years and it's been off TV now for 12 years.

Yeah, I'm also one of the few people on this planet that didn't like The Sopranos at all. My wife can't understand that.

I don't watch new TV shows at all and I haven't in almost 20 years so I don't know what weird or unusual trends TV series are taking but I imagine they have to change to fit growing audience demands for new and different ideas. Me, I'm strictly old school when it comes to watching TV series. Currently I'm on season 3 of The Love Boat (1977-1987), before that I watched all 3 seasons of the original Batman (1966-1968) and so on I am a big Star Trek fan but not the later J.J. Abrams stuff. I've seen Star Trek Enterprise twice and IMO it starts off average and gets better until the last season was the strongest, but that's just my taste

I think the big problem with me is that I watch a couple of episodes of a series then don't get back to it for weeks sometimes. By then I've lost track of what was happening in the plot. Maybe. Maybe I'm just an old guy with a diminishing attention span, eh?

I'll defend you re: attention span and say that it might have as much to do with expectation.

If you are a bit older, then for all of your life until the last decade or so, TV was about little self-contained stories meant to be watched casually, and able to be consumed a la carte. That might be a very hard expectation to break, and it might not matter if you intellectually "know" that some of these shows are heavily serialized and meant to be watched with the focus of a film most of the time. It might just feel weird/wrong, and if you find yourself watching these new kinds of shows like the old kind, even if just out of habit, then it makes sense that you'd find them less compelling.

That said, yeah, it's kinda common for lots of shows to peak just a few seasons in (I'd say 3-4 more than 2-3, but that's quibbling). It makes sense: they take a season or two to get going and, in particular, to get to the point where the people writing the show have also seen the performers performing it. The first half of the first season is written and created without knowledge of how well it's working, or what parts are or aren't working, whereas season two and beyond are made with a lot more understanding for what they have.

For the record, while I've enjoyed and support the move to serialized stories more generally, I think it occasionally comes at the expense of the self-contained stories that make television television. If it's just a big movie chopped up into parts, that feels pointless, to me. Just make a movie. For television to be its own art form it needs to fit within its format, and be made to fit the delivery medium. That means it can be serialized, sure, but only while telling smaller stories within the larger one with each episode. A big challenge, but a worthy one, when done well.

A bit, for sure.

Is there a poll on this site asking everyone their age range? That would be interesting . . .

Yup, but it's quite old (heh):

MoFo Age Demographic

Might be time for a new one, I'm sure it's at least somewhat different now.

Maybe. That poll is 14 years old . . . Could you post a new poll?

I could. But I'm also lazy and swamped today. I encourage you to!

If you respectfully refuse I probably would tomorrow, though.

It would mean more to the members if you did it. No rush -- the poll is by decade -- a few days won't matter. Glad to see you're feeling better.

BTW, I have the market cornered on laziness . . . and procrastination.

I felt that recently with season 3 of The Boys.

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

Just to clarify, when I say "run off the track" I don't mean "jump the shark" where a series that's been on a while gets so stupid and banal that you just can't take it anymore. Rather I mean that the plot, no matter how well acted, either gets too complicated for me or switches to a direction I don't want to go.

(For those that don't know this term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark)

I've done that. I recently binge watched all of the original Roots mini series. I liked it so much I was planning on watching the recent reboot of it, but then started watching something else, got side tracked and now it's on the one of these days list. BTW if you don't mind me asking how old are you? Well you did mention it

I have a ton of that kind of stuff . . . and not just movies and TV . . .

A little off the subject, sorry . . .

Another peeve of mine that pisses me off about series is the "cliff hanger" at the end of a season. I know this technique has been around for 80+ years but it still makes me angry, Especially If I'm getting a little upset about a series progression and then it does this to me at the end of a season -- that's it -- I'm done. Yellowstone did that to me at the end of season 3.

I don't expect every loose string in the plot to be "tied up" nicely at the end of a season but damn -- to imply that every main character was killed at the end of a season -- meh!

There's a term for that (or for some forms of it): "schmuck bait."

It refers to any time the series pretends a key character is imperiled at any point in the series where they can't realistically die, with the term obviously suggesting that anyone worried about their fate is, well, a schmuck.

Obviously characters can die, and obviously primary characters can die, but when the latter dies it's almost always near the end of a show's run. There are some notable exceptions, and a lot of recent shows have gone out of their way to shatter the old paradigms, but usually it's obvious if you're watching that kind of show or not. When a largely procedural show, or a show largely built around one character, tries to get you to believe they might die in the middle of season 2 or something, yeah, only the naive (or incredibly emotionally invested, I guess) react much to it.