Some nice, smooth, consistent quality. Better Call Saul was in my opinion pretty consistent. Single season anime is almost always consistent, like My Dress-Up Darling or Terror in Resonance.
Not dragging on longer than the series needs to seems to be a key point.
The Expanse seemed to be pretty even throughout its six season run. Maybe the only real "ding" is the fourth season where most of Jame's crew is on a planet.
Firefly. I'm not sure if there was enough gas in that show's tank to have kept it on this list or if the plug getting pulled at 14 episodes did it a favor for us fan's collective opinion of it.
Though I'd imagine that "space opera" is easier to keep the story/plot quality pretty even as writers can always just switch to a different set of characters to avoid having to deal with writing their way out of plot corners.
The Expanse was good but it's a damn shame it didn't get three more seasons to cover the final book trilogy. It omitted some of the most amazing setpiece points.
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Specifically Bobby fighting the capital ship in just her power armor then riding the nuke to kill it Dr. Strangelove style
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Oh yeah, there'd be some pretty good space fight set pieces. But trying to visually conceptualize all the Proto-molecule Builders and "Whatever the fuck extra dimensional critters they pissed off" probably would have been too difficult to do in a way to make everybody happy.
Also, what was it... like a 30 year time jump for the last chunk of books? That would have been a miserable thing to put all the main cast through for another 3~5 seasons.
It was a 10 year time jump so here's hoping we get a reboot in a few years and also it was cancelled because the guy that played Alex the pilot turned out to be a sex pest.
Nevermind you're right it was a 30 year time jump I just accepted it as the sort of future tech they had could explain away the fact Holden and friends would all be old and decrepit by that time in universe.
Though I'd imagine that "space opera" is easier to keep the story/plot quality pretty even as writers can always just switch to a different set of characters to avoid having to deal with writing their way out of plot corners.
outside of shows that are intentionally anthologies, that sounds to me like OP's fear of shows not only dragging on longer than they need to, but also endlessly dragging the viewer nowhere forever.
Yeah... I've definitely grown to enjoy shows that know they have to end and know what that ending is going to be instead of just dragging the corpses of all the characters through eternity.
I get wanting to watch a show forever, getting attached to characters and their antics (looking at you Red Dwarf) but its okay to let the characters and their stories fade into the sunset as it were.
The Expanse seemed to be pretty even throughout its six season run. Maybe the only real "ding" is the fourth season where most of Jame's crew is on a planet.
True, and the same applies to the book that was adapted into that particular season. Cibola Burn is by far the weakest book, but then it's followed by Nemesis Games, which is by far the best one. I do think, however, that The Expanse starts off very slow, and it only picks up the pace after the Donnager, three or four episodes in.
Surely the biggest ding in The Expanse was the Rocinante pilot getting fired for sex pestery?
Would have been a bigger ding if they kept the sex pest around, no?
Also, I'm fine separating the plot stuff from the actor's who are being shitty human beings.
Yeah, at least they did the right thing there, but for me personally seeing that guy is a stain on the series, even though the allegations came out later. I can't really watch anything that had Kevin Spacey in it either.
Oh yeah... it definitely negatively colored a lot of the "touching scenes" that this character has throughout the series.
One of the only shows that consistently got better over time.
I can second Barry and Black Sails. The latter has some of the best depictions of age of sail naval combat ever filmed and it's also gay as fuck. Barry is also extremely gay and the whole relationship with NoHo hank and the other cartel leader guy is adorable
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (haven't watched 2003), remember that being rather consistently good
Also Gravity Falls, but I haven't rewatched it since it ended in 2016 so I may be looking at it through rose-tinted lenses
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It’s perfect from start to finish, but it ended after the 2nd season because it was cancelled 💀 so might not count.
I feel the same way about GLOW, the way Netflix cancelled the last season after they'd already started making it is one of the reasons I won't give them money anymore.
Honestly fuck Netflix so much… literal embodiment of how capitalism is a scourge on everything that makes human life worth it.
It does and it’s so good! I love basically everything Elijah Woods has done tbh, and he is awesome in this.
What the fuck it has Elijah wood in it too? Damn I know what I’m doing this weekend
I thought She-Ra and the Princesses of Power stayed good right through the end.
Almost every episode of TNG is good, and the few bad ones were concentrated toward the beginning, not the end.
I answered Stargate as an overall TV franchise to the opposite question earlier, but SG-1 and Atlantis taken as individual series both stay good, although SG-1 is basically a different also good series in its last three seasons.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann rules all the way through, before and after the timeskip.
Dark. I love Twin Peaks equally but season 2 has a serious drop off in the middle.
If you can sit through like 12 episodes of a soap opera, the last two episodes of the second season skyrocket.
There's some interesting stuff halfway through S2 too, like when the Fireman appears out of nowhere. But the majority of it is just a waste of time. Worth getting through so you can watch S3 though, which is consistently good throughout.
Also worth noting that Twin Peaks S1 and S2 are meant to be parodies of the contemporary soap operas, while S3 is a deconstruction of modern Prestige TV shows like Breaking Bad. So the camp comes with the territory.
For anyone catching this new to Twin Peaks, also watch the prequel movie 'Fire Walk With Me" AFTER watching the first two seasons, but before season 3. The content warning would pretty much include everything.
fr. if anything should've had one more season (or at least a couple more eps in season 3), a few arcs/characters felt like they didn't get a proper sendoff and a few threads left dangling that shouldn't have been.
The Wire. Yes, the final season is still great, you plebs.
Santa Clarita Diet. I will never forgive Netflix for cancelling that show.
I thought The Wire was basically perfect all the way through, though a lot of people didn’t like the final season so much
Scavengers Reign is an exceptional work of art that I think not enough people have seen! I can't recommend it enough
Edit: also, The Terror is another show that very few people seem to have watched, and it's unbelievably good. It was supposed to be just a limited series, but they tacked on a second season and tried to turn it into an anthology show. Ignore that aspect, think of it as a miniseries and it's one of the best horror shows I've ever seen.
Steven Universe
Avatar
Bojack Horseman
Venture Bros.
Party Down
Silicon Valley
Star Trek TOS, TNG and DS9 are inconsistent, but trend toward better.
Community is often derided for a falloff in quality halfway through, but I actually think it's quite funny all the way
Scrubs if you stop at it's intended series finale episode. The studio execs forced them to keep going with a cast change, but you can just stop watching at that point.
Community is often derided for a falloff in quality halfway through, but I actually think it's quite funny all the way
Me too. Don't they like change writers in season 4 or something and then in the first episode the writers decided to make it a sitcom as a joke, I was horrified at first but when I realised it was a joke it was hilarious
iirc, the showrunner, Dan Harmon, had some allegations against him and they ditched him. I'm unsure of the reality of the situation or what the allegations even were, but he came back for the last season.
that's not the case, he was accused of (and admitted to) sexual misconduct years after Community ended
he was fired from season 4 due to "creative differences" but returned for seasons 5 and 6
