Ask Lemmy

Sometimes you realize that the main story arc keeps finding new reasons to continue, after lots of surprise twists and turns that each give another episode. Like they finally find their killer, after a whole bunch of running around, escapes, shoot-outs, stunts, explosions, etc. but it turns out he's been working for someone else all along, and now we have to find the Boss. It will never end, and all the plot manipulation doesn't serve a better story, it just keeps us watching so we can consume advertising.

My son is always complaining that a lot of these series probably started out as a movie, but Netflix, et al, want constant "engagement," so if you want Netflix to stream your content, you better stretch it into 10 episodes, with a cliffhanger. Quality isn't important, just engagement, so a good movie concept gets beaten to death as a series.

That's why a lot of British shows are so good. They'll say right up front that this entire series is only going to be one season of 3-6 episodes, and that's it. They take as much time as they need to tell the story, then quit. They don't just keep screenplay masturbating.

When it's based on a book/series and outruns the source material

Joss Whedon is the executive producer.

Walking back character development/growth.

When the main character(s) have a baby. When that happens it’s time to go.

They introduce a trendy sexual identity.

Shoehorning in a new main character

Shoehorning in a new main character to try to increase appeal

Shoehorning in a new main character to try to increase appeal to sell more merchandise

Shoehorning in a new main character to try to increase appeal to sell more merchandise because the higher ups made a decision to drastically change the original main character in an obvious cash grab

I'm looking at you, ya pop tart colored unicorn

Identical twins...trapped in the basement...winning the lottery...tonight, on a very special...cousin oliver

Changes in over or undertones. IE change in overtone being it suddenly turns into an action comedy when it was a gritty murder mystery. A change in undertone would be like if two characters that never had any romantic tension, or were canonically confirmed to not have romantic feelings for each other, suddenly were cofessing their feelings for each other.

When the potential long-term impact of the events keeps increasing, but the actual long-term impact keeps decreasing.

When they have a contained shark that the main character decides to jump to keep establishing his cool.

Seriously though, when threat of the week escalates to such a degree that it becomes a potential universe calamity, it's hard to be worried about Murderer McGee stabbing 13 people to death.

It's less of an issue in comedies, but main characters becoming Flanderised in drama series is where it becomes obvious they've run out of ideas.

For example, at the beginning of Stranger Things, Hopper had basically given up on life, and over the course of the first two seasons he finds purpose again through helping find Will, and later, raising Eleven as a surrogate daughter.... And then in season 3 he becomes ANGERY MAN WHO FIGHTS PEOPLE - and that's about it.

Loose ends start accumulating and there comes a point where you realize there's no way they could possibly be resolved coherently in the time the series has left. I was feeling this in a big way during seasons 6 and 7 of Game of Thrones.

It’s the pilot of a sitcom in which a goofy husband and hard nosed wife blah blah zzzzzzzzzz…..

Depending on the kind of show it is contextual, but here's some.

If it is a tight self contained story that ends...and then more things happen. Stranger Things for example pretty much perfectly ended in season 1. There was a tiny dangling mystery regarding Eleven's fate. Such things do not need to be a sequel hook, they can simply exist to tantalize and never be expanded on. This is like if Inception 2 was made and it answered the questions about Cobb's spinning totem; it would utterly miss the point that the story was over and the ending was intentionally ambiguous.

If the actors or voice actors are simply getting too old for the part. Personally I have a good ear for animation's voice acting. It drives me absolutely crazy when I hear noticeably aged actors reprising role or continuing them as if nothing has changed. Obviously some performers can last longer than others but for example modern Simpsons is unwatchable to me entirely on the basis of the voices. Even if somehow the writing turned around I simply can't get past the voices. Similarly I could barely sit through The Incredibles 2, which supposedly picks up right as the first movie ends but all the voices are aged 14 years and I can hear it.

When the characters are talking about something and say "oh this is like that time when..." and a flashback scene which is just copy and pasted from old footage is used. Then they do this 5 more times in the episode. So annoying and cheap.

The actors and writers get bored and do a musical episode.

Back in the 80s and 90s, it was when they added a new child character. In the 2000s, it was when they started doing weird crossovers that made no sense.