Going Out On Top

Why is it good news that one of my favorite shows has announced that it's going off the air? Because it isn't going off the air till 2010, there will be three more (16-episode) seasons and they'll run re-run free, and if there was ever a show whose creators needed an end-date to shoot for, it's Lost. But there's a larger lesson here, and one that I wish some other great TV shows had taken to heart: Imagine how much better The Sopranos would be if David Chase had been kept to four or five seasons, or The X-Files if Chris Carter had stopped churning out episodes in 1998 or so. I know Deadwood fans were sorry to see David Milch's revisionist Western cut off after three seasons, but maybe they should consider themselves lucky that there will never be a season four, or seven, or twelve (Al Swearengen faces off against William Jennings Bryan for control of the Populist Party! Hijinks ensue!). The same goes for The Wire, which seems poised to leave on a high note after this year's final season with its "best show on TV" halo still untarnished.

As a general rule of thumb, I think the better the show, the more it needs a cut-off date. Three's Company could have run forever; Seinfeld should have ended a season or two earlier than it did. Ditto the long-running Beverly Hills 90210 versus its far superior heir, The O.C., which could have left on a George Costanza-style high note by calling it quits after its near-perfect first season. Similarly, I'd think more fondly of HBO's Rome if it had only been a mini-series, without the mediocre second season, and I'm worried there's a similar sophomore drop-off awaiting Big Love. Leaving too soon makes a show immortal, while leaving too late ... well, would My So-Called Life be remembered as fondly as it is if we'd had to watch Angela Davis and Jordan Catalano get together, break up, get back together, break up - and then, worst of all, go off to the same college?

Comments

I vaguely remember that back when "The Simpsons" was young and new (and my college rommate was addicted to it), it was on opposite "The Cosby Show," which was still doing quite well ratings-wise. Cosby, however, decided to kill the show. So after "The Simpsons" the night of the Cosby finale, they had a little scene with Bart and Homer watching TV.

Bart was perplexed and asking, why did Mr. Cosby take the show off the air, isn't it still making money?

Homer answered that Cosby wanted, a la Ross above, to take it off the air before the "quality" deteriorated.

Bart replied something like, "Quality, schmality!" and opined that if he had a show, he'd "run that sucker into the ground," to which Homer said something supportive while patting him on the head.

So, y'know, sure, art.

Posted by Sanjay | May 7, 2007 6:32 PM

Ummm, Ross, I hate to be the one to have to point this out (as a liberal reader, nonetheless!) but isn't the point of a TV station, and the shows that it puts on, to make money? Fox would have been insane, commercially speaking, to shut down The OC after one season.

Now, if you want to propose public funding of TV stations, so that they are removed from the requirement of wringing every available cent from any halfway decent idea (and plenty who don't meet even that low bar), well, welcome to my side of the aisle.

Is this, maybe, an ancillary benefit of the pay-per-station model that, say HBO or Showtime puts on? HBO has no specific need to encourage the creation of more episodes of The Sopranos, since they don't make money on a per-episode basis, unlike ABC, which has to sell commercials.

Posted by David S | May 7, 2007 6:34 PM

You left out the great British comedies like Yes, Minister & Fawlty Towers whose brilliance is undimmed by hanging on.

Posted by Gabriel | May 7, 2007 6:41 PM

I thought last night's Sopranos episode was pretty entertaining -- maybe the best episode thusfar of this demi-season. And I still very much look forward to my Sunday nights (and will do so for these final four episodes). I understand what you're saying here, Ross, about going out on a high note. But I'd still argue that The Sopranos is better than about 98% of what's on offer (it used to be perhaps 99.9%). So, had HBO pulled the plug a couple of seasons ago, we'd be left without this current season's very good (albeit not great, by Sopranos standards) entertainment.

Posted by Jasper | May 7, 2007 7:01 PM

I watched season six, part 1 of the Sopranos the other day and thought it was great. I'm glad they didn't have you to advise them. The last few months of the Simpsons have been better that it has been in years.

Posted by Clark | May 7, 2007 7:43 PM

"You left out the great British comedies like Yes, Minister & Fawlty Towers whose brilliance is undimmed by hanging on."

There was only one 12-episode season of Fawlty Towers. Yes, Minister ran for several seasons but there were only 38 episodes (roughly the equivalent of three HBO-length seasons--a nice run but not so many episodes that you'd expect them to have run out of ideas).

In any case, I think you can usually get a longer run of quality episodes out of something like Fawlty Towers than something like The Sopranos. It's easier to think of jokes and isolated funny situations than it is to sustain a narrative and develop characters across episodes and seasons.

The plots in a serial drama will eventually become convoluted or repetitive, and the characters will either stagnate or keep having the same problems (e.g, repeated Sopranos plotlines about informants coming to bad ends, hot-headed Family lieutenants coming to bad ends, etc.). I think it's an iron law of serial drama that it eventually becomes ridiculous if it goes on too long--look at soap operas, or check out the utterly demented "histories" of most comic book universes.

A show like the Sopranos can get away with it for a while, since there's some artistic purpose to showing these terrible people making the same mistakes over and over and over again, but that can only go on for so long.

Posted by Charlie | May 7, 2007 7:53 PM

The O.C., which could have left on a George Costanza-style high note by calling it quits after its near-perfect first season.

But then we wouldn't have the second season, which means we wouldn't the second season finale, which means we wouldn't have this.

Posted by Cain | May 8, 2007 12:03 AM

Now, you can't forget BBC's The Office...ran for 2 seasons (of 6 or 10 episodes each)...

Posted by Dave in the Corn | May 8, 2007 10:42 AM

Seinfeld should have ended a season or two earlier than it did.

This is a piece of conventional wisdom that couldn't be more wrong. The last two seasons might have been the best, despite no Larry David: Man Hands, Elaine Dancing, Kramer as the new Merv Griffin, The Helloooo Voice, Kruger, Festivus, Wilfored Brimley as the Postmaster General, James Spader as the recovering alcoholic. Many, many high points.

Posted by JB2 | May 8, 2007 10:48 AM

I can't speak about HBO specifically, but according to Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood (TV writers who run a podcast about writing for TV), the main selling point nowadays for TV shows was how long the story arc can last. If you're trying to sell a pilot, you need to convince the networks that you already have several seasons mapped out. And it seems pretty certain that stories being written & produced today (especially sitcoms) have been designed at minimum to provide enough episodes to qualify for off network syndication.

It's an old wives tale that TV shows just get started with a few clever episodes, and the writers milk it for all its worth. Ever since Cheers, story arcs have lasted over multiple seasons.

Look at Office (the us version). The plotlines seem pretty carefully drawn (amidst all the zaniness) Season 1 feels different from Season 2, and Season 3 will probably feel completely different.

The key question is whether tensions that lasted for 3 seasons can be repurposed for later seasons. but after that point, characters have gained an awful lot of momentum. Even though jumping the shark doesn't always produce nice results (nice = good ratings), writers/producers who plan radical changes in the show do some interesting things nonetheless (see Archie Bunker's place vs. All in the Family).

Finally, let's not diss Three's Company. Despite the repetitious nature of the episodes, there were lots of characters and settings and problems for writers to play around with. I wouldn't describe this as backstory but as potential story space.

Posted by Robert Nagle | May 8, 2007 1:10 PM

Boy JB2, I couldn't disagree with you more. Certainly the last two seasons of Seinfeld had their moments, but generally the show became way too cartoon-y and surreal, and they sold out their two best characters: George went from weirdly likable neurotic loser to hateful scheming paranoiac; Elaine went from unlucky but plucky gal to bitter harridan.

The fortuitous death of Susan Ross at the end of the last Larry David season would have been an absolutely perfect note on which to end the series

Posted by Pat | May 8, 2007 2:41 PM

I'd add The Wire which I believe is capped at 5 seasons...

Posted by Lauren | May 8, 2007 3:24 PM

There was only one 12-episode season of Fawlty Towers.

Actually, no: there were two six-episode 'seasons', separated by three and a half years -- autumn 1975 and spring 1979, with the last episode delayed six months because the tape got lost.

The six-episode season has been a rule-of-thumb for a certain type of British comedy: The Office and Extras, Coupling, Peep Show, The IT Crowd. That's tied into the way that British comedies are generally written by one or two people, rather than by large teams: the presumption is that it doesn't overstretch the capabilities of the writer(s).

British audiences (and network execs) also seem more prepared to invest in very short runs of two-hour serial dramas: episodes of Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect (and more recently, Wire in the Blood) were essentially feature-length, take a long time to make, but are guaranteed a big audience.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 8, 2007 3:42 PM

There's a difference between shows that are mostly self-contained (i.e. Seinfeld) and shows that intentionally follow an arc: Deadwood, The Wire. Serials, in other words.

The argument about Seinfeld needing to go off the air sooner -- whether you agree or not -- is about writing quality, not the fact that the writers had sent George and Jerry on some quixotic quest through Manhattan with ever-more-complaicted plot twists and turns.

People often assume Sopranos is a completely arc-based show (i.e. a serial) like Deadwood and the Wire, but it's patently NOT that. Many Sopranos episodes can stand on their own, but I pity the poor person who sits through a mid-season epsiode of The Wire and tries to figure out what's going on.

Anyway, the real problem is when you have shows that are not serials that start to drift into serialization towards the end. X-Files and Friends are key examples. That's when you get into real trouble.

Posted by Frank Bruno | May 8, 2007 4:11 PM

Angela Davis=radical activist
Angela Chase=character played by Clare Danes on _My So-Called Life_. She was a character who became the thinking male teenager's crush.

Posted by scott | May 8, 2007 9:38 PM

Good catch. I DEFINITELY would have watched a second season in which Jordan Catalano loves and loses Angela Davis, to whom we're introduced while she's musing in voice-over.

Angela Davis: School is a battlefield for your heart. So when Rayanne Graff told me my hair was holding me back, I had to listen. 'Cause she wasn't just talking about my hair. She was talking about my life.

http://www.jimhair.com/angeladavis.JPG

Posted by Charlie | May 8, 2007 10:42 PM

The best example would be Twin Peaks... if ABC had decided that "Peaks" would be limited to the pilot and original seven episodes - a maxi-mini-series in effect - it may well still be thought of as among the most influential shows in the last quarter-century (think of all the imitators it spawned; X-Files, Lost, etc. etc.) But by trying to force in more story arcs than the show could naturally contain, it rapidly descended into self-parody.

Shame.

Posted by David | May 9, 2007 9:00 AM

This was the great strength of Babylon 5. It was planned to go five years and stop, and as such every story line made sense and seemed to arise naturally out of that world.

Posted by Jeff Kouba | May 9, 2007 10:42 AM

Jeff, Babylon 5 is hardly an example of a show that went to plan. Sure, he had a plan of sorts, for where the show would go. But that plan was jettisoned when the main character left the show and got replaced.

Then there were all sorts of complications caused by the constant question of whether it was going to be renewed -- the fourth season finished the story arc, and the fifth was stuck on like a fifth wheel.

Finally, all sorts of plotlines were left unresolved.

Don't get me wrong -- Babylon 5 had its briliant moments. And maybe you could say it paved the way for shows like BSG. But it's hardly an example of great planning.

Posted by cheerful iconoclast | May 11, 2007 4:18 PM

Cheerful, you're missing the point about Babylon 5.

Of course there were complications based on actors' leaving, and as for plotlines being resolved - well, that's life, right? Not every situation has a clear resolution.

The point is, that the showrunner, J. Michael Stracyznski, told UPN up front that this was a five year show, at most. He had contingencies for ending the show if it didn't make it beyond 3 years - just as a novelist can, if required to cut length, can prune some subplots to reduce page count. But JMS was approached about a possible extension mid season 4, by the network - and turned them down flat. He gave up cash to preserve quality - and that's something you can't say of David Chase, or the guys responsible for Lost.

Posted by John Muraro | May 11, 2007 4:34 PM

Joy! This conversation is a TV geek's dream.

Yes, (kudos to Mr. Muraro) "Babylon 5" was one of the first shows to be planned out with a multi-*season* arc--a proposal of extraordinary confidence and ambition, at that time. And I'm in favor of multi-season planning.

The only problem with this is, well, lots of shows--good shows--have pilots made, few of them are chosen, fewer still stay on the air for a whole season, and very, very few get renewed. Cf: Firefly, the best show not to make it to the end of season 1.

So (unless you're HBO) you're asking a show's creator to make a huge emotional investment in the world of a show and its characters, develop all kinds of backstory, with no guarantee that the work will ever see the light of day. Worse yet, if you do manage to get three episodes on the air, and *then* get cancelled, you can't take the show to another network--they'll never let you. And no other network would air it (why would they? It's damaged goods.) "Third Rock from the Sun" being the strange exception to this rule…

This is one of the main reasons HBO has done so much better than its competitors; it gives its writers permission to dream big. And why Babylon 5, Buffy, Battlestar Galactica and, yes, Lost are so astonishing--they *survived.*

Posted by Greg M. | May 12, 2007 1:41 AM

Is this a subtle argument that we should have a date certain for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq?

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