The end of Succession is near. The Emmy- winning HBO drama is coming to an end with Season 4. “There’s a promise in the title of ‘Succession.’ I’ve never thought this could go on forever,” Jesse Armstrong, the series creator, told The New Yorker “The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From Season 2, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?” A good thing can’t always last forever. How long should a TV show go on before it overstays its welcome?
For sure serialized is here. It has been for decades. Sure, we have the Netflix binge model but not every streamer has followed that and there have been quite a few Netflix shows whose criticisms have included shitty structure due to the binge method. Whether people watch episodes in a marathon or not, individual episodes require some narrative satisfaction. Lost was serialized but it was also excellent at giving every episode an A plot or supporting B plot closure. I could be open to the argument that we only have that expectation because that’s how TV shows have been written “in the past”, but I’m always suspicious of arguments from a place of novelty. Stories are always three acts, even if you break those down into 5 or 6 “act breaks” per hour long episode. And they always have some closure/satisfaction. (I don’t mean personal satisfaction here, I mean narrative satisfaction.
I’m really not convinced that there’s any magic number for how long a show “should” last. I really don’t think there is any hard and fast rule – I would bet you can find as many shows that went 5-7 seasons that are all-time greats as you can those that lasted 4 or less. If a show is successful, it creates an inherent incentive to keep going for everyone involved – the network/platform because having popular shows is good for revenue, and the production studio because it means everyone stays employed. Especially for union crew members who see their pay go up on or after season 4. That’s obviously not a compelling reason for viewers to keep a show going past its “best by” date, but it is what it is.
Different stories require different lengths of time to tell. A show should go on for as long as that takes, and no longer. Some shows are gonna hit that point at four seasons, others are going to take more time, others will take less time. Let them figure it out for themselves instead of giving an arbitrary number. That’s as bad as network TV’s impetus to keep shows running forever even when they have nothing left to say.
I don’t think the onus should be on the showrunners to fix the problem that Netflix fucks up their shows. They’ve canceled shows that people got invested in and it wasn’t because the format was wrong. I also think viewers could stand to take a little personal responsibility, too. It IS understandable that a viewer wouldn’t want to invest in a show that might get canceled. But that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.