Shows Such As The Duffer Brothers' Hit and Yellowjackets Are Turning Bloated. I Strongly Prefer the One-and-Done Show

This scenario is painfully common. Season two of your favorite TV show drops on your platform, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended with such precision: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. During the hiatus, you were perusing Reddit threads with dedicated fans to find some Easter egg clues illuminating what would happen next.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. By the next installment, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. As the story progresses, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. By the lackluster conclusion, you long for an earlier termination.

The Curse of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; most fans protest when their favorite shows are canned before they can get off the ground. Look at Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum, which was binned by Netflix due to low viewing figures. Yet audiences can console themselves that the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. In 1996, a plane carrying an all-girl high school football team crashes in the middle of nowhere. Skilled performers (with Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. I felt grateful as a viewer.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and watching how they deal with their horrific new secrets, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. A fatiguing tendency emerged of highlighting added personalities (including the flat character Callie) who added little to the overarching plot. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

An Increasing Pattern

But it’s not only Yellowjackets. Shows such as Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and fallen headfirst into expected or comfortable cliches. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, extend endlessly with reduced impact. Perhaps Adolescence's team reconsidered a second season.

The Perfect Example

I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, living rent-free in our imaginations, cliffhangers and all. My top series ever followed this pattern. The classic teen series, the quintessential youth program, concluded after a single run but was cinematic in its scope: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the visuals were beautifully seasonal, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. The ending left questions unanswered, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to resolve lingering mysteries. Though stored on outdated technology, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Sacred Bond

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more shows can end gracefully.

• Priya Elan covers entertainment and style.