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This scenario is painfully common. The second series of your favorite TV show premieres online, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The initial run ended so perfectly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with dedicated fans to decode subtle references shedding light on future developments.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. Cut to the second episode, your favorite cast member has done something that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. By episode five, the writers appear to have memory loss around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. By the lackluster conclusion, you long for an earlier termination.

The Pitfall of Prolonged Runs

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Consider Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology with Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. However, supporters might find comfort knowing their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I prefer it had remained a self-contained narrative. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, and every episode hit the right marks. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Numerous awards recognition occurred, creators confidently planned five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. This news brought me relief.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and their struggle with traumatic memories, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. A fatiguing tendency emerged of introducing peripheral figures (including the flat character Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Common Phenomenon

However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Series like Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and embraced predictable tropes. 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. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Perhaps Adolescence's team reconsidered a second season.

The Ideal Model

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, residing permanently in our thoughts, unresolved threads included. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. This beloved 90s drama, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, ran for just one year yet felt epic in scale: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the scripts transcended typical youth dialogue. The conclusion provided no neat resolution, yet this mirrors real life accurately of adolescent uncertainties remaining perpetual. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I mourned its end and drafted follow-up stories to answer some of those questions. It might only live on an old hard drive, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Sacred Bond

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more series can conclude appropriately.

• The author focuses on cultural topics.