When the writers start to lean too hard on character shticks.
Unnecessary cameos by guest stars that completely pull you out of the narrative. Bonus points if it’s Ed Sheeran.
When a show focuses on women in season 1 and in season 2 they add a white male character as a love interest. Examples: Supergirl, Once Upon A Time, Yellowjackets.
Similarly, when a shows focuses on women in season 1 and they add a whole bunch of male characters in season 2 that they give a ton of screen-time to. Extreme example: The Wilds
It’s on Syfy.
The Expanse begs to differ. (Disclaimer, I own Dinocroc vs Supergator on DVD)
The SciFi (before the rebranding) Dune miniseries are really good. They’re my favorite versions of Dune so far, and they did Dune Messiah and Children of Dune too. Those two are both part of the “Children of Dune” miniseries.
Having the Baby.
The budding love story is a go to for writers. Everyone loves it, and makes you feel emotions when they finally get together. Problem is, it has a natural path.
2 to 3 seasons to get together. 1 season of new bliss, 1 season of ups and downs, ending with a marriage proposal. 1 season of engagement ending in wedding. 1 season of new marriage stuff. Now what?
Married couples are boring. So what do we do now? Now it’s time for the baby.
And babies are horrible on TV. People watch TV to escape reality, not hear a screaming child. So the dream couple has a baby and it’s so tiring and so much work, but suddenly the show starts focusing on other characters, and then suddenly you know it’s over.
The office was famous for this one. Everyone loves Jim and Pam, until the wedding, then who cares. They tried to force those feelings again with Andy and Erin, but you just can’t.
Parks and rec luckily took a different route with Andy and April, but you can tell they were teetering on the edge, and in the final season everyone had kids anyway.
HIMYM had a worse approach because it wasn’t that Ted was on the path, but rather Lily and Marshall already were and so kids came in earlier, and again change the entire show.
The list goes on, it is an official trope now
A similar red flag, introducing a new, younger “cute” kid character because the previous cute kids aged out of the category.
For some reason the Cosby show was the first thing to mind there. Move out of the way Rudy!
I think Modern Family was the exception to this, at least with Mitchell & Cam. Gloria getting pregnant just had vibes of Married with Children when Peggy got pregnant and it felt like the start of the end.
It worked with Modern Family because the show’s entire premise was about Families and when that’s the show’s premise then the reverse is true, Families without children are boring lol
Married with Children’s pregnancy story arc was driven by the Katey Sagal’s real life pregnancy. She unfortunately had a miscarriage after it had been written into the show, so the writers decided to bail on it by making it all a dream. It comes across as sloppy writing, but it was probably the most compassionate way to handle it.
I’m not sure if that’s a red flag as much as it’s just a symptom of a show having gone for a while. Like if it shows on the air for a number of years then naturally couples are going to have to start moving forward with their lives so a baby’s rather par for the course. However at the same time the longer show goes on the more likely it is to start to decline. I’m thinking this is more correlation than causation.
When a character that has fully and officially died or been wrote off, returns in some deus ex machina style lazy way
Often times for me if is when they clearly wrote a show to have 2 main characters to be together, and they make them get close as if they are going to finally get there in episode 6 (where I should stop watching) and then it doesn’t happen until season 3 (when I’m fucking upset I bothered watching this shit because now I wanted them to never get together)
Joke’s on you, The Promised Neverland went downhill WAY before that point
Celebrity appearances.
Not to say the show goes downhill because of it. But I feel as if it’s often used as a crutch to attract more viewers.
*screams in Ed sheeran on GOT"
“We want to appeal to a wider audience that’s not the typical X fan”.
It’s usually code for “stakeholders/execs want infinite growth, and we are too burnt out/creatively bankrupt to fight back. So, enjoy the change to another cookie cutter slop content”.
Some shows even start out there already. Massive red flag.
I would say that most shows start out there already these days. There’s a whole bunch of boxes that have to be ticked off, instead of just creating an organic storyline with realistic and natural groups of people.
“We are proud that not a single person in the production team has ever seen anything from this beloved IP we are adapting.”
the show catches up with the books
Is there a freefolk equivalent on Lemmy yet?
Not any active. I feel like most of the people interested in the show lost interest after the finale. I know I’m one of them.
When netflix picks it up and adds new seasons (using untalented writers instead of the ones that made the show good)
Netflix will revive shows after the original networks didn’t order more seasons. In other words, the show was already long-dead…
Can’t wait for the Netflix seasons of Futurama after it gets cancelled again.
Futurama ended after 5 seasons
When one or more of the original main character actors leave the show. They’ll either introduce new characters to replace the originals or refocus the show on some of the existing, less-important ones. Sometimes a show can make it work, and occasionally you end up with something better, but it usually indicates the show has one, maybe two seasons of life left.
Fonzarelli jumping over a shark while water skiing in a leather jacket.
That’s why some people will say "that show waterskied in a leather jacket " to mean that it’s passed it’s due date.
The shark jumping episode of Happy Days was season 5 episode 3. The series went on for 11 seasons, meaning there were more episodes after jumping the shark then there were before.
Alternative timelines
Fringe disagrees
Though there it really was a core component, so obviously itllt work
And The Man In The High Castle. Or is that alternative universe?
time travel in general, for me… unless the show is specifically about time travel.
unless the show is specifically about time travel.
Even then… I mean, what has good chances to be OK is when the show is a pure serial with a defined story with a start and an end (so basically a looong movie cut in 40 minutes pieces), in a universe where the conditions of the time travel are clearly defined and limited.
When it is a series-serial mix (like >90% of TV shows theses days), with extra seasons which may or may not be ordered, you can be sure the writers will trip up, as they have to invent new things, and some of those things will break the conditions and the limits defined earlier and then it won’t make sense anymore.
Fucking La Brea
It’s become a joke between my partner and I at this point, so many shows fall into this pit
Rick and Morty Disagrees
Starting to answer backstory questions no one really wanted to know. For example, I knew Seinfeld was running out the clock as soon as they gave Kramer a first name.
When did that happen? I must have blocked it out of my memory.
I don’t know which season it happened but you might recall his name is Cosmo Kramer.
Oh yeah. That’s gotta be pretty early on though. It wasn’t a big deal.
Season six.
COSMO???
