It was never great.
Yep, season 4 of Magicians starts the end of January. The first season is very odd, but I think the show gets much better after.
The Magicians is great. If you aren’t feeling it in season keep going. Many of the characters start quite unlikable.
To be honest I’m pretty frustrated with statements like these… there are SOO many shows where people insist that “things will get better”, but that improvement is often just marginal. If you don’t buy into the premise and characters, then subsequent seasons seldom change things up to such a degree that its a whole new show. Its probably more like stockholm syndrom where familiarity leads you to overlook obvious flaws…
A recent example where people kept insisting I stick through the first season was “leftovers”, and I just couldn’t. For me it was a horrible show and I really battled to finish the first couple of episodes. And even though everyone said “it gets better”, I just don’t care about any of it and I’m so glad I didn’t waste any more of my life forcing myself through that grim slog.
Well in the series Spartacus they did some weird / stylistic camera shot things during the first few episodes that they just stopped doing later. Of course I told people to try and get through the few few episodes, not the entire season.
The truth is though, series used to get a chance to find their footing. I think the first season of STNG is crap. I don’t think it would have survived in today’s world where content is everywhere all the time. It got a lot better though.
It’s a fairly common phenomenon, as many times it takes a season for the shows cast to get to know each other and that feeds their on-screen chemistry, and for the writers to find their voice and tone, and for the show runners and staff to coalesce.
Yeah, if anything shows get MORE time these days to find an audience and figure themselves out, since production companies and networks are looking at ratings hovering around 1.0 even for successful shows, and getting to 60-80 episodes to package and sell off to streaming services has as much, if not more value than older syndication models.
To put it another way, if Joss Whedon had done Firefly in the 2018 marketplace, he’d have gotten 5 seasons made.
Whew, glad we dodged that bullet!
(I kid, I kid, Firefly fans are so fun to tease!)
STD got renewed for a second season. While I like the premise, some of the actors are Enterprise/Voyager-level annoying. Maybe things will get better.
(Also, I actually like S1 of TNG, even though the contrast with later seasons is stark. I.e. S1 is totally an '80s show.)
I think The Magicians is a bit of a special case. Some of the reasons someone may not like the show for in season 1 are things meant to be subverted in later seasons, especially season 3.
You threw me for a loop there and then I realized yeah, Discovery got stuck with that stupid abbrev. I don’t think I would have stayed with the STNG if I started with 1. I probably started somewhere around Season 2-3 and eventually went back to 1.
Gone…
I caught bits of that here and there and it seemed pretty dire.
I clearly know nothing about that show. Is that … zombies holding machine guns? That’s a new one, surely.
So, multiple things:
I’m now 3 episodes in to this past season of Killjoys and I’m struggling. This was a show I very much enjoyed through the first three seasons, and was looking forward to more. But wow, did it ever slow down this season, and for a show that thrives on consistent action and chaos, that’s a very bad turn to take. I’m already sick of the Jacobi brothers antics, especially Johnnie being Hullen, and the pregnancy storyline is about the dumbest thing this show has come up with in it’s entire run. I need this to get better fast, or I’m out.
The Timeless series finale two episode movie thing was OK, but definitely felt rushed. I’m good with how it ended so that most of the characters were given happy closure, but the way in which they just suddenly defeated Rittenhouse, rescued everyone (by manipulating various timelines) and saved the day was more than a little cheesy. The Korean War setting felt especially ridiculous. Still, I’m glad NBC at least gave fans a real ending, and a happy one at that.
Midnight, Texas was a show I watched in it’s first season and would never in a million years have thought would be brought back for a second season. It was truly awful, and the only reason I stuck it out was because I liked a couple of the actors involved. NBC must have had a contract with the author that they would give it two seasons or something…because WAY better shows than this were cancelled in the past year.
Z Nation is another head scratcher for me. I watched the first season and most of the second before giving up on it. It was total campy stupidity, with a plot that went off the rails regularly and featured few likeable characters. The fact that it somehow got FIVE fucking seasons while shows like Dark Matter and The Expanse were cancelled is a travesty. (I know Expanse is coming back on Amazon).
Well, shows like Dark Matter and The Expanse are probably a lot more expensive to produce. What I saw of Z-Nation looked like they shot it at the local garbage dump.
So you are saying the set matched the writing and the acting?
Speaking of The Expanse, I finally got fed up with the ridiculous UK rights situation and imported the Season 3 DVD/Blu Ray (ambiguous product description, will see what it is when it arrives) for £30. Haven’t paid that much for a season of TV since I was a teenager. Maybe a in a couple of weeks I can dare to venture into the official thread again!
There is much truth in these words.
@Papageno is right though, I’m sure Z-Nation got a pass on lackluster ratings because it was dirt cheap to make, and once they reached 60 episodes or whatever through Season Five they probably had enough to shop it to syndication and/or streaming services.
For once, I’m fully with ya, Wholly. The further I get away from my finally biting the bullet and watching Firefly/Serenity, the more sure I become that I actively disliked it.