Unnecessary cameos by guest stars that completely pull you out of the narrative. Bonus points if it’s Ed Sheeran.
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.
Flashbacks.
Romance between two characters that seems to come out of nowhere because the main characters have already gotten together.
A new kid is added the show.
A new *sassy kid is added to the show 🤮
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.
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
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.
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 was a young teen at the time and that show was part of my Sunday routine for many years, and I remember everyone was curious how the show would handle it. After seeing the episode, I distinctly recall feeling like they handled it very well and would have been disappointed if they’d make Katy Sagal have to act with a baby after going through that. I was also more sympathetic towards Peggy after that.
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
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.
The narrator asks you to tell your friends to watch the show
they didnt
“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.
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"
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
It’s on Syfy.
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.
The Expanse begs to differ. (Disclaimer, I own Dinocroc vs Supergator on DVD)
Season 3 of a show that wasn’t originally planned to be 3+ seasons is usually around where it starts to drop off. There are exceptions, but I’ve seen several shows where S1 is fantastic, S2 is good, S3 is okay at best, and S4+ is utter trash.
