Modern classics like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Community, and Bojack Horseman are notorious for “starting slow” and are often recommended with a disclaimer like “Give it a few episodes; I promise it gets good!”
This is a bit of a falsehood though, IMO.
Those shows (although I’ve never really watched BH) all ARE good from the start, as a rewatch will invariably reveal.
It’s just that the worlds they conjure sometimes take a while to get used to. But once used to them, those early episodes are often absolute gold.
The Wire in particular has absolutely nothing to apologise for in any of its first few episodes (or indeed virtually all of the other ones) but for someone unfamiliar with the Baltimore drug markets and the hierarchical structures within and around them, it took me a few episodes to get up to speed.
It’s not that it “gets” good after a few episodes. It’s just that it might take a few to realise just how good it is.
Tbf, there is often a proportional reward (multiple seasons of good TV being quite a bit longer than the movies that get good).
Also, with how pacing, budgets and casts work in the industry, a movie often ends up having more in terms of emotional investment and new information than an equivalent length of TV. So the effort to watch a movie is not the same as watching an hour and a half of TV (on average).
Generally have a tough time, especially with streaming, to stick with something past Season 3 (looking at you, Breaking Bad).
It’s hard to infinitely amp up the stakes without going off the rails.
I dunno, BB was an outlier for me in that it kept getting better. We’re there some crap filler episodes? Of course. Did the story wander a bit? Sure. But I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.
It’s also worth noting that many of these shows from the traditional TV days were a once a week affair and weren’t intended to be binged. It was a different way of watching back then.
A lot of those TV shows are from before streaming. Now there are only like four episodes per season. It could be interesting to see if episode ratings change when seasons are shorter.
My first thought was why they didn’t use percent through season 1 or the shows lifetime to account for variable season length
Stop saying jumped the shark ! It’s dumb and never should have become a saying! You definitely didn’t need it 4 times in an article!
I try to give a new show 3 episodes before i walk away.
Jumping the shark was a—metaphorically and in one case literally—real thing that used to happen, back when 22 or more episodes were cranked out per season, leading eventually to there being no juice left to squeeze from the show’s premise, causing it to go off the rails. It doesn’t mean just a “decline in quality,” or at least it originally didn’t.
Jumping the shark was a—metaphorically and in one case literally
Or two cases, if you’re familiar with the work of Barry Zuckercorn, Attorney at Law.
The problem with this methodology (using IMDb ratings to compare different seasons and shows to each other) is that every show is going to see a “ratings bump” when people who are disinterested or dissatisfied stop watching and only the die-hard fans are left watching and rating.
Same with movies, like how the Venom movies have higher Rotten Tomatoes scores with each installment, despite getting worse as they went along.
Yay, a dataisbeautiful post!
