I look at Supernatural as a prime example of this. End it after 5 seasons. It could have been great, but seasons 6-11? or so were really bad IIRC. There was a great story arc that they should have just left alone.
The X-Files suffered from the same thing. Season 5’s finale, appropriately titled “The End” was supposed to be the series finale. The X-Files movie (1998) was supposed to wrap up the main storyline of the show and transition the franchise into a series of big budget films. But before the movie was even released in theaters Fox got cold feet about losing one of their prime-time ratings juggernauts and negotiated a renewal to keep the show on TV for another four seasons… That’s when things really started to fall apart. The show’s main “mythology” storyline was always kind of a mess but in order to keep it going after the movie they had to do a lot of reconning. It went wildly off the rails.
Don’t get me wrong, some of my favorite stand alone/MoTW episodes are from seasons 6 and 7, for example, Drive written by Vince Gilligan and guest starring Bryan Cranston. The Unnatural written and directed by David Duchovny. And X-Cops, which saw Mulder and Scully accidentally being followed by a camera crew who happened to be filming an episode of the reality TV series Cops with the local PD (this episode was also written by Vince Gilligan). So it’s not a total loss. But sometimes I wonder what could’ve been had Chris Carter and Fox stuck to the original plan to spin the franchise off into a series of films.
joemo@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Hey no issues here, happy to learn about new things.
I never watched The X-Files but with winter coming up it’s always nice to have some new (to me) shows to watch.
A spinoff would be the way to go if you want to extend a series. I’m not quite sure who you could do that for in Archer. I was thinking like Better Call Saul (a fourth show has entered the discussion). I think that was really well done but I’m not sure a similar thing could be done for Archer and be as successful.
I hope you enjoy your rewatch of The X-Files!
ZeroCool@feddit.ch 11 months ago
Well if you liked those early seasons of Supernatural you’ll probably like The X-Files too. They both owe a lot to a short lived show from the '70s called Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker inspired The X-Files in the '90s, which in turn inspired Supernatural and Fringe in the early 2000s. Three great shows were built on the back of one series that’s been more or less forgotten.