How many seasons should a TV series have?

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

How many seasons do you think should a TV series should have? I can understand if people complain Simpsons was better in 1992. As of September 2018, the series is about to enter its 30th season.

Cartoons tend to run longer than some other, and comedy series run even longer. Some soap operas can run for decades. But for how many seasons do you think a series should air before it really starts lacking in quality?

[Storm Eagle]

I still watch The Simpsons and still will until I get tired of it. Why I'm not tired of it yet, I don't know. Any other show can go on as long as it wants whether I'm watching it or not, as far as I'm concerned. If I get bored of a show, I'll just simply not watch, just like I did with The Real World in the middle of its 12th season. Some people seem to forget they have that option.

[newfan]

Some shows can start to get old sooner than others but so long as there is still a big fan following and they're not flatlining with the story then as long as that lasts, be it 4 years or 15.
One of my all time favourite shows is now on season 13, I will watch it till it ends but at least when it does I can't feel like my enjoyment was cut a little shorter than it could have been.

[Wesley]

Depends on the tv series, but 5-7 seasons sounds about right for dramas/cartoons and 10-11 for comedies.

[sdp]

I usually only watch shows that are already finished and I realize that to me I usually wish it had gotten "one last season". I think every show should have a "last season" clause where when it gets cancelled it still gets one last season to finish it off.

But yeah as far as the question it's subjective, shows that continue but technically end like Power Rangers and Pokemon are fine having endless seasons since the story you were following does end, the universe just keeps on going. Shows like the Simpsons then yeah they just become a parody of themselves when they go on for too long. I think for most shows around 100 episodes is more than enough but it's subjective.

I also think shorter seasons are a bit better, nowadays many shows have 26 episode seasons but they get the same things accomplished as a 13 episode season did the previous decade. Also while I love that story arcs are the norm and not the exception, I also feel this has made most "filler" episodes worse off and now we don't get many great character moments. With the same idea I feel season arcs are stretched out now to make it a story arc while in the past some of those stories could've just been told in a two part episode max, Arrow is a great example of this when you compare the first two seasons with the others.

[Prowler]

As much as it needs, basically.

Once a show gets past a point where people think it has jumped the shark, then it's time to wrap it up.

[CyberCubed]

Depends on the series, but most regular shows do tend to cap out around 5-7 seasons. That's usually a good number, but even some shows like Buffy get worse in the last two seasons. Also the 3 major Star Trek shows all ended with 7 seasons.

I also notice when it comes to anime, I like 26 episode series the most, not counting the long running shows like Dragonball, Pokemon, etc. I knocked out so many 26 ep anime like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Samurai Champloo, Evangelion, Big O, or ones a little longer like Black Lagoon, One Punch Man currently only has 12 episodes.

If a show lasts over 100 episodes I need to be really invested in the franchise like I am with TMNT, Dragonball, Pokemon, etc. to continue to watching it. Even for Simpsons I generally stopped collecting the DVDs at Season 10, even though I watched it on TV to about Season 21 or so before calling it quits.

[Shark_Blade]

Originally Posted by Prowler

As much as it needs, basically.

Once a show gets past a point where people think it has jumped the shark, then it's time to wrap it up.

X-Files Season 10 & 11...

I feel it's due to the story/writing/script which is piss poor compared to the earlier seasons. Shame, really.

[newfan]

Originally Posted by Shark_Blade

X-Files Season 10 & 11...

I feel it's due to the story/writing/script which is piss poor compared to the earlier seasons. Shame, really.

I was still really glad to see it back and had the nostalgia but yes the story was a bit of a let down and so were the really short seasons, I think due to actor commitments? but one proper season done well with a good conclusion would have been preferable.

I used to watch Revenge but I did find myself being glad that wrapped up, that story just wasn't one which could go on for too many seasons.

Agreed with SDP about getting notice to wrap a show up or at least some warning so they aren't rushed wrapping it up in the last few eps or ending unresolved.

[Coola Yagami]

No true answer. It all depends on the kind of show and how well it does. The Simpsons endures because it never had set rules on when it can take place. There are now as much (or possibly more) episodes of the characters with smartphones and internet as there are older episodes before those technologies existed. They change with the times. One episode has Homer throw a computer away cause it's 'too complicated' back in the day computers were for nerds and jocks wouldn't go anywhere near them, but modern episodes have Homer surf the internet since the internet made computers cool.

Now some series do have planned ending and a planned story that head towards a certain conclusion. Those shows should end when the creators want them to end and not be forced to continue past that.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by Shark_Blade

X-Files Season 10 & 11...

I feel it's due to the story/writing/script which is piss poor compared to the earlier seasons. Shame, really.

Season 10 and 11 might've been mistakes but not the idea of an x-files revival, it had potential but it should've been a new show with Mulder and Scully as mentor roles in some way and continue with a new generation.

X-Files jumped the shark way before that revival though, even before David Duchovni left it, they just completely messed up the alien conspiracy.

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

No true answer. It all depends on the kind of show and how well it does. The Simpsons endures because it never had set rules on when it can take place.

I disagree, you can have modern technology in the simpsons but the concept clearly works better in the 80s/90s era, hell many established characters backgrounds are set in specific era and look at the backlash when they for example tried to get the retcon Marge/Homer being a couple in the 90s. The characters are just too iconic that people don't mind or care about countinuity same with most superheroes making more sense in previous than modern eras because it'd just be more difficult to get away with secret identities and wahtnot.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Prowler

As much as it needs, basically.

Once a show gets past a point where people think it has jumped the shark, then it's time to wrap it up.

Which reminds me... Jerry Seinfeld made a very wise decision not accepting a huge chunk of money for a 10th Seinfeld season. The show was already limping a bit by the time Larry David(the true genius behind Seinfeld) left the show, even though the last 2 Seinfeld seasons still have a lot of good stuff in them.He left us wanting for more, which we would get ages later in a Seinfeld reunion thing on Curb Your Enthusiasm iirc.

Britcoms usually are short, meaning they stop long before they wear thin on people. Black Adder is basically a mini-series with 4 separate seasons of 6 episodes each. Fawlty Towers, iirc, had two seasons of 12 episodes each. Yes, Minster and Yes, Prime Minster both had 2-3 seasons max each. Allo Allo however did drag out for a long time, and it eventually got stale and repetitive.

[neatoman]

It's a bit a weird question. First off "season" really just means "episode batch" and there isn't a real standard number for how many episodes a single season can be. Two shows that are both ten "seasons" long can have as widely different episode counts as 60 and 220, it's a nearly meaningless measurement.

This is the point where I'd episode count is a better measurement for declining quality... But it really isn't. Admittedly, the show with only 60 episodes is more likely to have a consistant pace, higher budget per episode, careful rewrites, less tired concept, etc. Yet that's not really guaranteed either.

Ultimately, the "best" answer I can give is: A show should end when the consensus is that it sucks now.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by neatoman

It's a bit a weird question. First off "season" really just means "episode batch" and there isn't a real standard number for how many episodes a single season can be. Two shows that are both ten "seasons" long can have as widely different episode counts as 60 and 220, it's a nearly meaningless measurement.

This is the point where I'd episode count is a better measurement for declining quality... But it really isn't. Admittedly, the show with only 60 episodes is more likely to have a consistant pace, higher budget per episode, careful rewrites, less tired concept, etc. Yet that's not really guaranteed either.

Ultimately, the "best" answer I can give is: A show should end when the consensus is that it sucks now.

Yeah, pretty much. Good points.

[Wildcat]

So this will basically become another “Simpsons should have ended already” topic?

I agree with Storm Eagle. Whenever it wants to stop. If you lose interest in something stop watching.

I know the Simpsons is an extremely special case but still if you find it so horrible don't ever lay on eyes on post-x-season again.

I’m sorry but I can’t stand the Simpsons complaints anymore. It’s not the horrifying abomination that those who criticize it say it is.

To be perfectly honest I do not even think the early seasons are that drastically superior to the modern ones. The show has been pretty consistent with its tone and direction imo. It was just fresher at the time.

[MrPliggins]

Whenever they want to stop it, really. I used to be a person who said I've watched this far, I need to keep going, even when the show is bad. What a waste of time. This mentality made me suffer through the last couple seasons of Dexter (and Fast Forward, Back to the Sewer, although there were a few gems in there). Now, if something starts to suck, I quit watching. I stopped watching The Walking Dead a while ago and I don't even care about missing episodes. I stopped TMNT 2k12 because it just wasn't catching me and started to feel like a chore to watch. There is just too much in my Netflix queue (and other non-tv things to do) to watch things that bore me anymore. Let the show go on, I'll just do something else.

[TheBlueTurtle1]

Hard to say, my guess would be about 7 season, but when I think of Friends and Futruama, I could say more.

A lot of shows that start off well do get stale the longer they go on. The walking dead and The Simpsons to name a few. I think The Simpsons literally still ride on the accolades of the first 7 Seasons.

[ProactiveMan]

Three or four. That way it can get off to a rough start, find its feet, peak, get weird, and then fade away before it stats to repeat itself. Wrapping TV series up never seems to work, so they may as well go off the air between seasons without a fuss.

[ZariusTwo]

I think The Simpsons have gotten a lit bit better in recent years, it's not side-splittingly hilarious as it used to be, and yeah I'm pretty much forever craving Lisa and Ralph to start a relationship (which will never happen no matter how badly Gail Simone wants it), but the jokes are starting to land with me again and there's still solid gold Sideshow Bob stories every so often.

I'm hoping Bob's Burgers winds down after the movie, though they've been smart and have only steadily grown the characters every three or four years and let them stay within factory settings, focusing more on the calamity of the day.

Long-runners can be consistent if you have a vision and know where to take a character or an ensemble with a target goal in sight, post-script seasons are usually when the rot kicks in and it takes a while for the next target goal to be established.

[Spike Spiegel]

3-5.

I skipped about two years' worth of Bates Motel and still felt more than prepared for the final season...

And someone already mentioned X-Files.