I loved the first season and I genuinely love your take enough I want to watch it again to see if you're correct.

Remembering what stood out for me was the narrative vision having a single director and writer steering the ship.

Imho it should have been one and done but it was too popular so they just had to fuck it up and make more seasons because American TV is goddamn stupid.

BBC would have done a single season run and be done with it and no one would think anything else of it.

Season 2 was terrible because HBO forced them to do a second season right away before giving them time to write a decent script. I thought Season 3 was good. Season 4 was well made in all respects, but I just didn't care for the story.

I can't say you are wrong tbh. The red herring was quite frustrating in the forth season, I didn't dig the ending. They do have stellar casts that really carry it but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near bad though.

Cage is great when the director is good. E.g. ‘Matchstick Men’ and ‘Leaving Las Vegas’. And of course ‘Vampire's Kiss’ is Cage dialing up his style to the max.

However, if Cage is the best thing about the film and the film is not ‘Vampire's Kiss’, things are gonna be tough.

2 really was not utter dog shit. The worst part about it was the fact they didn't have a single director. Many shows wish they could have written a season 2 of TD, and I am a season 1 stan.

three was... meh. Felt too performative in the writing (returning to the tropes of s1 like multiple timelines and buddy cop) and reddit solved every twist. That's how formulaic and predictable it was. I watched maybe two episodes of s4.