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Netflix Shows Are Suffering Because It Takes Too Long For Them To Return (www.whats-on-netflix.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 108 points 1 week ago

Isn't the problem with Netflix that nobody can count on a second season no matter how well the first season does? So many good shows have been cancelled after the first season because Netflix doesn't collect data correctly. And it's now a self-repeating cycle:

everybody knows Netflix will cancel great shows
people choose not get invested in shows
shows don't do as well as they could
Netflix cancels the show
rinse, repeat

I didn't notice I was doing it too until an article popped up (Forbes wasn't the first) and it clicked: I wait for at least 2 seasons and an announcement of a third before watching a Netflix series, otherwise it's just a waste of time. Evidently, others do it too.

[-] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago

Even shows that do get more seasons often see their budgets slashed. It's similar to blockbuster movies that get cheap direct-to-tv or direct-to-home video sequels.

The Witcher comes to mind. I know a lot of hardcore GAMER fans had complaints about them deviating from the games, but even worse imo was the budget. The lighting, the CGI, the makeup. The acting even seems worse (maybe fewer takes, less editing budget?). The first season looked like it was trying to compete with Game of Thrones and other HBO shows. The second season was a step back, but still looked good. The 3rd season looked like a soap opera.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

They had already lost me in the second season so glad to hear I got out at the right time 😅

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

The moment henry cavill bounced and all the leaks about him being pissed about the direction and the writers openly mocking the source material came out, I wrote it off.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

The changes were honestly just weird. I usually can understand changes to source material from book to screen because you have to condense somewhere, but it felt like they just threw out all of it and made their own story instead but with a few beats still disconcertingly present. It was high budget fan fiction (or I guess anti-fan fiction based on what you said!)

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

The rights they got were for the books only, so it makes sense that they wouldn't adapt things from the sequel video games
The games changed things from the books too, so they're consistent in that at least

I'm not excusing garbage, mind, but some people draw the line in odd places

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

It wasn't hardcore gamer fans, at least the ones I knew were hardcore book fans who hated how they destroyed some of their favorite characters and moments.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Shows need to be greenlit and funded for at least three seasons after the decision is made to film it in my opinion.

Just trying out one seasons to see if it sticks is not the way to go.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

That's exactly what I do. Unless it's something I'm really excited about like black summer, I just don't start.

[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago

IMO it wouldn't be as bad if they released one episode a week across a year instead of dropping a scant 10 episode season at once for people to binge and forget

[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago

And if season two weren’t the same thing, just 28 months after anybody stopped paying attention.

Many shows would do well with a weekly release and don’t get it. Then there are other shows where the episode breaks are narratively arbitrary, so not being able to binge leaves the audience with a bad taste in their mouths. Different shows can benefit from different strategies, but the streamers mostly mismanage things.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I hate when they do that though, it feels like they do it to make it so you have to pay more months of subscription to watch the same content.

To me the issue is they need to either schedule limited series or multiple seasons up front. The two plus year lead times are just too long.

I hate getting invested in a show like Kai’s just to find out a copies weeks later they mismarketed it and now it’s gone forever.

I get that if they ran it weekly it had more time to generate buzz, but really by the time I watched the first episode they cancelled it a week later. That window is way too quick, especially because buzz is a very bursty thing to happen.

Also when watching The Last Of Us S2 I found I stopped watching when it got frustrating and forgot to come back after, whereas with a binge I’d push through.

[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago

Shows used to come out every season but many shows now take years between seasons, I watch so many other shows in between then that I tend to forget what the heck happened last season

[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

Disney+ learned this lesson, and for the Marvel shows at least, they're going back to yearly releases. Daredevil Born Again season 2 is well into production right now and will come out again next March, for example.

I am 100% out on Netflix shows for this reason. It's been how many years since One Piece live action came out? It's been how long since the last season of Stranger Things? No one gives a shit anymore.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Most Netflix produced stuff is garbage on top of that. They have a couple quality things but most of it is completely unwatchable. I'll take less content, for higher quality content. I don't use it for constant background noise.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Same. It's just been Netflix's MO since they came into being.

They have never been able to develop a decent idea into a good one. Triple Frontier, a movie about former special forces dudes stealing from a cartel. Great idea, horrible 3rd act when they forgot how to all green beret at the same time.

Good idea, needed a few rewrites. Old Guard, 6 Underground, the list goes on and on. Movie after movie is just mid.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

And yet you just highlighted some of their best work lol. Which isn't saying a whole lot.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Haha that's the whole point! There best work, isn't.

Like, the first few Stranger Things were great, and House of Cards was great until the boondoggle of an end (which wasn't the creators fault bc of all the Spacey nonsense). That's about it.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Mindhunter was also great, but rather than losing their audience with huge gaps, they lost their showrunner and cast.

House of cards and mindhunter came from Netflix trying to give money to people that knew how to make quality shows and not interfering. Then they decided a different strategy of trying to appeal to lots of different demographics with low quality shlock. It destroyed the quality of everything. Now Netflix original means terrible, like direct to video was in the past.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah that's a fair assessment.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Agreed. I loved seasons 1&2 of stranger things but I was over it less than halfway through the third season. But they had a low budget high school zombie show that was enjoyable but they ended it immediately. Like, I don't know what their issue is, but the fact that they don't understand their audience is clear. The fact that they're still around is owed to the fact that they were first to market, and now have lots of content. But most of the good stuff is just rented by Netflix from other companies.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah exactly. It's like they're making 'content' to keep subscribers and nothing else.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I dunno, HoC went off the boil before. And it wouldn't be hard to write a better last season

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

Cause they don’t give a shit about movies, shows or storytelling as a whole.

They are a business and they only care about making a line move upward sharper.

Every single decision is based around that.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

The point is, though, that with ever decreasing quality, the line doesn’t keep going up.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

Apple TV+ has it figured out with Slow Horses. The last episode of the season always ends with preview scenes from the next season, which means it has (at the very least) already been filmed by the time the current season has aired.

PS: Cancelling 'The Recruit' is bullshit and why I avoid Netflix series unless they have very self contained seasons like 'Sherlock & Daughter', or have been renewed with a final season commitment. Again, Apple TV+ does well here with Silo.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The solution is to stop giving Netflix money. They greenlight new IP and tell everyone "just be glad you've got a speaking role. Here's SAG minimum." Then when the contract comes up again after season 2 for renewal they say "fuck no you're not getting a raise - we'd rather cancel the show after a cliffhanger than actually pay our talent. Btw your royalties contract isn't good for streaming revenue LOL getfuked"

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

I cancelled about 3 months ago now

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Same, and I’ve been a subscriber since it became available over here. Haven’t missed it.

The don’t even give any offers to come back

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Also same.

They did keep emailing me daily to come back, so now they're blocked and can't Odyssey me anything.

I dropped all came for Netflix and I would go to a friend's house for Game of Thrones (actually kind of miss those days)

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

This is only tangentially related, but it touches on why I barely trust new shows anymore.

I kept hearing praise for a show called Severance (not on Netflix, though) and it sounded like it was something I'd like. Still I resisted the urge to watch it. It wasn't until several fucking years later, they released a second season.

So, after the second season came out, I figured I'd give it a go. The firs season left me irritated because the season finale resolved almost nothing, left everything open. I'm pissed just knowing how betrayed I'd have felt if I had watched the show when the first season came out and then just got left hanging for years.

Then I watched the first episode of the second season, which fortunately provided some answers, and decided, fuck everybody involved with this project. I'm not getting invested because the potential for them to do another non-answer cliffhanger and just leave fans/viewers without any type of closure is just too much.

But back on topic, yes, I agree, Netflix quite often takes too long to release follow-up seasons on a lot of shows I watched and liked. I know some of it is outside of their control, but it seems to happen quite a bit to the point where I do wonder how much of it is actually out of their control.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Severance is very much safe from cancellation if that's what you're basing it on. It's hugely successful.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

It's not safe from The Walking Deadification, though. And I'm sad to say, it seems like it's already happening.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

There's no way Severance goes on for 11 seasons.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Laughs in LOST

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

The days of shows like that being 20 episodes a season are long gone.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

LOST os a wild one for me because i never watched it growing up. Everything i know about it was just from watching commercials during shows i actually liked, and i very quickly had no fucking clue what was going on with that. 10 years later i had the exact aame experience whenever my much younger brother would watch Arrow. Absolute nonsense TV shows that started with a good premise before immediately spiraling out of control.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Lost is amazing, easily one of my top probably 10 favorite shows

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I have never had the motivation to actually start it knowing that the writers were just winging the overarching plot and it ultimately ends up nowhere remotely satisfying. Like yes I'm sure that episode to episode the story flows and the mysteries are interesting and the characters play off each other well. But it really sounds like a TTRPG DM who refuses to plan his campaign ahead and is just worldbuilding on the fly and throwing out puzzles and mysteries that even he doesn't have the solution or understanding of. Sure that can be fun as hell while you're in it trusting that the DM is building toward something. But then when those loose threads run out and you realize that they never had anything on the other end at all. That almost ruins the entire experience, even the good stuff. I've invested years into multiple novel series that ended up being like that, series I absolutely loved and reread multiple times for fun as the books were still coming out, and now I can't even pick them back up due to the taint of the endings.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I hope so but they're already abusing cliffhangers so they're not that far off from just completely stalling the narrative on every chapter except the last one.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

As the other comment said, Severance is going to get truckloads of money for the foreseeable future, it's one of Apple's biggest hits. And the delay for the second season wasn't intended; it sounds like they weren't happy with much of the second half and had to go back to redo it. That being said, I won't spoil it too much but

Tap for spoiler of... tone I guess

the second season does also end on a kind of "wow, what's the fallout from this going to be" note, so if you were bothered by the season 1 ending it might hit the same nerve.

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

your Netflix shows return?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

This is not a problem unique to Netflix. It’s an issue with every streaming service that I’m aware of.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I mean one they're usually so short so as to be disappointing. Then they take a long time to return. More than anything no one knows if they're going to return.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Happy cake day !

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Radar Love - Golden Earing

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aRlSHG5hRY4

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Did you mean to post this somewhere else?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

No, this song is meant to evoke the feeling of liking a Netflix show and having to wait an excruciating amount of time for the next season to come out.