Television shows that never fell off despite a multi-season run

Always worth mentioning fairly long-running shows that just continued to get better and better, or at least never remotely feel like dipping in quality, like Veep

― imago, Monday, 18 January 2021 14:31 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

or Always Sunny, the gang still bangs fuiud

― imago, Monday, 18 January 2021 14:35 (forty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

always sunny absolutely, pretty remarkable how consistent that show’s been for a decade plus

Sopranos, unlike virtually every other drama that carried on past 5 seasons

veep took a slight step down in the season where selena was out of politics, but it bounced back the following year

yeah it is probably easier to sustain comedies than dramas, but something like Veep is weirdly a drama as well as a comedy imo

maybe wanna do a big spoilerrific Grand Finale Episode poll someday too. usually finales are kind of ehh but Veep and actually The Good Place are recent examples of the overall finale being maybe the pinnacle

(The Good Place did v much dip in quality though before that finale imo and didn't have enough seasons to qualify here)

I could mention a few famous ones that qualify for me, but there was lots of posting otherwise in the other thread, so I won't rehash that here. I will mention Friday Night Lights, which managed to stay great even though it completely revamped the show the last couple of seasons.

Hancock's Half Hour
Dad's Army
Porridge
Bosom Manor

The Shield qualifies - it's too long, but no one season is notably bad.

The Wire and Breaking Bad, although some will surely disagree.

Although it was only four short seasons, Rectify was pretty much perfect from start to finish imo.

The wire has season five
Sopranos sags
Breaking bad is x files for chemists

Sopranos sags

wrong

Even friday night lights and twin peaks, god bless em, have their seasons 2

The Larry Sanders Show kept scaling new heights right up to the finale

The Americans dipped a bit in S5 but S6 was magnificent. One of the most consistently great shows.

The Leftovers only had three seasons but they were all superb. I'll also rep for both Homeland and 24 being consistently great to the end.

Im hearing wire season 5 is now not *that bad* which might make it the winner

Deadwood also contending

Adventure Time had a pretty impressive run - 283 episodes (not including the new specials) and very few episodes I'd be inclined to call outright bad.

Anything under 5 seasons doesn't count imho

Should have mentioned Larry Sanders, yeah--I don't remember a dull patch at any point.

Yeah i think 3 minimum but 5 a good bar

I stopped watching south park but im not confident that we will get a review of its quality as opposed to a discussion of other of its characteristics

Also, should it be shows that have discernible drama plot threads as opposed to idk sitcom-cod efforts at same or shows that dont rly have character/plot development at all

xpost Oh man, of course. I'm embarrassed that I forgot. Larry Sanders might be my all-time favorite.

Adventure Time had a pretty impressive run - 283 episodes (not including the new specials) and very few episodes I'd be inclined to call outright bad.

― stylish but illegal (Simon H.), Monday, 18 January 2021 15:07 (three minutes ago) link

I thought so so so many of them were bad past season 5...

I will rep for South Park being, if anything, currently better than it was for much of its run, although I don't expect many people to agree with me on this. The latest season's Tegridy Farms run (the first 6 episodes) was a career high

The best kind of show adds great new characters as it goes along: with Larry Sanders, you had Mary Lynn Rajskub and Scott Thompson, and Bob Odenkirk became more prominent towards the end.

only one acceptable answer here, and it's smallville

Dick Van Dyke Show.

Dramas are more difficult to call. I've seen loads of old cop/detective series and most of them decline a little or a lot over time. One exception - imo Naked City peaked at the end (1962-1963) but it only had four seasons.

South Park definitely had a few bad seasons in the middle but yeah whenever I catch a new episode it's surprisingly good

people seem to love all of Letterkenny but I don't know if my body is ready for content that canadian

again I think the point made earlier that drama is harder to sustain than comedy is pertinent, i guess as drama has an arc and comedy is eternal

better call saul is at season 5, and each season has been better than the last

^ good thread idea. not sure there'll be many other contenders though.

Did 30 rock ever rly drop?

Again its one i stopped watching, vut that time it was cos i dropped the hard drive

no show has achieved this

better call saul is at season 5, and each season has been better than the last

― boz conspiracy by toby hus (voodoo chili), Monday, January 18, 2021 10:49 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

^ good thread idea. not sure there'll be many other contenders though.

― joni mitchell jarre (anagram), Monday, January 18, 2021 10:50 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago)

I wanted to start this exact thread once, but now I can't remember what show prompted the idea (possibly BCS but I'm always a season behind on that cuz of Canada)

UK's Coupling woulda made this list if not for the ill-fated series 4

Sopranos season 4 definitely feels a cut below, a little more soap-opera ish than usual. wouldn't call it 'bad' per se.

but Season 6, man does the back half of that hit hard

30 Rock qualifies imo - only a slight drop around seasons 4-5 maybe

Did 30 rock ever rly drop?

Again its one i stopped watching, vut that time it was cos i dropped the hard drive

― spaghetti connemara (darraghmac), Monday, January 18, 2021 11:10 AM bookmarkflaglink

the only episode I outright hated was the "live" episode from Season 6, which managed to ruin the essence of 30 Rock. but it was just a single ep.

comedy-wise, Father Ted qualifies

we won't mention what happened after

My quarantine deep-dive was the Sopranos (I'd seen the first three back in the early 00s but never finished), and I think S4 is legit bad. But yeah overall Sopranos tends to be plagued with dud episodes more than bad seasons.

Rome

b-but S4 of the Sopranos has Christopher's intervention and "Whitecaps"

I'm re-watching 30 Rock, it's pretty consistent.

the Greenzo episode is one of my favorite episodes of television ever

I remember finding the Seinfeld one was pretty poor but on rewatch liked it more.

The Shield is the champion for me. It never really flagged and the final season and series finale (the last two episodes, really) were amazing.

I loved The Shield, but the Forest Whitaker arc killed it for me, couldn't make it through that.

I was thinking Hill Street Blues, but then I remembered it getting bogged down in procedural/political tedium during the last couple of seasons.

Daria

The plots of the last few 30 Rock episodes were hacky sitcomy (we're getting married! And adopting kids! Kenneth is now ceo!) but the jokes were still good

Brockmire

Many would say The Rockford Files. I haven't watched the late seasons in a long time but they mostly get high ratings on imdb.

Deadwood has a pretty solid run, tho after multiple re-watches, it doesn't glide with quite the same verve in season 3, that said, there was many places for it to go, had it not been cancelled to soon, will also say that 'black sails' is a show that got better and better as it progressed

What about sci-fi shows? TNG always strikes me as one of the most consistently decent shows ever to be on TV, but that might just be me.

I can't believe no one, except for Ward, has mentioned Bosom Manor!

what about sci-fi shows? TNG always strikes me as one of the most consistently decent shows ever to be on TV, but that might just be me.

― The return of our beloved potatoes (the table is the table), Monday, January 18, 2021 6:00 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

at the time i didn't care for the final season of Fringe but over the last 3 weeks i've watched all 5 seasons over again for the first time since their initial airing on tv and i really loved the whole thing (tho season 5 is still the weakest). Definitely a better experience for me watching 3-5 episodes a day and actually remembering what was supposed to be going on rather than forgetting loads of stuff like i must have the first time around. Of course the plot threads they start then forget about are more obvious too.

and anna torv is incredible as Olivia who is a terrific character. As is Nina Sharp and Astrid.

sopranos qualifies and the saggy bits are essential- the general evasion of narrative conventions about pacing and closure and determinate meaning in those later seasons makes the show way less boring than its more streamlined successors

First two seasons of TNG are p poor imho, so it fell on rather than never fell off (and even then I think there are some lame episodes in every season).

Parks and Recreation, Grimm, iZombie

I'd also argue for Buffy and Angel. There's a couple of S6 Buffy episodes I really dislike (Normal Again and Hell's Bells) but I don't think they lessen the overall quality of the show (also, I actually really love the S7 plot); I also don't like how Cordelia is handled in Angel S4 but the buildup of that season is great and they weathered through it to get to an amazing final season.

sopranos qualifies and the saggy bits are essential- the general evasion of narrative conventions about pacing and closure and determinate meaning in those later seasons makes the show way less boring than its more streamlined successors

― Left, Monday, 18 January 2021 18:57 (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Finding it difficult to see the join here between "this is bad but i like it" and "no this is good, actually"

similar to TNG "fall on" -- I've only ever watched the last season of Leftovers, and from what i've read, that seems to have been the very best way to watch this series.

Not the longest of shows but The Good Place was solid throughout

I'm a huge fan of The Wire (I know, ACAB and all that, mea culpa) but those who are hand waving Season 5 as not a significant decline are delusional.

I submit the following:
George Gently
Prime Suspect
Ripper Street

oh and The Killing

i thought 30 rock fell off pretty sharply in the 2ish seasons before the last season, too much commitment to long-term stories and not enough frantic laffs. and then the last season was a return to form, lot of very funny single episodes

felt the same about parks and rec tbh, i guess i don't really like when pure comedies go hard on dedicated season-long stories, they get bogged down and limited. and then in the last season they did the 3-years-in-the-future gimmick which opened it back up a lot

though i'm guessing if i were to rewatch all 30 rock in one fell swoop i might not notice. i haven't watched it since it originally aired, and it's harder to say that a show is consistently good when you're watching it over the course of years and you can't just jump to the next episode

The Good Place only had three seasons and each one was weaker than the one before! I mean it lands in the category of "shows whose last season was still really good" because it started from such a high point, but not "shows that didn't fall off," and at any rate the list of "shows whose third season was still really good" is quite long.

When the audience starts to really care about the characters, that tends to carry the show and compensates for a watered down core concept or convoluted plot line (or usually both hand in hand).

xps those mean the same thing from my pov. any good art could aslo be considered bad for not following certain rules

s5 of the wire is a decline but like many such declines the problems were already there in smaller doses. it has its moments but the newspaper stuff is simonism at its worst and the obsession with turning all the various characters/narratives into symbols becomes way too much by the end

the good place was dropping off in the last seasons in the same way all of that guy's shows seem to do, by becoming too mushy and overdefining the characters, but it ended before it could really get bad

I tend to start caring about characters less when all their traits and stock jokes and so on become too codified and predictable

How I Met Your Mother didn’t really fall off... until the finale.

MASH probably had bad weeks on the back half but for such a long running sitcom of its era it never got bad long-term.

I can't recall an all-bad Mad Men episode and certainly no persistent drop-off (and I thought it would after Don's secret came out).

this is such a rare thing

madmen knew when to end it, i think

breaking bad goes from great to good pretty consistently throughout the entire show

this notion of consistent quality material from start to finish goes against how entertainment companies produce and jump from one concept to another though

most shows that get a big viewership will be milked until enough people think it's bad, i feel

The Peter Principle of television basically

I've only ever watched the last season of Leftovers, and from what i've read, that seems to have been the very best way to watch this series.

wait, waht? no!

The Good Place only had three seasons and each one was weaker than the one before! I mean it lands in the category of "shows whose last season was still really good" because it started from such a high point, but not "shows that didn't fall off," and at any rate the list of "shows whose third season was still really good" is quite long.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, January 18, 2021 2:48 PM (one hour ago)

it had four seasons and I can't imagine thinking S1 was the best one

ER

I'd also say The Good Place was consistently good for all of its four seasons.

Disagree with milo on How I Met Your Mother. I thought it kept it's quality into its fifth season but then cracks appeared. I think for me the episode 'Rabbit or Duck' was the first one where I thought the entire episode wasn't funny or good/poignant in any way.
While I personally thought the final episode was pretty good (except for Barney getting yet another 'reset') I'd say that the last season was overall not so great.
The show did entertain me all the way through - just increasingly less so after mid-season 5.

I can't imagine thinking S1 was the best one

S1 of The Good Place had the most consistently funny material, prompting the most out-loud laughs per episode, but that humor was drawn from a well the writers wisely chose not to over-exploit as the series continued and the main characters gained complexity.

Don't get me wrong, I like S1, but it relies a lot on familiar situational comedy tropes like the various dissembling characters scrambling to not get found out. I'm enough of a classicist that I liked all that stuff and the cast is extremely winning, but in my opinion S2 elevates the show into something more surprising and memorable. Arguably they go a little too far with the fantastical stuff after a point, and the unreality lowers the stakes too much (though ftr I approve of mentioning the show on this thread), so S2 would be my pick for the show's quality peak.

HIMYM had a big sag in the second half when they kept asking if their next season was going to be the last, but would never get told until the end of production that they were renewed, so they had to keep spinning wheels. There's a big chunk right after they were finally told they had two more years or w/e that suddenly Bays/Thomas are writing two out of every three episodes and the engines start revving furiously.

(xp the sag may have been where Valentjin identifies but idk episode titles or remember any specifics)

30 Rock stays hilaire forever, which I care more about than whether... the multi-episode plots are less plausible than in the pilot episode?

I'm a huge fan of The Wire (I know, ACAB and all that, mea culpa) but those who are hand waving Season 5 as not a significant decline are delusional.

It's a huge decline*, but I'd recommend it to folks to catch up on years after an initial binge, or to add in on a rewatch. There's still interesting stuff.

* The main problem imo is that they were denied the spin-off series The Hall, so six episodes of plot for that had to be crammed in alongside 13 eps worth of Wire plot... and then the episode order was cut to ten. The sudden out-of-character nonsense behaviour, and painfully on-the-nose Simonisms, are just bad shortcuts trying to force 19 episodes into a ten-ep bag.

The Americans dipped a bit in S5 but S6 was magnificent. One of the most consistently great shows.

― joni mitchell jarre (anagram)

Also does bojack horseman have enough seasons to make the cut?

bojack horseman dipped in S5 and i refuse to countenance otherwise

Unacceptable

like the scripting and lax quality control of bojack horseman season 5!

Batman the Animated Series - though I might be cheating here, since I consider the New Batman Adventures, which I don't care for much, to be a separate series.

Avatar was consistently great

I thought of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, but isn't that just one really long season? I keep thinking of it having five seasons as the opening theme/sequence changes every 12 or so episodes

I was thinking of the DCAU/Timmverse in general for this thread, for sure. A decade and a half of multiple shows that never fell off imo.

Avatar is probably also my go-to for a show that never flags in quality for more than an episode or so but it's only three seasons. Korra DID flag in quality imo so you can see that it was a bit of an unsustainable pace for the creators

Anime is weird and doesn't always follow the seasonal structure of the west. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood just aired week after week for more than a year. Wiki considers it two seasons. But it's a show that definitely drops off at times imo

Cheers kept up a remarkably consistent quality over its lifetime, considering how long it ran. Though, yeah, the last 2 seasons definitely weren't as good as the peak.

rewatched 30 rock recently and it absolutely sags. best sitcom of the last x number of years still

seinfeld was quality until the finale

rewatched the post-David seasons last year, for the first time. was amazed at how many classic bits I remembered were from that run. Puddy staring straight ahead for an entire transatlantic flight!

also the finale is great. tear down the sets, have the featured players do a panto walkdown, lampshade that everyone's going off to become a hollywood cunt afterwards, why not.

Puddy staring straight ahead for an entire transatlantic flight!

And Elaine breaking up with him because of it. chef_kiss.emoji

yeah outside of the last 2 episodes (Puerto Rican Day & the finale) I thought S9 of Seinfeld was one of the funniest, in my opinion one of the few final-season success stories for a popular sitcom

likewise I think every season of Curb has been pretty great. later seasons are obviously more over-the-top and contrived but it's still very funny

seconding Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul as well. was definitely worried about how S5 of BB was gonna go given they'd killed off the big bad guy & I was definitely worried when they started introducing all these new characters but IMO they knocked it out of the park