Season 4 has its issues

[Wesley Pryce]

I've noticed that on a lot of shows the 4th season seems to run into issues. Why do you think this is? what causes this? Yes,obviously on BTVS and Angel (for the record i love both seasons) there were fan complaints,but this isnt limited to the verse. The Sopranos, Smallville, and others seem to fare less well than the shows had in previous seasons. Is this just me or is there a pattern here,a writing issue with season 4?

 

[Evil Angelus 95]

I think when it really comes down to it, it's a matter of inspiration and writing. It's hard enough writing three seasons worth of good ideas and having a standard degree of quality. When you're doing season after season, it's not that common to lose inspiration.

 

[thetopher]

I guess theat there are just some general patterns in television.

For example I've never watched a show where the second season wasn't a hell of a lot better than the first (which is why I don't understand networks who can a series after an entire season- either do it early on, or not at all until the end of the second).

Then, if a series gets a second, they can build the characters, plots and mythology into a three series if the writers are any good. The third season either slightly better or slightly worse than the second.

Then by the end of the third series a lot of the original creativity has usually been played out, so you either do something a little different (like send them all to college for example) or bring in fresh writing talent, or both.

But if a series makes it past 4 then I tend to think their on safe ground writing-wise, they have established plots/mythology, well-rounded characters and so forth.


Note that this pattern that I've seen only really applies to genre shows and dramas, not procedural shows (like Law & Order, CSI, NCIS) which in my mind are almost completely interchangable season-wise.
Even after 4 series the characters are still wafer thin, you're pretty much watching it for the plot.

This pattern also doesn't apply for ST: Voyager and Enterprise, which both sucked from the first. 🙂

 

[Robb Stark]

I don't think there's anything like a "Season 4 curse" out there or anything.

I mean, I thought S4 of Smallville was one of the show's best. Similarily, I Breaking Bad's S4 was the best of that series. Game of Thrones just completed their fourth season and I felt it was one of the strongest there as well.

I don't think there's any real ingrained excuse for a poor season. If the creative team has exhaused all of their worthwhile stories prior to that then there probably shouldn't be a fourth season. I find that shows tend to struggle a bit more when they funadmentally alter the structure of a series and have to build something new. Think leaving high school and transitioning to college (which I felt Joss never really got a grip on) in BTVS or in S4 of the OC. It was similar in S5 of Smallville when everyone left high school.

 

[Fuffy Baith]

After the first 3 seasons I think it's just a matter of time before the show starts to decline whether it's the 4th season or the 6th. There are a lot of good shows that do well in it's 4th season and don't get bad until 6th or 7th. For me, I stopped watching Supernatural in it's 6th season, and Bones even though I love it, has been going down slowly after it's 6th. Also not huge on Doctor Who season 7 but can't wait for the new season. Have not seen all of Smallville yet. With Once Upon A Time entering it's 4th season this fall, I really hope that it doesn't go downhill, because I love that show.

I do think that sometimes a show loses it's creativity early on. Some shows try to stretch out a story for more than it should. Not all story's can go on forever or before it gets old and repetitive. Like Revenge, great first season but not really a plot that you can continue forever. Sometimes shows just need to learn to know when to call it quits.

 

[EVIL UU]

Let's do the maths. 3 seasons - that's 60 up to 72 episodes, each of those is 44 minutes long, that's 2640 to 3168 minutes total or 44 to almost 53 hours.

What kind of a story needs more than 50 hours? I mean, really.