Westworld comes to mind for me
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The ending of season 1 was perfect. Anything after that is an excuse for nudity and gore.
Agreed. I like the following seasons okay but the first season is nearly perfect on its own.
Season 2 was rough, but I think season 3 was a good soft reboot. After that it's all downhill again, but it almost righted itself.
altered carbon. Season 2 was so cheap in comparison
First season stayed close enough to the books, second season strayed too far after coping with first season changes and deviating from the actual plot
Heroes. The first season wrapped up its story beautifully. The second season was an aimless disaster.
I've read online that the original plan was for each season to tell a stand-alone story with a different set of heroes but the network was insistent on keeping the popular characters from season one on for season two. Peter Petrelli's power is universe-breaking after he learns to control it, so the show ended up tying itself into a pretzel to explain why the answer to every problem isn't "get Peter to snap his fingers and fix it". There was also a writer's strike in the middle of the season, which didn't help.
The writer's strike shielded the show from so much criticism, because people figured the shite pacing and jumble of characters were caused by the studio plowing ahead without proper scripts. Nope! Executives just demanded the dumbest shit imaginable, and the original creators did their level best, until they were told to stop work and join the picket line.
The obvious examples for me are Altered Carbon, The Terror (although its anthological and a third is in production) and Westworld.
HEROES. It died an ugly death because of a writer's strike. It's unfortunate, but I support the writers.
Jessica Jones
Heroes was great at the start, but that didn't even last a whole season. The "Save the cheerleader, save the world" arc might be the best superhero TV ever made (10 or 11 episodes, I think?) then it rapidly went downhill to mediocre then terrible.
Prison Break
The Rig
I actually think season 2 of Prison Break was a perfectly natural and well done (for the intended tone) continuation of the story. I know people snarkily point out the title doesn't strictly apply anymore, but I think convicts on the run from a manhunt fits. The show was from the beginning always a political conspiracy thriller baked inside of a prison story anyway.
The following seasons get increasingly absurd, but they are enjoyable in a silly way.
I couldn’t get past the first episode of The Rig because it seemed cheaply made.
You're not wrong, it was watchable but barely.
Altered Carbon
I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion, but Stranger Things. Season 1 was perfect, and in my opinion the rest have sort of been all over the place.
Firefly. After the first season everything that made the show great is just missing.
The movie was enjoyable
He said what he said.
If you are counting anime, Sword Art Online.
Gonna go with Handmaid's Tale, gets progressively worse with each season
I only watched a bit of True Detective season 2 but I could tell it was not going to be nearly as good as the phenomenal first season
To be fair, it was the highest possible bar to clear. True Detective season 1 is arguably the best TV has ever gotten, it was just perfect from story to pacing to acting and cinematography
Weeds
Weeds was okay up to season 3
A.P. Bio. They slowly tied to normalize it and it lost all its edge.
Welcome To Flatch. Season 1 was awesome! Season 2 they tried to make it a "normal" show and it was awful.
Thank you for mentioning AP Bio - I half-remembered some show with a trailer that had been color-graded within an inch of its life. No colors left besides peach and teal. But whenever I tried finding it again, it ended something like "Abbot Elementary doesn't look like that."
That crossover episode pisses me off because I wanted the crew in the AP bio universe. Imagine if Dennis was living a double live there?
Or had a secret evil twin.
Well. Had, was, po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
Goliath...the show with Billy Bob Thornton. Season 1 had dynamics and interesting characters plus the ending resolved all the loose ends.
Next attempts at seasons were beyond lame.
Cobra Kai
Every successive season forgets harder and harder that grown men having karate feuds is embarrassingly juvenile.
Squid Game. The Mandalorian maybe?
While season 2 of The Mandalorian had the distinct flavor of introducing executive producer mandated spin-off hooks, I still found it quite good overall. The finale was the perfect ending to the Mando and child storyline.
The perfect ending. We didn't need anymore after that ending.
Everything Mando related after that has gone totally off the rails by undoing that ending, and the show has become a parody of itself.
Lost
You can hate on the end all you want but don't pretend like it stopped being good after the first season
It was a dogshit show with no plot.
And he spoke to the truth, so they voted him down
Truth. Right here.