All good TV shows should come to an end

Last year saw the return of one of my favourite TV shows: Futurama. I was apprehensive about the new series - after all it's been away for 7 years! The writers had scattered to other shows (including the geek-tastic Big Bang Theory) and the show seemed to have vanished into the wild blue yonder. Thankfully the return was, at least in my eyes, a success. The style of humour seemed to be slightly different, but there were a lot of good ideas and science fiction behind the stories. The series is just coming out on DVD (and BluRay!) so be sure to check it out if you haven't seen it.

It got me thinking about TV shows and the thought I have that a lot of shows should stop after about 3 seasons. I'm going to use several US shows to illustrate my point. I know people get very attached to and defensive about their favourite shows so I don't want to cause any offence. As with every rule, there are some exceptions, but I'll get onto them later.

Friends.
Last year I finally got around to buying the complete series of Friends on DVD (spurred on by the knowledge that E4 will finally stop showing the repeats later this year). After sitting on my shelf for 3 or 4 months I've finally started ripping the episodes and watching them (just to make sure they encoded correctly, naturally) and I'm reminded how amazing the early episodes are. The scripts have the perfect combination of wit, slapstick, perfect timing and warmth. Looking back a lot of the setups, lines and jokes may seem stale and predictable but at the time, Friends was the pioneer and has now been copied by most sit-coms. By the end of the first season, Friends had established itself as a megahit. The first 3 seasons seemed to get better and better and spawned some classic episodes. From Joey's début in the musical Freud!, to the ongoing will-they-won't-they between Ross and Rachel which in itself seemed to form the main story arc and threw up some unexpected and surprisingly heartfelt episodes in the form of TOW the list and TOW the morning after. In fact, season 3 ended at a nice cliffhanger for the couple. Season 4 began straight away with a seeming desire to blow apart the previous arcs in a fairly unrealistic way. I'm not sure if the writers changed, but it seemed like more and more episodes become featured around the previously subtle traits of the characters. Monica became completely obsessive-compulsive (a trait mentioned in an early episode), Phoebe became an over-the-top hippie weirdo rather than being endearingly kooky, Ross became very annoying and whiny instead of simply having his hands full with life and Joey became a complete idiot instead of a little slow. The show seemed to rely on these character traits, slapstick and in-jokes to get by. By this time, most of us were invested in the characters and couldn't stop watching. The show carried on for many more years and thankfully improved again in time for its swansong season. Over the years (and thanks to E4 showing the series again and again) even the middle seasons are like comfort viewing now.


Scrubs.
At one point during university, Scrubs was my favourite show. Again, like Friends, it married a razor sharp wit and jokes that hit home perfectly with an undercurrent of drama. In fact, while Friends could occasionally pulled the emotional rug from under you, Scrubs seemed to be able to combine the humour with the regular dramas of interns coping with hospital life - mostly learning how to deal with death - fairly regularly. In the very first episode we see J.D. struggle with simply dealing with real life patients and carrying out simple procedures. The early episode My Old Lady sees the doctors struggle to cope with working against the odds. Even by season 3, we were getting phenomenal episodes such as My lucky night and My Screw Up. In fact, it seemed like the show was being nudged towards going out on a high at the end of season 3 as some characters got married and some got together, but as the show was renewed it seemed like the writers had to go to ridiculous lengths to keep the stories going and from season 4 onward, something was different and gradually became more and more zany, relying on in-jokes and slapstick.Even when the main cast decided they'd had enough after season 8, the writers and creator couldn't let go and carried on with new characters. Needless to say, most of the viewers had left and the "new look" show was cancelled after one season.

24
24 hit the a post 9/11 world (even though it had been created before) and instantly became a big hit. The main hook of the show was that it was set in real time. So when an advert break came up you saw a split screen of the various plot threads with a timer before and after the break. However, it still cheated as in the US a standard "1 hour" show lasts about 43 minutes if you account for all the adverts during the show. "Ah, but you said the timer accounted for the adverts!" I hear you shout, but even including the adverts, the show only lasted around 50 minutes. This is due to the adverts before and after the episode. Still, at least the intent was there. It quickly became clear that a great deal of time and love had been spent by the creators planning the twisting plot of the show in a way that most episodes could end with a cliff-hanger. Indeed, although there were still a lot of plot holes so big you could drive the QE2 through them, everything fitted together so well and the pacing worked really well. For the first 13 episodes. In the US it's common for shows to only be given 13 episodes at first (either they are cancelled halfway through a 26 week season or they start halfway through through the season to replace a cancelled show). While the first 13 episodes definitely rounded off the plot and left an opening for the show to continue (a new "bigger" bad guy pulling the strings was introduced) it seemed like the creators almost didn't expect to get to finish the season. As such the 2nd half feels very static at first with some very dialogue-heavy episodes and the writers clearly didn't know what to do with some of the characters. Thus we had the old chestnut of a character getting amnesia and another ended the day having been kidnapped about three times! The second series surely wouldn't repeat this mistake, would it? After all, the show was so popular it was almost guaranteed a complete season. The writers upped the tension and the cliff hanger's became bigger. The first episode ending featured the infamous "I need a hacksaw" line and the plot of terrorists planning to detonate a nuclear bomb in LA certainly upped the stakes from the assassination plot-line of the first season. Again though the plot line shifted in a much weaker direction in the second half. Again, there was a character the writers didn't know what to do with. After being chased by a mountain lion (no, really) she was yet again kidnapped before finally having her pointless plot removed from the story. Series 3 upped the ante again, this time involving a virus that could kill millions across the country. Some clever writing in the first third misdirected viewers who may have thought the plot was retreading old ground, but by the end there was something clearly wrong with the way the show was put together. Each episode tried to up the tension leading to one infected man getting out into LA at large, infecting more people in a shop. Suddenly the writers seemed to realise there wasn't a way to finish this off easily, so the whole plot strand seemed to go away and was solved off screen. Still, the ending showed how big the show had become with the USAF providing F/A-18 jets for the show and a spectacular battle leading to capture of the main antagonist. The ending of the season didn't have a cliff hanger and finally showed Jack struggling to cope with what he's been through in the past 24 hours. By this point the real time aspect was starting to slip as well. Again, it would have been good to finish the show here, but it carried on. Again, some episodes had fantastic action and tension, but by now the entire country had been threatened with a deadly virus and subsequent plots felt like they were just rehashing the same ground. It also became easy to telegraph what was going to happen. Key witnesses would die just before giving the crucial evidence, Jack would shout "dammit!" a lot and amazingly there would be some crucial event at one minute to the hour every hour for 24 hours...

The Simpsons
This is the big one. It's also the exception to the rule in some ways. The Simpsons started in 1989 as a spinoff from the Tracey Ullman Show and was the simple story of tales involving an average American family. The catchy look of the show (why were the characters yellow?) and the high quality of the scripts and writing ensured The Simpsons became a big hit. Essentially, the show is based around the lives of a dysfunctional family. Initially, people assumed Bart was the main character, but over time it emerged that the whole family were the protagonists of the show. The plots were simple things, such as Homer loosing his job and feeling guilty for being unable to provide for his family, Lisa becoming depressed at all the bad things in the world, Bart being bullied at school and Marge becoming frustrated by how her family treats her. The show was carried by the writing. The script again had the magic combination of wit, charm, humour, parody and above all, heart. Often times, the second or third plot-lines were hilarious accompaniments for more heartfelt main storylines (such as Homer vs. Bart at video boxing in Moaning Lisa). Going back and watching the early series shows that voices weren't locked down, the animation was a bit dodgy, but these steadily improved until the 3rd season where the show locked down it's look and sound. Looking at The Simpsons today it's become a pale shade of its former self. Where pop culture references used to be slid in in sight gags of short scenes, they often form the basis of whole episodes, there is much more slapstick humour and a lot of the modern episode plots often reference the fact that they have pretty much completely abandoned any semblance of being about an average family. In the finale of season 1, after being made took idiotic on tv, Homer turns to Marge and says. "Lord help me, I'm just not that bright," and that is the whole point of of the show. All the characters are flawed in some way, but they always love each other and make things right in the end. There are many examples in the early seasons, but a great one is Homer embarrassing and then angering Lisa in Lisa's substitute leading to the classic lines "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand," from Homer and "You, Sir, are a baboon!" from Lisa. By season 10 Homer is quite literally an idiot, doing things that he knows will harm his family (normally involving quitting his job so the main plot of the show can occur) and a lot of the humour has shifted to slapstick generally involving Homer being hit over the head a lot.
As season 2 progressed, the writers fleshed out the town of Springfield and its other inhabitants. This rich list of characters is quite possibly why The Simpsons remained such high quality for so long. Guest stars initially didn't want to be credited (or was it they were embarrassed about being in a cartoon) meaning early appearances by Dustin Hoffman and even Michael Jackson weren't made a big deal of. Today, guest stars either completely direct the plot or are put in in such a jarring way as to make little sense. A great example of this is The regina monologues where the Simpsons go to England, meaning they inevitably run into a long line of British guest stars as, of course, everyone does when they go to London on holiday(!)
I think can actually point to the episode where the seeds were sown for the demise of the show and that episode is Marge vs. the monorail in season 4. The episode was written by Conan O'Brien and has a fairly wacky main story, but the humour is kept simple and grounded. Shortly after this O'Brien left the show to host his own chat show. Over the years more writers attempted to make the stories wackier and use more pop-culture gags like that episode had, but they lacked the finesse of O'Brien and gradually the wackiness became a staple of the show. The show was still really strong in my mind until season 8. Episodes such as boy scoutz 'n da hood and And Maggie makes three are among the standouts in seasons full of excellent episodes.
Season 8 gets off to a good start with the Bond-villain inspired You only move twice which is a fan favourite, but season 8 was where it seemed the writers drew a lot of "inspiration" from pop culture. We had the James Bond episode, a Rocky episode, an X-files episode, a Mary Poppins episode, a Frasier episode and even a Lassie episode. To my mind season 7 is the last top quality season and then seasons 8-10 begin the downward trend.