Hacker News Reader

Comment by raiyu | Hacker News Reader

I think Showtime should have followed this. Usually the first season is spectacular, and it's almost as if the writers are surprised it is renewed, but they wasted their best material on season 1.

Weeds Season 1 was amazing, the rest not so much. Dexter, season 1 should have just been a single season, sooo good, after a while you wonder how many serial killers reside in Florida. Billions, season 1 amazing, it hasn't been too bad after, but after a while it just starts to seem forced.

View on HN

I think there is a parallel here with the old saying, "you have your whole life to write your first record and then six months to write your second.” Similar to the Showtime shows you mentioned, I would apply this to the first season of HBO's "True Detective." Spectacular first season in which I got the sense the writer put in everything he had collected in his head his whole life, and then a rushed second season due to its success.

Earth: Final Conflict

Season 1 was amazing. After that, bleh. At least in that case it sounds like executive meddling was the culprit.

On the other hand, The Expanse keeps opening whole new everythings that make what came before tiny but also essential. No second of plot is wasted. They could loosen it up a bit with a bottle episode or two to develop the characters more though. I could go any number of seasons if they could maintain the quality.

And then there's the new Lost In Space. They're going to end it in the next season at exactly the right time. Pacing-wise, it feels like a three-part miniseries. Just enough room to build a world and develop the characters without overstaying its welcome.

The Expanse is already written to 7 or 8 books. Plus, as you mention, they take the “solution” from the prior work and turn it into the “problem” for the next. The authors of the original content did a bunch of background work ahead of time as they were planning on turning it into an RPG.

AFAIK they actually played in the world as a tabletop RPG.

For better and worse, sometimes it still feels too much like very little in the world of The Expanse actually happens outside of the "campaign PCs" and it makes it feel like a smaller world than it should that much doesn't actually seem to happen until just the moment when the "campaign PCs" show up. The show tries to make up for it some of the time, but that still feels like the core of things. (I have not tried reading the books yet.)

It's a bit of a trope in the books that Holden has a need to get involved in everything. They even lampshade it with Avasarala.

Showtime seems like the worst for this. Maybe Netflix is becoming the anti-Showtime. I've joked before that I wish I could pay half price for a Showtime subscription that only had the first half of each series.

Strongly disagree on Billions.

Season 1 was good and they’ve only gotten better since.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com