The answer is term limits. And the question has nothing to do with Strom Thurmond.
No indeed. It has to do with the shelf life of TV shows. Specifically, a statute of limitations. Should a series be produced with a termination date already in mind? And should networks offer a warning when they introduce their new shows? Something like: “Welcome to `ER.’ We hope you enjoy the 44 episodes that we plan to produce over the next two seasons.”
Think about it. If shows came stamped with an expiration date, like a gallon of milk, we’d avoid the sour-smelling puddle of ennui that seeps out from under the TV table whenever a show starts to get long in the tooth. This feeling of detachment, characterized by an uncontrollable urge to see what else is on, varies from one show to the next. But, aside from the occasional exception like “The Simpsons,” it’s pretty much inevitable. With “Ally McBeal,” it happened early in the second season. With “ER,” it was season four. Or maybe five.
Whatever. It’s as predictable as green on cheese. Like it or not, a TV show is perishable, just like broccoli. It eventually becomes unappetizing, and ultimately unconsumable. At this point, we tend to throw the food out. But networks will serve the rank, the stale and the moldy without a moment’s hesitation.
It’s because no one is checking to see when a good show has gone bad, least of all the viewers. We get hooked when things are good, when the show is crackling with witty dialogue, clever plot twists and great chemistry. We expect it to remain good because no one told us that the last decent idea the show ever had was used up a couple seasons back, just before the original writers and producers departed to start another series.
In other countries, long-running shows — the kind that go on for five, six, seven seasons — are scarcer than homely people on the WB. In England, for instance, no one really worries about a series overstaying its welcome, because they don’t stay long. Two or three seasons, maybe four, and it’s on to something else.
That probably would have been a suitable life expectancy for an ensemble series like “Party of Five,” which ended its six-season run early in May. I ceased being a regular watcher two seasons ago after Charlie, flush with his victory over Hodgkin’s disease, met a stripper and got her pregnant. It seemed that the writers were reaching, grasping, clawing to keep the story of the orphaned Salinger siblings viable. I remember thinking at the time that no family could possibly experience as much melodrama in a year as the Salingers did in 45 minutes.
Greatness, or near-greatness, begets mediocrity, as good shows peter out after passing what should have been their natural expiration dates. It’s impossible to know exactly when a show will lose it. But doesn’t it make sense to decide up front that a show will have a finite run of, say, three or four seasons? That way, the ending might come before the wheels start to fall off.
The inherent lunacy of term limits is that you just don’t cancel a show, no matter how tired, if people are still tuning in. “ER” is rarely hitting on all cylinders these days, but it remains the favorite drama series in America because viewers have simply become conditioned to tuning in on Thursdays at 9. Still, I can think of several new shows that are infinitely more appealing right now, notably “The West Wing,” “Roswell” and “Once and Again,” but NBC recently renewed “ER” through the 2003-2004 season, assuring it at least a 10-year run.
“ER” is the exception to a rule that requires most series to disappear after a brief time in the spotlight. So the idea of predetermining a show’s lifespan is counterintuitive in an industry set up to perpetuate an economic model that anticipates a large failure rate. Without this model, the industry would collapse under the weight of too many successful shows preventing new pilots from getting on the air.
But these successes are measured in quantity, not quality. Once a show gets four seasons in, it has enough episodes to be syndicated, which is where the real money is. If some network executive were to decree that the premise of a certain show seems doable for only three seasons before it runs out of steam, the whole syndication bonanza is out the window.
That’s the biggest problem with term limits, and the reason it’ll never happen in this country until the networks put art before the dollar.
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