Can You Tell Your Story In 4 Seasons Or Less?

Netflix recently announced some show renewals in a  "Good News, Bad News" routine. Critical and fan favorites, Ozark and Dead To Me, were renewed for new seasons, but at the cost of it being their final seasons. Ozark's fourth and final season will be split into two parts of 7 episodes each and Dead To Me will return for it's third and final season. They join a growing retirement community of shows that were cut off at season 4 for the streaming network. Ozark seems especially puzzling consider it's recent third season seemed to finally separate it from the Breaking Bad knockoff reputation the show had, and yet Netflix is only allowing it to go one more season. There's a number of shows on network, cable, and streaming, that really came into their peak either in or after their 4th season. Imagine if Breaking Bad ended in their fourth year. Yes, Season 4 of Breaking Bad was fantastic, but you would've also been robbed of the terrific 5th season. Can you really tell everything you need to about your story in 4 seasons or less and then get out? Or does your show end up feeling like it gains all the momentum only to hit a dead end?



Does Netflix always cancel shows before they can reach the hotly contested 5th season? No, not at all. We have a number of examples of shows going beyond that. Orange Is The New Black, the show that really opened the doors for Netflix, went on for 7 seasons and 91 episodes. The Ranch went on for 8 parts (essentially seasons) and 80 episodes. Fuller House, as well as Grace and Frankie have gone on past their 4th season and for over 70 episodes. Even lovable but incredibly depressing Bojack Horseman got to a 6th season before Netflix decided it was time to wrap it up. Let's start dissecting why Netflix chooses for most, but clearly not all, of it's shows to end early. We'll take the slightly naive approach first and say it's because of artistic integrity and that shows should end creatively after about 3-4 years of telling their story. We can look at these previous examples of shows that went past it's fourth season as to why they may have stuck around too long.

I would say OITNB was at it's peak during the first 3 seasons, but you can certainly throw in season 4 there too. The show seemed to stagger, lose it's cast, and run out of momentum by the time it finally ended in season 7. This is not a great example of a show that should've gone on as long as it did, and Netflix probably should've wrapped things up around it's 5th year. Sitcoms have a much better excuse to stick around longer as they're usually not telling a serialized story like their drama counterparts, but The Ranch, Gracie and Frankie, and Fuller House seemed to still go on longer than they should've, have ended past their prime. Bojack Horseman is an example of a show that ended just on time. The show had done some wild swings by the end of it's 5th year and the 2 part final season did feel like a right time for the show to end, even if the cast felt like they could keep going. So it seems like Netflix is making the right call? We have these examples of shows that most of the time start running on fumes by their 5th or 6th year, so they are making the right decision with ending it before then. Well, not exactly.

Netflix can make bad calls on extending shows just as much as they do with ending them. For every Bojack Horseman that ended at the right time, there's 13 Reasons Why, which really should've just stayed as a limited series, but somehow ended up with a whopping 4 seasons. Creatively, that show was just stretching how much they could extend their story and I'm still perplexed how they even got into a 3rd season. Netflix is playing a risky game of trying to use it's data and trends to see what captures an audience. Of course 13 Reasons Why continued because it was a huge hit in it's first season for them and even though I checked out after the 2nd seasons, I knew it was going to be a success because of how strong that first season was, so the show got a 3rd. It lost all steam then, so Netflix allowed them to finish everything up with a 4th. Netflix's gamble here didn't really pay off. Creatively the show didn't have a lot of places to go and once the core audience saw that, they lost interest. Ozark's first season was received as just okay, with season 2 getting a bit better, but season 3 exploded in ways the other 2 never came close to doing. It felt like the show found it's footing and was entering it's peak, but now it has to put a bow on it. So I can't really believe this is happening for creative reasons only.

We've now reached the cynical part of answering this question: Because of money. Netflix infamously just throws cash for it's original content and because so, they're also infamously in debt. Last year, it was estimated the streaming network is 14 billion dollars in debt. They can feel better that Disney is even further in debt than them, but that's a lot. Yet, with that debt, they never fail to attract investors. For years, Netflix was the lone king and even when Hulu and Amazon Prime came for the crown, they missed. Last year saw it's biggest competitor, Disney+, rise up with it's impressive library and launching with an attractive Star Wars streaming show. This year, HBO Max arrived with an equally impressive library, though it's originals are nothing to write home about. Meanwhile Hulu has benefited from the Disney takeover with FX originals now onboard and a series of absolute hits like Little Fires Everywhere, The Great, and High Fidelity. Amazon Prime has started to acquire more assets with The Boys and it's future looks bright with the highly anticipated Lord of the Rings series and the recently announced Fallout series adaptation from Westworld's Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Essentially, Netflix couldn't afford to play it safe with just about every network getting their own streaming service and taking away from Netflix's library and those new services having their own expensive exclusives.

Others have claimed the reason is because Netflix would be needing to give raises to the cast and crew after the show enters it's 5th season and that 100% has merit and would 100% play into the money factor. I can't faithfully say that's the reason, but it's certainly part of the because of money umbrella. To remain king, you need the money. Netflix is always looking for the new show that's going to be a huge hit, trend with it's audience, and ideally would end it before it got stale and lost too many viewers, and then replace it with a new hit show. As much as it annoys their fans, it also works a lot of the time and they're now just an assembly line for your new favorite binge obsession.

What will be interesting to watch is how some of Netflix's hugely popular, very expensive, shows last. Stranger Things entered production of it's 4th year before the pandemic. The Duffer Brothers had mentioned they see the show going 4 or possibly more seasons before the end and I can see stars like Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobbie Brown, and David Harbour eventually getting too busy for the 8 episode season schedule, but they would be mad to just end it. It's easily one of, if not the most popular show for them. Creatively, yes, I think Stranger Things has started to run out of stories to tell, even if season 3's ending did give them some interesting avenues to explore. If we're going artistic integrity on this, the show should end at season 4, but it feels almost too popular to kill off and will probably be one of those examples where Netflix ends it about a year or two too late. Another one to watch out for is The Witcher, which became a huge hit for them late last year  thanks to the ever growing community of fans from the novels and video games, but also gave viewers their epic adult medieval show fix a few months after Game of Thrones disappointed just about everyone. The showrunner claims she has a 7 year plan, which would make sense giving the books, but will it make it past the death grip that is fourth season on Netflix?

Can you tell your story in 4 seasons or less? Technically, yes. Just go through Netflix's catalog to find shows that were able to wrap it up. The question now becomes, should you? As much as I want to bang on the drum for shows going longer than 4 years, I personally think 5 years is a sweet spot, I can't argue with the network's past results of shows going past their prime. I would love to see Ozark and Dead To Me last longer than one more year, but I also wouldn't like to see those shows completely lose everything that made them special in the name of more seasons. Liz Feldman, Dead To Me's creator and show runner, inked a an overall deal with Netflix as the show's final season was announced. That's a silver lining I'll take any day and would hope more cases like this happen. End the show on a high, but also the promise of more to come from the same minds.