u/Famous-Country-4921

I feel like a lot of shows follow one of the below trajectories:

1. Start off amazing, have some incredible peaks, have a fall-off period and end really badly (Game of Thrones, Dexter, House of Cards, Umbrella Academy)
2. Start off average/solid, become amazing and end really well (Succession, Halt and Catch Fire, The Leftovers, Breaking Bad, Person of Interest)
3. Start off great/amazing, have up and down periods, end somewhat ok - not amazing but not terrible (Lost, Fringe)
4. Start off solid, remain solid in the early seasons and have a slow decline into mediocrity or irrelevance without being outright bad (probably most popular, longer shows tbh - some that come to mind are Frasier and CSI)

But what are some shows that are pretty much the same level of quality, especially really good ones, throughout their entire run? Like they start off great, they remain great and end really well without much variation between seasons.

The best example I can think of is Mad Men. It was amazing from pretty much its first season, and it remained around that same level of quality all the way until the end. There are some standout episodes but for the most part the show feels like one long novel with most of the episodes being just one chapter in the overall story.

Any others you can think of?

Probably not the biggest sample size but I’ve read 4 of these now - Stolen Tongues, We Used to Live Here, Black Farm and Penpal - and I’ve been anywhere from underwhelmed to straight up disliked all of them. it’s weird because I read these in their original form as r/nosleep posts and thought they were pretty interesting and often compelling, but as an actual novel they fell flat.

Maybe it’s just the fact that format matters when it comes to consuming certain kinds of media, and at the end of the day, an actual published novel needs to have a certain level of polish in its prose and structure to work. For better or worse, all of these books just feel like Reddit posts compiled into a novel-length manuscript. They feel disjointed, episodic, repetitive and without a sense of structure and proper pacing. A lot of narrative elements feel like complete ass-pulls.

And whereas I can pretty easily forgive amateurish prose in a series of online posts, it’s harder to do in an actual book where you expect *some* level of polish.

Maybe I’m being overly harsh because at the end of the day these *are* just online creepypastas written for fun - but idk if I’m reading them as a novel they should be critiqued as one. I’ll give them credit where it’s due though as some of the concepts and story beats in these books are pretty compelling and in isolation, there are some well-crafted individual sequences. overall though…not so much.

If there ever was an underrated/underappreciated masterpiece, it’s this one, Tad Williams’ massive 4-volume epic Otherland. Memory Sorrow and Thorn is considered his magnum opus for good reason but imo Otherland is almost on par with that series. And in general, it’s one of the best sff series I’ve ever read.

Now it’s definitely leaning a bit more on the scifi side considering it’s based on virtual reality, but the overall narrative definitely feels very fantasy-ish. The worldbuilding in this series is simply phenomenal and I’ll put it up against the best in the genre in that aspect - it’s just as good as ASOIAF or Wheel of Time when it comes to creating imaginative, unique and downright crazy concepts and premises. It’s simply Tad Williams flexing on them hoes with how creative and imaginative he is.

The plot and characters are very compelling as well and the books just accomplish what the best fantasy stories usually do - completely immerse you into an alien world with its own unique rules

My sff tv adaptation dream is actually a multi season series based on the Otherlands books. please read them - you won’t be disappointed.

It can sometimes be difficult to come into a show like The Sopranos, in contention for literal TV GOAT with an almost endless quantity of praise and accolades over the years. Your expectations are sky high and you're simultaneously worried that it might not meet those expectations, especially given its age. 

I started on The Sopranos about a few weeks ago, and I'm almost at the end now, about halfway through season 6. Overall, I think that this show pretty much completely lives up to its stature and reputation - but surprisingly, it's also far from the kind of show I was expecting going into it.

Like yeah, it has all the hallmarks of top-tier HBO prestige TV - incredible acting, writing, directing and real thematic depth (not to mention the requisite blood and gore, and sex and tits). But what really elevates the show for me - and I'd imagine for so many others - is how different it is than a lot of "serious" prestige dramas. The two things that stand out to me the most that defied my expectations:

1. The plot - or lack thereof. For some reason, I had expected Sopranos to be this dense, story-heavy narrative about the mafia underworld in America, with lots of moving parts when it comes to various crime syndicates and enterprises, rivalries, plot twists etc. And while that stuff is there, I was surprised at just how much of the show is kind of just a slice-of-life look at Tony Soprano and his friends and family. The mafia/crime narrative seems entirely incidental. Large stretches of seasons go by with pretty much nothing happening plot-wise. The characters are the story. But it's almost always compelling because of how much you enjoy just watching the characters interact and talk. Which brings me to my next point...
2. I was utterly blown away by how fucking funny this show is. It's actually crazy. A lot of serious prestige dramas have great comedy in them, i.e. Succession and Breaking Bad, but Sopranos is on an entirely different level. I would go as far to say that it's funnier than a lot of actual comedies I've seen. The way the writers capture the petty absurdity of the world these characters live in, and their wacky worldviews, is nothing short of genius. There's multiple laugh-out-loud moments in every episode, and it just adds another layer to what is already an incredible experience.

 

So yeah, time and expectations have done nothing to take away from how amazing this show is. I still have about 10 episodes to go and unless it's a Game of Thrones-level disaster, I think The Sopranos will be established as one of my 4-5 all-time favourite shows.

EDIT: forgot to mention, the theme song and intro sequence is fucking GOAT tier. It’s so cool, stylish and badass.

Yes you read that right - years. I haven’t written anything for like 3 years now because I’ve been trapped in an endless spiral of analysis paralysis. I have ADHD so it’s hard for me to pick something to begin with when there’s multiple choices, and it’s manifesting itself in the worst possible way when it comes to writing.

I have a bunch of different story concepts/ideas, all of which I want to write about - I but I just cannot for the life of me stick to one. Everytime I think one of them sounds great, I immediately feel like there’s another better one I should write about, or that this idea is no good and no will ever enjoy reading it.

I’ve basically been circling the drain these last few years, staring at my list of ideas, adding and removing, and changing around the basic concepts, but just wasting time and procrastinating because I cannot for the life of me pick one and stick to it. It’s caused me an endless amount of stress and anxiety and it just feels like I’ll never, ever be able to write anything.

Its not even that I think any of these ideas are amazing or unique or mindblowing or anything a they’re just concepts I’ve personally always wanted to explore. I just can’t fucking pick one.

Anybody else ever experience this? And if so, how did you overcome the choice paralysis?