My articulate chum Phil writes, speaking of television shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost:
High ratings can force the creators to stall an essentially fixed-length story to get more seasons out of it.
This is absolutely correct and pithily stated. It's also true over in the Giant Fantasy Series world, where Robert Jordan is renowned for having less and less in each subsequent book.
I gave up on Lost at the beginning of the second season, when it was evident to me that the writers were making shit up, and were not aiming at an end point, and that I didn't enjoy spending time around a bunch of people being intolerable jackasses to each other. I'd've been a lot more likely to stick around if I could have believed that the show was aiming for an end that would make sense.
Posted by Greg at December 14, 2006 10:42 AM
August 2005, I was on a panel at Worldcon about Lost. We had Joe Haldeman on the panel and Greg Bear in the audience (and the sense to immediately call on him any time he even looked like he wanted to say something). Neither one of them, after Season One, could come up with what they considered an acceptable explanation for all the stuff that had been going on. Not a good sign.