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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show has just begun streaming, and you're brimming with anticipation. The initial run ended flawlessly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. After the season wrapped, you delved into fan discussions with dedicated fans to find some Easter egg clues shedding light on future developments.

But the new season opener falls flat. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. Cut to the second episode, your favorite cast member has done something that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. By episode five, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you long for an earlier termination.

The Downside of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Look at Kaos, a clever mythological satire starring Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. Yet audiences can console themselves that the show's quality wasn't tarnished by a weak follow-up.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. Several prize nominations followed, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to fully explore the narrative. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. I felt grateful as a viewer.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and watching how they deal with their horrific new secrets, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. This involved a wearying pattern of bringing in and focusing on new characters (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Growing Trend

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and settled into familiar patterns. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. Considering Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, writers understand when narratives find completion. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, return repeatedly with declining quality. Perhaps Adolescence's team reconsidered a second season.

The Supreme Instance

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, residing permanently in our thoughts, mysteries intact. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. My So-Called Life, the quintessential youth program, ran for just one year yet felt epic in scale: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. The ending left questions unanswered, but this reflects truth appropriately of youth queries staying forever open. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I mourned its end and drafted follow-up stories to resolve lingering mysteries. It might only live on an old hard drive, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Special Relationship

If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more series can conclude appropriately.

• This writer writes about the arts, music and fashion.