My personal sign is when you start seeing awkward collaborations start cropping up. One time when I was thrifting, I picked up a graphic novel that had the Justice League, team with the Power Rangers of all things. I glimpsed into what the plot was about out of morbid curiosity and it was just a plain generic time and dimension thing.
Nothing ever connected between the teams at all. DC Comics, while fledgling at times with how they go about their series and movies, still have far more relevance than Power Rangers do. I think the Power Rangers are just grasping at straws to keep being relevant when people have largely moved on from them.
Sometimes you realize that the main story arc keeps finding new reasons to continue, after lots of surprise twists and turns that each give another episode. Like they finally find their killer, after a whole bunch of running around, escapes, shoot-outs, stunts, explosions, etc. but it turns out he’s been working for someone else all along, and now we have to find the Boss. It will never end, and all the plot manipulation doesn’t serve a better story, it just keeps us watching so we can consume advertising.
My son is always complaining that a lot of these series probably started out as a movie, but Netflix, et al, want constant “engagement,” so if you want Netflix to stream your content, you better stretch it into 10 episodes, with a cliffhanger. Quality isn’t important, just engagement, so a good movie concept gets beaten to death as a series.
That’s why a lot of British shows are so good. They’ll say right up front that this entire series is only going to be one season of 3-6 episodes, and that’s it. They take as much time as they need to tell the story, then quit. They don’t just keep screenplay masturbating.
Absolutely an issue for American shows. So many are built around a three season arc just trying to get on the air. Then if they make it big, they panic and have no idea what the fuck to do with season 4.
So many shows fail in season 4.
Probably the worst example is Game of Thrones. They started the show with at least the last third of it unfinished, and once that TV money started rolling in, GRRM basically lost his motivation to write.