Summer reading sizzles with 10 titles
From a thriller co-written by Bill Clinton to a biography about tennis great Arthur Ashe, there are plenty of cool books to beat the heat.
Loving something means learning when to let it go. I’m looking at you, Netflix. And Hulu. And HBO. And the rest of you networks and streamers.
The second season of 13 Reasons Why arrived on the streaming service last week, and to say that it was unnecessary is an understatement. The first season of the controversial teen-suicide drama was based on the book by Jay Asher, and competently covered its source material. All 13 reasons were adequately explained. It was done. And that was OK.
And yet, the series returned for a second season that serves little to no creative purpose, rewriting some of what we knew in Season 1 and adding a gratuitous rape scene to court yet more controversy. And it’s not the only show doing this.
TV has a problem with endings. And I’m not talking about the shows that are canceled too soon (although there are plenty) or the ones that limp along for a few more seasons than they should (there are plenty of those, too).
I’m talking about short, contained stories with a distinct ending; limited series ought to stay limited. I’m talking about Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which has spent six episodes of its second season spinning wheels, literally torturing characters as it tries to justify moving beyond Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel.
And I’m talking about casting Meryl Streep in the upcoming second season of HBO’s Big Little Lies to somehow justify undoing its gorgeous ending.
This isn’t a new problem. Think back to ABC’s Revenge, which really should have ended once Emily VanCamp’s character got hers. Or NBC’s Heroes, which started so strong but made monumental missteps as soon as it returned for Season 2. I’d also include Fox’s The O.C., which aired a relentlessly paced first season and burned through plots so fast that subsequent seasons felt silly. The list goes on: Glee. The Killing. Prison Break.
The trouble with following up something great with something mediocre is that we have such short memories. Nobody remembers Revenge’s great first episodes, but instead the ridiculous third and fourth seasons. When you think of The O.C., you remember Marissa’s (Mischa Barton) overwrought death scene. Heroes could never get over its bad rap, even with a short-lived revival in 2015. A TV show is really only the sum of its parts: The more bad episodes there are, the more they taint the good.
Coming back for a superfluous second season is a more frequent temptation these days as the TV industry changes the way it makes money. For a hit (or at least what appears to be one) a creatively unnecessary season is more attractive from a business or prestige standpoint.
Did we really think Hulu wasn’t going to go one and done with Handmaid’s, the first streaming series to win the outstanding drama Emmy, even if it meant giving a terrible solution to a decadesold cliffhanger from Atwood’s book?
There are other options to keep shows alive. Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story and American Crime Story empires prove you can make an anthology work and still keep the branding intact. (Although Horror is reaching its limit, even within this form.) Fargo, also on FX, has improved on this model. It doesn’t work for every show (sorry, True Detective), but it’s a better alternative.
It’s strange to argue for a beloved show to end, especially as a longtime TV fan who cried foul when My So-Called Life, Firefly and Bunheads were canceled. It’s the rare moment in this industry when popularity is a curse. But I wanted Firefly to go on because I knew Mal (Nathan Fillion) and the crew of the Serenity hadn’t done their best work yet. I want Big Little Lies to stay done because there’s nothing that can improve upon the way it already ended.
OK, so I promised you 13 reasons these shows shouldn’t have more than one season, right? I present the 13 episodes that made up the first season of 13 Reasons. They didn’t need to be tarnished by Season 2.