- Today's video is brought to you by Squarespace.
Hey guy, welcome back to the ocean.
There's something interesting that happens with
a lot of long running sitcoms,
where eventually their success starts to become
a detriment to the quality of the show.
Over time almost every running storyline
and character arc is going to reach its logical conclusion
or at least get to a place
where it's time to write that conclusion.
But I think it can be hard for the producers, the writers,
the actors in the show to walk away from something that
they've been so heavily involved in for multiple years,
especially when the fans are still curious about what's
going to happen with these characters,
but there comes a time when every show should be dead
and maybe even is dead.
And doesn't seem to realize it yet fully content
and letting it zombie fide form
Continue to Trek on,
unaware of the damage it's causing to itself.
Hell, there's a show about zombies
that fits this description,
but when something is still working and continues to be
lucrative for everyone involved,
how do you just get up and walk away from that?
It's gotta be hard.
Hundreds of pilots are submitted to networks every year
that never see the light of day.
So for a show to get picked up
and then get the chance to play out an entire season,
then get renewed for another season
and two more seasons and three more seasons.
It's like winning the television lottery.
So many people work for decades to try
and strike gold and end up working on a project like this.
It seems idiotic to turn down an eighth season
or a 100 season or your very own terrible spinoff show.
And yet in hindsight,
you could say the only idiotic thing
was to ever agree to do
these things in the first place,
unless you're getting $15 million.
In which case good for you, Joey,
at best shows that continue on passer logical conclusions,
merely satisfied diehard fans
without really adding anything new to the mix,
but at worst can retroactively damage
even the good parts of the show
by sending characters in unwanted directions,
making them make bad decisions
that make you question
if you should even root for this person anymore.
The office was to show that I think should have ended
after season seven.
Not because there weren't enough interesting characters left
to fill the void of Michael leaving,
but because the story was done.
They didn't need to keep going.
Instead of spinning too more seasons
cycling through bosses and manufacturing issues
and Jim and Pam's marriage for the sake of drama.
They could have ended it with momentum,
they could have accelerated through the finish line
rather than doing a very slow barrel roll.
I do think the eventual finale was great.
I think they did a good job finally ending it,
but there were 49 episodes in between this and this.
We didn't need all that.
You don't have to show everything
when you're writing a story.
At a certain point I think it's okay to take a step back
and be like, all right, we are done.
There's nothing else to say.
The rest can be implied.
I don't wanna read a book that's 3000 pages long.
I don't wanna read a book that's a hundred pages long.
Reading makes my eyes hurt.
But my point is,
if you're so far down your list of episode ideas,
that the only options left are either insane or boring.
It might be time to just go ahead
and skip to that finale.
I'm glad at least that they ended it well
when they finally did.
A show that you can't say that about
is that seventies show.
There was really no reason
for them to think that they could squeeze out
a good final season without not just one,
but two of their main characters
in a show that didn't have an office
full of other people to make up for their absence.
It was just the four remaining 30 year old
pretending to be high school graduates
and Seth Myers brother
whose character could have been killed off
within the first 10 seconds of season eight
and would have been a lot more likable.
Instead, He didn't die.
So you're left with this lukewarm replacement
of two characters rolled into one forgettable guy
who was introduced way too late
for anyone to start giving a shit about him.
- who the hell are you?
- I bet you don't even remember what his name was.
I say that because while writing this video,
I forgot three times
it's Randy and he sucked.
- I'm not wearing a bra
- But it wasn't just subtraction by addition,
it was also subtraction by subtraction.
They lost two hugely important characters
and then made one of them kind of an asshole,
but entirely off screen.
Eric went from being a super likable dude
and the main character of the show
to temporarily living in Africa
and then eventually breaking up with Donna over the phone.
Great.
So now I'm not supposed to like them anymore.
And Hide and Jackie broke up,
even though they had the only successful relationship left.
And now they're just like mad at each other all the time.
So I don't really like them anymore.
And I definitely don't like this guy
and now Donna's dating him.
So I don't think I like her anymore
is Fez The only likable character left at this point
while he would be,
if they didn't inexplicably transform him into like a hot
deuce bag, practically overnight.
Oh, and now he's dating Jackie,
but not until the second to last episode
of the entire show
whose ideas were these,
they did such a bad job of buttoning things up
that even in the finale,
when Eric comes back and give smooch to Donna,
it's still a little hazy
on whether this means they're back together.
It feels more like a goodbye kiss.
Like they know that because Eric fucked up
by going to Africa.
Well, there's no going back from here.
And that sucks.
That's a terrible ending.
You're telling me that the whole show leads up to this
200 episodes of hanging out down the street.
And this is how it ends.
At least it's a happy ending for Jackie and Fez,
a relationship that makes zero sense
and was never even hinted at
until the second half of the final season.
It's like if in Friends,
instead of Joey and Rachel having that weird view episodes
where they were flirting,
but then they came to their senses and stopped.
They got married
and then everyone else died.
It's such an unsatisfying ending
to an otherwise pretty well-written show.
Had they just restructured season seven.
I think they could have sent everyone off
in a much more meaningful and logical way.
Hyde could have proposed to Jackie,
like he planned to,
but without the unnecessary twist
of naked Kelso showing up and ruining it.
Eric and Donna could have found a way to go to college
together or maybe not end up together.
That's fine.
I'm not saying they have to have
this like perfect storybook happy ending.
I think it makes more sense if they drifted apart,
they're like 19
and they're trying to figure their own shit out.
They could've come up with something really heartbreaking
and realistic,
but instead they barely explore this idea.
Leave it way too open-ended and say,
okay, say eighties now, bye-bye.
I just think the ending of a show is so important
because you wanna make sure these characters
are sent off in a way that makes sense
and feels satisfying to the viewer.
And if you mess that up,
I think it can really put a stain on the entire show.
Now there's an obvious counter-argument
to everything I'm saying here
that a bad final season or two doesn't
retroactively ruin the season that cames before it.
Did I really just say season that cames
and not even notice.
Because those still exist.
You can still watch those.
You can watch up until the point that it starts to get bad
and then stop watching
and just make up a better ending in your head
and roll with that.
That's fine.
Problem solved.
But my feeling is when you watch 200 episodes of a show,
these characters start to have such a big place in your
life.
It's not like a movie where you do get pretty invested in
everyone's business,
but only for a couple hours.
And then after a day or two, you forget about it,
and life goes on.
With a long running television show,
Often times these characters are your life,
they become your life.
Watch this show every week
for seven years
or on Netflix every day for 16 days.
You spend so much time around these fictional people
that you start to feel a connection to them.
It's like, they're your friends,
especially with a show like this.
This all matters to me because I love that seventies show.
I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact
that I grew up watching it as a teenager.
And so it sort of dug itself into like a deeper recess of my
brain than a lot of the other things that I've experienced.
But I really like,
it's cool that I'm at a point in my life
where it now makes me nostalgic
for both the early two thousands
and the seventies,
even though I was negative 20 during the seventies.
And so I don't remember a whole lot of it.
I don't think the writing is always as strong as some of the
more cleverly written shows I've seen,
but they managed to create a really fun atmosphere
that makes it such an enjoyable show to watch
the over the top commitment to bits
and visual gags lend themselves perfectly
to this live studio audience format
that tends to play a lot of other shows.
Multi-camera sitcoms are theatrical by nature.
So I think they do a good job of embracing that format
by going to the lengths that they do visually.
And I don't mean to discount the writing
by saying it's not as funny as other shows.
It's still fucking hilarious sometimes.
even some of the most simple jokes
have made me laugh out loud.
Every time I see them
because of how perfectly they're delivered.
- Oh, hi, Joanne,
it's Joanne.
- And a lot of their success
has to do with how well-defined the characters are.
They do a good job of fleshing out each of their stories,
making them seem like real people with real lives
and emotions that you can easily identify with.
I think in general,
Eric and Donna's relationship arc is really well written.
Jackie, going from Kelsey to Hide
seemed weird at first,
but actually started to make a lot of sense
as you saw how their characters grew into the relationship
and into themselves.
And because the whole show is meant to feel like you're
hanging out with them all the time,
you end up super invested
in what's happening to all your TV friends,
especially when you're like 13.
And so they're your cool older friends
who do drugs and have kids.
There's a lot of speculation
as to why Topher grace left the show in 2005.
He's never really given a candid answer about it.
So most people just tend to assume,
well, he left the show to be in movies,
but after that seventies show ended,
he was only in one movie
for the next four years.
That doesn't seem like someone who was just desperate
to see themselves on the silver screen.
My theory is that he left the show
because he didn't like what the writers were doing
with his character.
Eric kind of becomes this directionless loser
in season seven,
who just sleeps all day
and has no ambition.
Maybe Tofor felt like he should have been more mature
at this point,
or they should have had a better vision
for what he was gonna become as an adult.
- Of course I am mad at Eric.
I just,
he wasn't supposed to turn out this way.
- And maybe when he Ultimately made the decision
to turn his back on the show.
The writers then vindictively turned his character
into a jerk
because they were mad at Tofor for abandoning them.
I don't know.
I'm just guessing
what I do know is this ending sucks
and I wish they could have figured out a better one.
And I think it would have been a lot easier
for them to do that
if they just ended the show after season seven,
when they probably should have,
instead of continuing to truck along
with three flat tires
and Randy hiding in the trunk,
when you keep trying to force these storylines
that come out of nowhere,
it's gonna end up being convoluted and weird
as disappointing as season eight and nine of the office are.
Imagine if they went on for another season
and now they've truly run out of storylines to explore.
So for the sake of drama,
Pam becomes addicted to Casa
and that puts a real toll on her marriage.
So Jim divorces her
and then realizes he's been bisexual this whole time
and ends up with Kevin.
who accidentally cooks their daughter into a pot of chili.
Also Toby leaves the show to be in Spiderman four.
that's obviously an extreme example,
but my point is,
when you decide to start shaking up the core things
that you've been establishing
since the beginning of the show,
the viewer is gonna look at that and be like,
I don't know if I buy this,
this doesn't seem right.
And just like in real life,
when you find out something horrible that someone did,
it changes the way you look at them forever.
So I think as a writer,
you have to evaluate what behavior is irredeemable.
If I write this into the show,
is it going to permanently taint this character?
Is the intrigue of this dramatic plot point
worth the repercussions it could have on the legacy
of the show as a whole.
And why haven't I killed off Randy yet?
These are the questions you have to ask.
So those are a couple of examples of shows
that I think outlive their ideal lifespan.
But I think it's also interesting
when shows do get canceled
against the will of the show runners,
but in doing so
end up having like a perfect natural ending.
I talked about this in my rested development video
that maybe that show got canceled at the perfect time.
Maybe it's better for something to end prematurely
because seeing a show drag on past its prime
can contaminate the overall perception
of the show as a whole
weirdly enough and arrested development's case.
I think somehow both of those things are true,
but there's plenty of other shows that come to mind too,
like Crashing on HBO.
One of my favorite shows from the past few years,
I thought it was hilarious,
but also really well directed.
I think they nailed the tone of the show
and did a good job developing the characters
in a believable way,
particularly with Pete
and his personal growth as a performer
and as a boyfriend.
And that show actually got canceled by HBO
after three seasons.
But because of the way they wrote the season three finale,
it actually felt like a really fitting conclusion
to the show as a whole,
To the extent that if Pete Holmes came out
and said that that was the plan for the series
the entire time,
I would believe him.
my number one favorite show of all time
Avatar :The last Air bender
also only had three seasons.
They didn't get canceled,
but they had a concrete plan from the beginning.
They do the exact arc that the show would have.
And even though it ended up being pretty successful
and I'm sure Nickelodeon
would have been down
to let them stretch it out a couple more seasons,
they close the book on it
and let it end the way it was supposed to,
and then they stretch it out for a couple more seasons,
but that's okay.
We don't have to talk about that.
At least that show had a different name
so I can pretend it was some kind of
non-canonical Fan mate spinner.
I'm curious to read the comments on this
and see what shows come to mind for you guys.
Whether it's a show that
maybe had like a really good ending lined up
and then continued past that point for some reason,
and ended up ruining everything,
or maybe a show that you think ended at the perfect time.
Someone who always comes to mind.
When I think of people who didn't try to milk a show dry
is Nick Kroll
who had his own successful sketch show
on comedy central.
It was pretty much a culmination
of everything his career had been leading up to
until that point
with characters he had been doing for years,
it was his show.
It had his name on it.
And the format of it was so incredibly open-ended
that he pretty much could have gone in any direction he
wanted to with it.
And yet after three seasons,
he turned down offers to continue
and chose to end his own show
because he felt like it had run its course.
And I find that to be an extremely admirable decision.
One that he's admitted to questioning a bit himself,
but he ultimately decided that
that was the time to move on from the show.
And if that's what he thought,
then I respect it,
I don't know what seasons four and five of Cruel show
would have looked like.
But if working on that
would have taken away his opportunity
to go on Broadway with John Malaney
and put together one of the weirdest funniest shows
I've ever seen.
Well, then that would suck
and maybe it wouldn't have been worth it.
He's also been working on big mouth
for the past few years
a show that people either absolutely fucking despise
or they love,
but either way,
if this is where Nick's passion lies
good for him for pursuing it,
even if it meant making a scary decision
in order to get there.
I'm sure there's like a life lesson in here somewhere
about how you never know what you could be missing out on
until you take the chance to pursue it.
Or maybe that just because you're content
with your current life
doesn't mean that you wouldn't be happier
doing something else
or maybe this all just means
that I spend way too much time watching television.
I don't know.
I'll let you form your own conclusion.
But one thing I know we can all agree on
is that Randy
sucks.
- Oh , oh
- Well, now that this video
has reached its natural conclusion,
I think I should practice what I preach
and go ahead and turn it into a 12 part series.
That I would be pitching to Netflix.
You won't believe what happens next.
Now, if I want to make this happen,
I'm gonna need to fund it myself.
Luckily I can just use the money from today sponsor.
Hi,
I rotated and I'm proud founder
and CEO of picture of hotdog.com.
America's number one website.
I assume
since publishing this website last month,
we have taken the internet by storm
with our patented catch-up technology
and our newest edition mustard,
but it doesn't stop there.
I've invested hundreds of dollars into a research
and development team.
That's currently working around small sections of the clock
to discover new condiments,
to be added to the world's best hotdog.
So stay tuned.
how did I pull this off?
You ask?
Well, it's simple.
I used Squarespace Squarespace.
Squarespace is the best way to build the website
You've been dreaming of
without any coding experience necessary.
I've had a lot of success with Squarespace in the past,
using it as an online store.
They've got a bunch of great tools integrated
within the platform
that make your life a whole lot easier.
You can sync directly with something called ship station,
Which organized all my shipping labels
and made printing them super easy and fast.
Once you start with Squarespace,
it's super easy to keep track of things like
how many visitors are coming to your website,
where they're coming from,
what they don't like,
what they do like
you can set up email campaigns
that push out important information
to your repeat customers
and help solidify your brand in the long run.
They also make it super easy to embed audio
within your site.
So if you have like a podcast,
you can make it playable
to everyone who's visiting your website.
There are a million great reasons to make your own website,
whether it's for your business or for your personal life.
So get started today with a free trial.
And when you're ready to launch your brand new website,
go to squarespace.com/true,
to get 10% off your first purchase
of a website or domain.
And to let them know who sent you.
It was me.
Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video.
And of course,
giving me the platform to fulfill my lifelong dream
of sharing one virtual hotdog
with thousands of strangers.
Now back to my desk.
I've actually been sitting here the whole time.
I'm not sure if you noticed,
thank you guys for watching.
I hope you like when I make videos like these,
if not that's okay.
I make other ones too.
This is just a way for me to talk about something that's
interesting to me in a way that people will enjoy
as long as they agree with my opinion.
All right, I will see all of you first thing yesterday.
Goodbye.