Let's say you've discovered something—a movie or a book or a TV show—and it really appeals to you. There are stacks and stacks of disappointing and poorly conceived items of pop culture out there, just loads of wretched stuff, and you've managed to locate the exception, the shining ideal. It simply works at most levels; it may even scratch your low-brow itch and give your brain new notions to think about in the morning.

If you found that perfect work of art, wouldn't you want to find the sequel or season 2 and enjoy the heck out of it?

And what if that follow-up was not up to the same level of quality . . . would you give up?

I'm a completist, so I've always gone overboard once I have an enthusiasm about something. I would get excited about an author, read all their books, then have to rediscover the fact that other people are writing books worth reading too. I'd watch a whole series of movies, even if every sequel after the original was a scrape on the bottom of a smelly barrel. For example, I would defend the original Robocop movie to all detractors, and I watched the sequels too, even though they are not worthy of the name.

Or at least I used to be a completist. Lately I've been struck more and more often with the realization that my so-called leisure time is finite. I wouldn't call it desperation, particularly, but a close relative, maybe anxiety. I might even go so far as to say that I'm starting to regret some of the time that I've spent wading through the lower levels of the aforementioned smelly barrel, in the name of seeing everything that's down there.

Simply put: what happens when something big and good gradually turns into crap? I used to not care, but lately I've been cutting my losses. To follow the earlier example: I may have watched all three Robocop movies, but I never bothered with the TV series.

For me, the proverbial straw has been the ready availability of complete TV shows. The mountain to climb gets pretty big when, say, you've missed all three seasons of Lost and you have to watch 60 hours straight, commercial-free, just to catch up to the spoilers on the internet. I need to get away from the computer screen after a day of that same activity at work, not prop my eyes open with toothpicks, smear salve on my incipient bedsores (couch-sores?), and rot my brain with another load of brain-rot.

On that note! Here are a few shows that started to fall into that rotten brain category before I decided to give up on them.

The X-Files

I only watched an episode here or there, probably around season 4 or 5 (1997 or so). I watched the movie when it came out (1998), and was just as baffled as everyone else with the events as they continued on the show.

So last year I started at the very beginning, and it was not pleasant. I don't know if anyone else has watched season 1 of The X-Files lately, but the show was decidedly uneven back then. The strength of the Mulder-Scully relationship was present immediately, but the writing staff didn't seem to have much of an idea of what to do with the two leads from show to show. Later in the first season, we got the first inklings of what was to become the "mytharc," of which volumes have been written.

Seasons 2 and 3 had some of the best episodes—I'd have to pick between "The Calusari" or "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" for my favorite of the chilling-style X-Files. Seasons 4 and 5 were ok, but the show was losing some of its potency, and the story was bogging down considerably. I left after season 6. Three more seasons seemed like too big of a hill to climb, especially with Mulder off the show for most of that time, and many of the mysteries either cleared up or hopelessly buried and recomplicated.

My suspicion is that Chris Carter and company never really understood what they had. To give them some credit, the whole phenomenon of "mythology episodes" was not common at the time, and subsequent shows like Lost and Heroes owe The X-Files a great debt. Those newer shows in fact built on the trial-and-error approach that the earlier show took, or rather, had to take, since it was the trailblazer and could not rely on any previous examples.

Battlestar Galactica

This one hurts me more than The X-Files, since I fell hard for the reimagined Galactica. I was suddenly not interested in BSG after 1 or 2 episodes of season 3. It was a weird experience: I didn't have big internal struggle or anything, and unlike The X-Files where it was conventional wisdom that the Mulder-free years sucked, no one knows if the upcoming season of Battlestar Galactica will be good or not. It was like a switch was flipped in my brain and I didn't find the show appealing any longer.

The seeds of my discontent had probably been sown much earlier. The show's opening credits claim that the villainous Cylons have a plan, but as season 1 stretched into season 2 and the show accumulated logical problems just like any other show (a lot like The X-Files now that I think about it), that "they have a plan" line got really galling. The end of season 2 featured a crazy reboot of the storyline, which might have been fine in another show. But for some reason, in Battlestar Galactica that move felt like the writers throwing up their hands and admitting that they were in a corner. Maybe some outrageous upcoming rejig will fix everything.

But I'm starting to doubt that such a thing is possible. Writing a show-length narrative arc is like playing with fire, specifically on TV. It can keep the viewers coming back every week when the show airs originally, or pressing play on the next episode when it's out on DVD. But if it's the defining storyline of the show, how can you ever resolve it? The show would, ipso facto, be over. That's not always true of course (see some examples below of shows that didn't blow it), but in the case of Battlestar Galactica, I lost faith that the show could recover from past mistakes. When it's a long storyline, every link along the way has to hold. For BSG, I saw little signs here and there of breakage, followed by a blowout of desperate proportions.

It's possible that I'll return to seasons 3 and 4 of Galactica once it's all wrapped up. So that's at least one step ahead of seasons 7-9 of The X-Files, which will never interest me.

Heroes

I've given up on Heroes as of last week! I had my problems with season 1—the material was awesome but it felt absurdly stretched out—and while I hung in there, the experience became more of a "complain with friends" variety rather than a "get enthusiastic" one.

Season 2 has had all of the problems of the original season and none of the redeeming aspects. And since the ending of Season 1, the result of all that build-up, was distinctly middling, I have no reason to hang around if the story seems to be following the same track as last time.

Counter-examples

What are the shows that I've kept going with? So far the only two that I've completed have been Alias and Arrested Development. Arrested Development is pure lunacy, better sampled than watched through in a marathon. If an episode is on TV, I almost always watch a few minutes, marvelling at the audacity and memorable lines.

Alias is an unusual case. The writers of the show clearly had no clue what to do with the main fantastic storyline (Rambaldi), they constantly threw gimmicks like reboots and retcons at the viewer, and the show went way down its own navel as the five seasons progressed and there always had to be a new revelation. So, a show that screwed up its big narrative arc and made every other mistake as well . . . how could I keep watching? In this case, I think it has to do with low expectations—I never saw the show as the great hope for SF on TV—combined with a cheesy amount of action packed into every episode. Before I ditched Heroes, I would find myself shouting at the TV, "Please make something happen!" For Alias, the problem was never a lack of plot developments. Mind you, that stuff never ended up making much sense. Then again, Alias never claimed to be much more than a shot of pop-culture, made up of a riff on the spy subgenre here and frantic pacing there, all ephemeral. The pleasures of such are hard to deny.

I'll have more to report soon on another big front: I'm on the final seasons of Buffy and Angel. I never watched Whedon's various vampire shows when they were on the air, and I worked backwards from Firefly, which I enjoyed immensely. I think the way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer hooked viewers and converted them into insane fans scared me. So far, I think that Buffy (more so than Angel) found a sweet spot between lots of action per show and the requirements of a season-long storyline. Not for every season though!

I've mentioned Avatar: The Last Airbender in this space before, but I have to mention it again. It's the only currently airing show that's getting better and better, rather than running out of steam. The cartoon is in its third season, and as it's structured around the four elements, I suspect the story won't end until the end of next season. But the show's writers use all kinds of creative tricks to keep the episodes fresh and interesting despite the fact the main story clearly won't be resolved for another 30 episodes. The Halloween episode of season 3, The Puppetmaster, was genuinely chilling! And not only have they pandered to obnoxious kid humor, they've delved into heavy character building. For my money, it's the only show, on air now, that has any chance of fulfilling the promise of a show-length narrative arc.

Non-TV Examples

On a more serious note, what happens if the story is unfinished? Robert Jordan died earlier this year, leaving his giant Wheel of Time series incomplete while working on the final volume. The same thing just about happened to the long-suffering fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower when he was struck by a van. Ironically, once King finished the series, the idealized version of the conclusion that many had in their minds was wiped out in favor of an ending that was either idiosyncratic or offensive depending on your point of view.

This year I've been rediscovering the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. For many years, I regarded myself as foolish for reading as many entries as I did. Now that I'm listening to the audiobooks every day while walking to work, I find that I can't stop. Pern #10 and counting.

This may date me more than I'd like to admit, but I played the original Elder Scrolls: Arena, back in the day. The world of Tamriel doesn't seem to have captured a cult following in the way that some fictional locales have, but it has survived and prospered for much longer than many of its counterparts in the industry. Bethesda has slowed down the output and spent more time on each entry, essentially reinventing the game and world each time, which might explain the longevity. If you don't take any shortcuts, i.e. give each entry the full treatment, that seems to be the best way to avoid sequel fatigue.