There's the general perception that tv series decline after each successive season. Even shows which are highly critically regarded seem to suffer from this e.g. The Wire (season 2 was seen as a misstep, corrected in seasons 3 and 4, while season 5 isn't as highly regarded), The Soprano's ending was highly divisive, as was the ending of Lost (with seasons 4 to 6 also being less highly regarded than seasons 1-3).
Many more examples exist.
Let's do two things:
- Let's validate or challenge this perception with quantitative data using IMDB critic, IMDB user, Metacritic critic, Metacritic user and whatever other data points we can find
- Assuming that the perception is validated with data, let's do a deep dive on forming hypotheses on why this decline happens.
Let's focus specifically on shows that tell serialized as opposed to episodic stories.