Does anyone else have a show that got cancelled and/or lukewarm reception but it’s just darling to you? I feel like Netflix has screwed over so many wonderful shows with creative and interesting concepts along with perfect casting and world building just for money. As an example, several book adaptations, such as Shadow and Bone and Lockwood & Co, were cancelled after season two and season one respectively. However, shows like Big Mouth are currently getting greenlit for seasons over and over because their producers make Netflix quite a bit of money.
This is definitely part of a much larger issue. The United States has very much become a late-stage capitalist society, and when profits are given a heavier weight than artistic appreciation, we end up in scenarios such as these.
Despite being one of the oldest facets of humanity, the arts have always been underfunded, under appreciated, and overlooked. Especially now with the rise of generative AI “art” and media, the beauty of human art is slowly getting lost to time. People have grown so accustomed to consuming cheap, quick slop that companies have stopped caring about creativity. After all, why would they pay for a team of artists, animators, costume designers, set and tech artists, scriptwriters, and editors when they could just feed a prompt to a bot that tells them how to do everything without any bit of human nuance for little to none?
Another reason so much good art is pushed aside to make room for corporate-approved content is private and not-so-private donations. I keep using Big Mouth because it is a prime example of how money is favored to quality. The Kroll Family, if you are not aware, are the producers of Big Mouth. They are also filthy rich. They pay Netflix an appalling amount of money to keep their content on the platform and to ensure it keeps getting new seasons. The donations Netflix receives from wealthy people as well as corporations or different lobbyist groups are a far more stable and predictable income than the money they receive from viewership of certain movies/shows.
Once again this is mainly just a long roundabout way to say capitalism can and very much will be the death of art and humanity as we know it. Once more and more bland, shareholder approved content is pushed to viewers, even more lovely works of art is left in the margins for fans to find and later wonder why they never got a new season.
I have to wrap this up. There are so many amazing shows and movies that go unnoticed because they aren’t being promoted anymore due to lack of new content. It’s very upsetting for me to think about all the incredibly creative and hardworking people that have given up their time and effort and minds, all for nil. All because some man in a fancy suit, sitting in a taxpayer funded building, is willing to trash good material as well as severely overwork and underpay their employees. All for a pretty penny.
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Alright. Well, this was typed out in pure rage. I’m well aware this is all a massive rant, but this particular topic is one that I’m quite passionate about. Thank you for reading all this if you did. I’d personally love to hear any comments or takes of your own. I’d also love to know… what is your favorite show that was cancelled after only a few seasons or less?
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