Westworld

Well that was the literal strategy for a lot of these shows in the 2010s, particularly the ones on HBO. Have a great premise, with some high ticket actors, and some major titties during the first couple seasons. They were actually hiring literal strippers and whores as extras in many of these shows. Then if the show hits, the actresses start thinking they are above getting naked, the writing goes off course due to overmilking storylines, and the whore/tittly budget vanishes practically overnight.

Where Streaming has really done damage is the 8-10 episode "season" where they are still wasting time on filler because they want to milk the show for money as long as possible. The Woke brigade also pretty much made sure we never got to see titties again after a certain point, but endless Dongs abound (see The Boys as a prime example) or shows where the audience gets into the "wrong" character and the writers with an agenda try to overcompensate, usually only to make the situation worse. If you have a longer season, you can spend more time on these one off idea episodes or backstory expositions. When you have less than a dozen episodes to get an entire arc out, you can't fuck around. And you cannot shit on the audience or lower quality. If you sold people on titties, titties must be provided. No, Emelia Clark, you are not a good enough actress to justify putting your skeeter bites and snizz on lockdown after a season or two. Sorry Seth Rogan, the more you try to make Homelander the bad guy the more we like him the best. And if you gank Pedro at the start of season two, nothing that comes after is going to hold my interest, certainly not the downy woke carpet muncher girl. Its a combination of Agenda, prioritizing drawing shit out forever, and poor pacing all crammed into overly short seasons.

Now there are some shows that seem to buck those trends and even deliver complete stories with short seasons. Slow Horses is an excellent example. I think Fallout does a pretty decent job, though its over reliant on Goggins and MacLaughlin. The Sandman did a really fantastic job maintaining its pacing and quality for its entire run. There have been a couple other recent gems, but not many. Speaking as someone who regularly binges DS9 from time to time and who is currently binging Blacklist, its a stark contrast of how unbelievably shitty most writing and show running has become since the streaming era began.

Cybsled said:

Funny you later mentioned DS9, but this is exactly what they did with Gul Dukat in the last seasons. Lots of fans were like “Gul Dukat did nothing wrong” and the writers basically dialed up the evil by 10 in the last season. Ziyal getting killed at least provided a reason for Dukat to have a complete mental break

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Which is the difference between good writing and shit writing. Dukat was a fundamentally evil and selfish the entire time, but after his mental break and his Pah Wraith interactions, he went completely off the rails as you noted. This was actually part of the story and his character, not the writers shifting gears like has gone on with say, Homelander or most modern white male antagonists that the fans have warmed up to. Its not noticeable because Garak was so much more compelling of an evil character (as was Weyoun for that matter).

Well Trek has been progressive leaning since day one. But that does not mean it was bad story telling and DS9 had good story telling with complex characters where the viewer was left to decide what they had been presented. The bulk of the OG series and TNG had this going for it, where it was present an allegory that is not directly one for one, show the viewers both sides, tell the story, and let them think about it. Hell Voyager even ,managed to tackle the 13=50 issue and confronted slavery through the Holodoc in a couple of episodes. Fast forward to recent years and you have Fox News somehow still existing to be shit on, black mary sue space Jesus, and gay poet cross dressing klingons. In the Boys, you have Homelander becoming a literal MAGA Trump punching bag stand in with zero grey area at all.

Most of this did not apply to Westworld, though. Westworlds main failure was shit tier writers that had a good idea that carried them through season one by leaning heavily on Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Thandy Newton, and fucktons of titties. Most of that ran out very early in season 2 and was essentially all gone for the rest of its run. And to make matters worse, the second season ending was so bad that most people dropped the show practically overnight. The outspoken feminist lead actress did not help things, either. The core ideas remained interesting, but the resources and writing dried up. Same with pretty much every series these days, like Last of Us being the most egregious recent example though it had other issues.