open/close all folders
Arc Stall
Examples
- How some felt during 24's fourth season in regards to Marwan's Gambit Roulette, a plot originally intended for five or six episodes that instead got expanded into seventeen for the remainder of the season. Many people got tired somewhere around the third or fourth time he made an illogical escape just to start another plan.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003):
- The second half of season three. After the dramatic escape from New Caprica, the show lapsed into a series of filler episodes with little development. This was from two apparent factors: Executive Meddling and budget restrictions. 'Dropping The Bucket' in "Exodus Part Two" wasn't cheap.
- Gaius Baltar's character arc in Season Four. Even if we grant that the focus was not 'turning him into a good person' (which many fans already believed him to be) but rather into a full-fledged hero, he manages this feat by the end of the season premiere when he offers his own life for that of a young child who he's seen maybe twice in his life. Later episodes in the season pose questions such as "Does Gaius Baltar have the courage to get hit by a guard?" and "Does Gaius Baltar have the courage to shoot enemy Cylons from a safe distance?" usually to be answered with a resounding and nonsensical 'no,' when he'd already committed himself to far more dangerous things in the past. The entire arc could have been concluded in the episode it was introduced.
- An earlier show that Ron Moore worked on, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, suffered from almost the exact same problem in its sixth season, and for a lot of the same reasons. Once the Federation retook the station in an episode involving the largest space battle that Star Trek had ever done up to that point, the latter three-fourths of the season was almost completely made up of filler, with only three episodes having anything definite to do with the Dominion War arc.
- The telepath colony arc in Babylon 5 went on and on. And on. And on. And on. (The story was originally intended to only last three episodes but due to behind-the-scenes issues ended up taking up all of the fifth season's first half).
- The Blacklist makes an annoying habit of dragging the current arc all the way to the season finale and then resolving it during the fall finale of the NEXT season. The worst of which is the bones bag plot. It appeared in the season 4 finale and the content is only revealed in the season 5 finale.
- The Pelant arc in Bones had viewers feeling this. He was introduced early in season 7 and wasn’t killed off until season 9. It might not have been as bad to many if he’d stayed in prison after framing Brennan for murder in the season 7 finale, but he kept using his computer skills to get away. By the season 8 finale, many felt he was becoming a villain because of everything he was capable of. His forcing Booth to reject Brennan’s marriage proposal made it even worse. And There Was Much Rejoicing when Booth finally killed him early in season 9.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Season Six. Every plotline and character arc seemed stretched out without any developments or changes. It took Buffy the whole season (21 episodes) to get over being dead and resurrected. The last time she died and was brought back to life (in season one) it took one episode of angst before she was back on her feet. (In all fairness, though, the first time she merely flat lined and was revived. The second time she was yanked out of Heaven against her will and brought back to Earth and forced to claw her way out of her own grave, after being buried alive had been established as her biggest fear.)
- Season Seven with the First Evil storyline suffered in a similar way, mainly because the First Evil itself barely did anything productive or meaningful throughout the entire arc. It also didn't help that, unlike the previous seasons, nearly every episode of the season was spent preparing for the threat (whereas the previous episodes would give the occasional light-hearted Monster of the Week episode).
- Even Season Five suffered from this. The Glory arc was slow and plodding with whole episodes going along without anything progressing in the plot. Glory isn't introduced until the fifth episode, is forgotten about for another three episodes and if you cut out all the filler from that season you have about twelve episodes where the plot progresses normally.
- Burn Notice had the titular Burn Notice. Michael wants to know why he got burned, who did it, and how he can get back in. Season after season with little development, only to reveal that it's a massive conspiracy orchestrated by a disaffected man on the inside with the ability to get people burned and the ability to manipulate them. Then it goes on for another season with a new mystery related to the Burn Notice because Michael just won't let it go. And that's six of the show's seven seasons.
- Castle has the murder of Johanna Beckett. By the end of the third season the only thing about the murder that still needs to be explained is who the mastermind was. This did not get revealed until the premiere of the fifth season with the episodes of season 4 dedicated to it been a long exercise in stalling. Explanation Even then it was not until the penultimate episode of Season 6 that he was brought to justice. And then, just when you thought it was all over, Season 8 dug it all up again to reveal that the guy who did it was himself a stooge for someone else, and they also had some big complicated conspiracy scheme going on, and Castle and Beckett had to dig even further into her mother's murder to unravel it. By this point everyone watching was so sick of it that Season 8 turned out to be the last season.
- Coronation Street had Tracy Barlow's abuse of Steve. It got to the point where even Tracy's actress Kate Ford said she was sick of it.
- Doctor Who:
- The Doctor's exile on Earth in the Classic series, in which he lost access to space and time travel and decided to cooperate with UNIT, a branch of the British military. It was a good twist, the storyline created enduring popular characters like the Brigadier and the Master, and it allowed the series to ration its tiny budget more effectively, but the arc was controversial with the creative team to begin with and by the time it was wrapped up, all of them were sick of it. Apart from the major problems caused by having a conceptually anti-authoritarian character like the Doctor working with the Army, the arc effectively nullified the show's entire premise, which caused further problems when they tried to end it - due to the high viewer turnover of children's shows, time-space travel had to be reintroduced gently so the audience could understand what was going on. UNIT stories started being phased out by Season 10, space travel stories got lots of exposition and slow initial episodes so the audience could get used to them, the first story for the recast Doctor was Reality Subtext for how boring the arc had become, and he still returned to UNIT in several early stories despite having quit his job at the end of it, in one case ("The Seeds of Doom") with zero explanation. It's difficult to say when the UNIT era actually ends - "The Three Doctors" ends with the Third Doctor's exile ending, "Robot" finishes with the Doctor quitting his UNIT job, "Terror of the Zygons" is the last story of the Fourth Doctor era featuring the Brigadier, "The Android Invasion" is the last to feature the rest of the UNIT regulars, "The Seeds of Doom" is the last story to show the Doctor acting as a UNIT agent and "The Hand of Fear" is the last to feature a UNIT 'assistant' as companion. Whichever way you slice it, being rid of this arc took something around seven years, encompassing the Third Doctor's entire tenure and at least the first year-and-a-half of the Fourth Doctor's.
- The revival series had the Time War plotline concerning the Doctor's offscreen genocide of the Time Lords. The arc had been set up in the first episode of the first Series to clear up the Continuity Snarl and Continuity Lockout caused by the Wilderness Years and give some more depth to the Doctor's character, and was well-received. The trouble was that an event of that magnitude (murdering billions of people, mostly innocents, to avert even more Time War destruction) was something so big that there was no way the Doctor could ever resolve it or move on from it. The Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors all had personalities completely dominated by the Time War and their varying struggles to deal with the guilt as a result. Russell T Davies attempted to resolve it in his final episode before stepping down by having the Tenth Doctor repeat the decision to kill off the Time Lords, but, although the Eleventh Doctor was better at hiding his mountains of Angst, he hadn't got over it because there was just nowhere for him to get over it to without resorting to character-betraying Angst? What Angst?. After almost ten years, Steven Moffat felt that the arc had been pushed as far as it could go (and the initial genocide was an Out-of-Character Moment to start with) and used the 50th anniversary special which followed Series 7 to retcon it out of existence (the explanation being the planet was actually transported to another dimension but to preserve the timeline the previous Doctors had to forget this). This allowed the Twelfth Doctor to scale back the "cosmic" angst in favor of more personal heartaches: guilt over his solider days, Who Wants to Live Forever? as he inevitably loses his loved ones, Chronic Hero Syndrome, etc. In Series 12 (Jodie Whittaker's second season), the Thirteenth Doctor is dealing with the wiping-out of her race again — and learning that it's really her adoptive race in the first place.
- The Ponds - the second longest-running companions of the new series (only edged out by Clara Oswald) - started out as very popular companions due to their dramatic Romance Arc, but due to their relatively long tenure and the high number of Wham Episodes featuring them, they had to go through something catastrophic every three weeks. Large chunks of the fandom, especially those who initially enjoyed them for having a relatively down-to-earth romance compared to the Doctor/companion shipping of the RTD era, got sick of them constantly breaking up and getting back together, or Rory having to have increasingly ludicrous moments of being awesome to win her back, or Rory constantly dying, or Amy treating Rory badly and it being Played for Laughs, or Rory mooning over his inadequacy compared to the Doctor no matter how cool it becomes apparent he is, or them becoming the Doctor's in-laws, and so on.
- In general, Series 6 and 7 of modern Who suffered from the Series 5's Silence/crack/baby arc going on for far too long — eventually consuming Matt Smith's entire run. It finally wrapped up in the 2013 Christmas special, by which time Amy and Rory had already left the show. This is made worse by the splitting of these seasons into two arcs apiece, and by the tendency to interweave arcs so that you were never quite sure if a storyline had truly ended or not.
- Clara Oswald's tenure as companion was a stretch detractors came to dub Clara Who. In both the Series 7 premiere and the mid-season Christmas Special the Doctor encountered the same plucky young woman in a Dalek asylum and Victorian London...and both times saw her die. And then he meets her again in The Present Day. Internet speculation as to the nature of Clara's existence kept buzz about the show going, but ended up having nothing to do with the unprecedented Negative Space Wedgie it turned out to be. Also, despite a few character moments, Clara was effectively Out of Focus while a multitude of plot threads were tied up or cut short. By the time the 50th anniversary and Matt Smith's regeneration came along, Jenna Coleman had very little to do. Series 8 gave her a romance with Danny Pink and a struggle to understand the much-changed Doctor, but that resulted in a Romantic Plot Tumor. Her story seemed to end in the Season Finale "Death in Heaven", in which she lost Danny, and then chose to stop traveling with the Doctor thanks to mutual lies...but then Coleman decided she wanted to stay — first for the post-season Christmas Episode and then for Series 9. Because this decision came so late, she was largely shoehorned into the first two-thirds of the season as the Doctor's Distaff Counterpart. With all this, many fans were sick of her long before the three-part Season Finale that saw her off for good. Worse, that finale ALSO involved the Doctor finally returning to Gallifrey — an event that could have sustained a standalone finale or even Story Arc, but instead played second fiddle to the Doctor-Clara endgame.
- In a short-term example, the "Monks Trilogy" of Series 10 was criticized for bringing the momentum of the season, up to that point lively (if sometimes lightweight and old-hat) standalone episodes connected by the larger Vault arc and a much more popular companion in Bill Potts, to a crawl. First, "Extremis" was a Prolonged Prologue merely establishing that evil aliens were going to invade Earth; this was simple enough that it doubled as a Two Lines, No Waiting episode that revealed the Vault's backstory. "The Pyramid at the End of the World" had the aliens arrive, but they didn't invade until the Cliffhanger; a lot of Padding involving a Red Herring ensued. "The Lie of the Land" picked up six months after that, meaning the invasion was never depicted onscreen; this episode was solely devoted to the heroes undoing it thanks largely to the villains' Third Act Stupidity, with enough time for a crucial development in the Vault arc ( Bill meeting Missy) to be worked in. Not helping the arc's case were ultimately generic villains, as well as the sense that the stories could easily have been rethought as more effective standalone adventures with different villains in each.
- EastEnders has the "Who Killed Lucy Beale" storyline. Lucy's murder happened in April 2014, and the killer wasn't revealed until February 2015, to coincide with the show's 30th anniversary. For comparison, the show's most popular and famous Whodunnit, "Who Shot Phil?", was over and done with in five weeks. And just when you thought it was over, the arc was revived four months later, with Max Branning being wrongfully arrested and convicted of the murder, and the truth slowly beginning to leak out leading into Christmas 2015.
- Irish soap opera Fair City started a storyline in May 2016, where Katy O'Brien was kidnapped and locked into a small room. As of May 2017, she's still locked up. The entire public got sick of the storyline that a petition was started to end it
. Naturally, Waterford Whispers News had a field day with this one. - The on-again, off-again romance between Ross and Rachel that went on for the entirety of the ten-season run of Friends. It was largely forgotten about in later seasons (except when the show needed a season finale cliffhanger) until it came time for the show to end, whereupon Ross and Rachel were reunited in a manner that seemed somewhat forced.
- In fact, it was lampshaded in an episode when Joey wants to date Rachel, but doesn't want to upset Ross. When they talk it over, Ross realizes that they hadn't gone out for six years and that it was just ridiculous for him to keep holding on.
- And to give some comparison: Monica and Chandler's relationship only spanned 6 seasons during which they had started dating, had a Secret Relationship, fell in love, moved in together, had a year-long engagement, got married, went long-distance for a while, and adopted twins. Even Phoebe and her boyfriend - who was only introduced in the penultimate season - dated, fell in love, broke up, got back together, and got married before Ross and Rachel considered sorting themselves out.
- For many Glee fans, Kurt leaving the club and transferring to Dalton Academy counted as this, since it was supposed to be temporary from the start, but had been extended due to high ratings, even though there were many episodes where Kurt added nothing to the story and the Dalton scenes felt like Big Lipped Alligator Moments. At least it didn't drag as long as the Finn/Quinn/Rachel plot, which ran for two whole seasons.
- The Good Doctor:
- Some fans have lost patience with the development of Shaun's romantic plot with Carly in Season 3, thinking that however realistic or well-intentioned the plot is, it was stealing precious time from the show. It doesn't help that Carly abruptly ends their relationship in episode 15, for realizing that he loves Lea.
- After three seasons, fans are finally starting to get tired of the UST involving Shaun and Lea. At this point in the plot, many fans believe that the writers are making forced excuses just to create melodrama and delay their romantic involvement for as long as possible. Fortunately, it seems that this situation came to an end at the finale of Season 3, when Shaun and Lea finally became a couple.
- In season two of The Good Wife, the storyline of Blake investigating Kalinda's secret past was only supposed to last through the season's first half. Scott Porter, who played Blake, turned out to have a more demanding schedule than they realized, so they were forced to progress the story in random fits and starts until it ended up dragging on through almost the whole season.
- The Dahak Saga that dominated the fifth season of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and concurrent third season of Xena: Warrior Princess. While his daughter Hope was an endearing villainess, Dahak annoyed fans for being a generic God of Evil whose true form is never seen, and whose plans revolved around a very convoluted prophecy where he knocks up Gabrielle with Hope, who then gets knocked up by Ares, then their children are supposed to bring about the end of the world.
- Homicide: Life on the Street:
- The focus into Bolander's love life throughout the first two seasons dragged pretty quickly. Not only did no other detective get this kind of focus into their personal lives, but the writers' efforts to portray the overweight, elderly Bolander as a Chick Magnet were incredibly Narmy and his efforts to find love were often out of place on a gritty crime drama, and took screentime away from other, more interesting storylines. It was thankfully dropped in the third season, which similarly resulted in Bolander going from an insecure sadsack into a wizened mentor figure, which was a pretty vast improvement.
- The aftermath of the Luther Mahoney shooting in Season 6 started with a newcomer (Falsone) having a burning interest in a police shooting of a drug dealer from the year prior, morphed into laughable dramatics from Mahoney's "long lost sister" and basically destroyed the credibility of Lewis, Kellerman, and Stivers. Made worse by the fact that the shooting wasn't a black and white issue.
- Sheppard's gun-taking fiasco from season seven, which made her look weak, incompetent and untrustworthy. Lewis, regardless if he were justified in doing so or not, looked like an even bigger Jerkass who alienated the others against her and even the "good" female detectives turned on her for making them look bad. Even worse, this ended up being one of the seasons' main storylines.
- Kamen Rider Blade: The conflict of Mutsuki being possesed by the Spider Undead. The creature first appeared in episode 11. He was sealed away....in episode 42. For 26 episodes (not counting the ones he didn't appear), the characters were dealing with Mutsuki’s possession and it dragged for so long that by the time the Spider Undead was finally sealed for good, there were only 7 episodes left before the end.
- Lost has the "Walt gets kidnapped" storyline, which dragged. After spending an entire summer waiting to find out what happened, we get about a dozen episodes where almost nothing happens other than Michael shouting about it in every other line (which rapidly plummeted him to Scrappy status) and eventually running off on his own and disappearing. We then get eight solid episodes telling us nothing about what happened to him, with most of the characters hardly seeming concerned that he's missing. And then the storyline suddenly comes back and blows up in a very controversial way in the season's last few episodes.
- Season 6 of Mad Men had a bad case, with nothing really happening for most of the season, but the last few episodes were widely acclaimed.
- The premise of The Mentalist is that a man who has mastered the Sherlock Scan joins the police to hunt Red John, the serial killer who murdered his wife. Jane finally caught Red John... in the sixth season. It wasn't as big of a deal in the first three seasons because even though the arc was ongoing, it wasn't a huge focus of the series, with most episodes centering around an unrelated Mystery of the Week, and the Red John arcs that did exist usually running as a subplot underneath each individual episode plot; only a few episodes per season actually centered on the Red John arc, and enough twists were thrown to keep viewers interested — most fans agree that if the show had just rolled with Jane killing Red John in the Season 3 finale, it would have completely avoided this trope. Instead, they had the Season 4 premiere reveal that the man he killed was actually a Red John disciple rather than Red John himself, and then began to introduce even more convoluted twists and turns while also making the arc more and more prominent in the series, culminating in a half-season stretch that revolved solely around this arc. What's more, in the rush to wrap up the Red John arc, the writers ended up shoving in a number of plot threads in quick succession but then didn't actually do much of anything with them — some of which could have been an interesting arc in their own right had the writers actually explored them properly (for example, a vast conspiracy involving corrupt members of law enforcement covering up heinous crimes) — and also failed to follow up on a few loose ends from earlier in the arc, so the whole thing ended up feeling rushed and disjointed, and the ultimate conclusion was almost doomed to be unsatisfying simply because the buildup was so extreme it was almost impossible to live up to, (In recent years, however, there have been fans who argue that while the arc didn't exactly resolve everything, it at least gave viewers closure on the arc, which is better than a lot of arcs of this type have done.)
- The 6th Season of My Kitchen Rules gives us 4 Instant Restaurants rounds, as opposed to the usual two. Even though the Instant Restaurant rounds were generally regarded as the best part of the competition (due to the fact that this is one of the show's original elements that is not borrowed from MasterChef), many viewers find that having to watch 24 of them gets rather tiring — especially since the 4th round, the Redemption Round, have previous contestants recreate their original instant restaurant, which significantly reduces the "wow" factor of these restaurants.
- Once Upon a Time:
- Fans first started to complain around the second half of season 2, particularly after Cora's death. The show becomes very wearying to watch, especially given how anticlimactically Greg and Tamara were dealt with at the beginning of the third season.
- It got worse with the Neverland arc at the beginning of season 3. While most like Peter Pan as a villain, some people tired of it quickly since it was essentially the same scenery (not to mention the eternal nighttime) every single episode. And, because the arc is more of a Character Study than plot-based, the action moves at a very slow pace through 9 whole episodes when it really could have taken half that long with less character-based detours. In any case, the cast finally returns to Storybrooke in the 10th episode of the season, so it's not as bad an example as it could have been - but that didn't stop it from becoming the go-to punchline for a large portion of the fandom.
- The Frozen-based arc in Season 4 has also gotten these complaints, particularly once Executive Meddling added an additional episode onto it and greatly slowing the story's pace as a result. It was still considered enjoyable overall, but debatably outstayed its welcome some - as a corollary of this, the strong and improved ratings of the season premiere had dipped to one of their lowest points ever for the mid-season finale (starting, incidentally, with the earlier two-parter).
- The Queens of Darkness arc which immediately followed got these complaints too. An entire episode dedicated to what Robin has been up to in New York slowed it down considerably and bringing Zelena back just made it worse. Then there's the fates of the Queens - Ursula is redeemed four episodes in, before the arc has even got going, Cruella gets killed off and Maleficent is anti-climactically reunited with her daughter.
- The Dark Swan/Camelot arc looked to finally break the trend of overly long arcs - in fact, it drew the opposite criticism of being far too rushed. It's really too bad that the Underworld arc which immediately succeeded it got so much padding that it was compared unfavorably to the infamous Neverland arc.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: The Lights of Orion saga. The reason for it is Troubled Production. (Incidentally, the arc is actually four episodes shorter than its corresponding arc on Seijuu Sentai Gingaman - eight episodes compared to twelve.)
- Sherlock ended its third season with a massive cliffhanger that had Sherlock murder a man, get arrested, only to be saved when it is revealed Moriarty is still alive, which aired in New Year 2014. A year's hiatus led to the next episode airing in New Year 2016, which was a Mythology Gag episode and self-confessed excuse to dress the leads up as Victorians, and its bearing on the Moriarty plot was existent but minor. 2016 was a rough-news year with a lot of prestige television to bingewatch, so by the time the arc's continuation aired in New Year 2017, lots of viewers had forgotten where the plot was up to.
- Sons of Anarchy Season 2 has the plot of the first couple of episodes resolved in the last three of the season, thus first time viewers will wonder if it ever gets resolved at all.
- The Sopranos often get these complaint about Vito's Gayngst, Tony's coma, and Carmela and Furio's will they or won't they dance.
- Season two of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles spent A LOT of time with three basic plot points: John has a girlfriend that Sarah disapproves of, John's Uncle has a secret girlfriend, and Sarah has cancer and debilitating insomnia. Pretty much the entire season was spent with the characters just meandering and brooding over those three plot points, with actual development of those plots moving excruciatingly slowly. The time in Season 2 that wasn't spent angsting over these internal conflicts was spent showing the origins of an AI that was clearly intended to be Skynet- to the point that Skynet's origins pretty much became the entire plot. Due to a torrent of complaints about these very things from viewers, the writers became aware of this and sped things quite a bit in the last six or so episodes, moving the story forward and improving the quality a lot. Unfortunately, these changes were too little, too late and the show was cancelled on a cliffhanger. And the finale of Season 2 revealed that the AI the entire season had focused on was not actually Skynet- it was a completely unrelated AI the entire time. This twist effectively made the entirety of Season 2 completely pointless.
- Who killed Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks which lasted one and a half seasons. Or at least according to the network at the time but this actually caused a drop in quality as the series struggled to come up with another focus for the show.
- Some thought Jade and Tori's rather extreme rivalry in Victorious had run its course by the end of season 3 (especially after the big events and supposed Character Development of "Tori Goes Platinum"), but it for the most part continued throughout the rest of the series. Which led to discussions of if it's because Jade's antagonistic behavior is the only way she can show affection to those close to her (and some small, subtle exchanges between her and Tori did indeed hint at that), or if the show had run out of fresh ideas and was using it like a crutch- and exaggerating Jade as an unredeemable jerk.
- The Walking Dead:
- A combination of Executive Meddling (forcing series creator Frank Darabont's departure from the show) and a severe load of Padding meant that the second season was criticized for this by reviewers and fans. After the six-episode first season, the following season was twice as long and filled with repetitive conversations that were repeated Once per Episode (Rick and Hershel talking about the former's group making a permanent home on the farm; Shane getting into an argument with at least one character about his extreme methods). The problem was that the entire season was one long Safe Zone Hope Spot, but the season was 13 episodes long. This meant that Season 2 had, at best, slightly more plot progression than Season 1 despite being twice as long, as many of the episodes featured little besides the characters standing around on the farm and talking. This is further explained in this Cracked article.
- The introduction of Negan and the Saviors lasts the entire second half of Season 6 and consists of little more than Rick's group running roughshod over them. This was all a buildup to Negan abducting the group and killing off a major character as revenge, only for the show to cut to black at the actual death scene without showing who the victim was. Meaning the payoff to all of the cliffhangers throughout Season 6 was an even bigger cliffhanger leading into Season 7.
- Season 8 was also criticized for stretching out the war with the Saviors (itself already criticized for making the previous season one thirteen-hour example of Alexandria and Hilltop being treated as The Chew Toy by The Saviors) to unbearable lengths, with multiple battle scenes only resulting in the deaths of barely-seen Red Shirt characters, main characters rehashing arcs they had seemingly moved past, episodes or even seasons earlier (Rick deciding whether or not to trust Jadis after she betrayed him at the end of Season 7; Morgan's "kill or be saved" mentality rearing its head again; Gabriel's guilt over being a survivor; Negan having a dramatic "taking charge again" arc twice in the same season) and blatant attempts at stretching out a plotline over whether a character is The Mole or not. The season was even called out by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes for having "barely-there plot progression".
- A combination of Executive Meddling (forcing series creator Frank Darabont's departure from the show) and a severe load of Padding meant that the second season was criticized for this by reviewers and fans. After the six-episode first season, the following season was twice as long and filled with repetitive conversations that were repeated Once per Episode (Rick and Hershel talking about the former's group making a permanent home on the farm; Shane getting into an argument with at least one character about his extreme methods). The problem was that the entire season was one long Safe Zone Hope Spot, but the season was 13 episodes long. This meant that Season 2 had, at best, slightly more plot progression than Season 1 despite being twice as long, as many of the episodes featured little besides the characters standing around on the farm and talking. This is further explained in this Cracked
- The Wheel of Time (2021): The romantic drama between Rand and Egwene lasts the entire first season and gets tedious, being needlessly drawn out and providing little character development. Although the central conflict of Egwene's Career Versus Man dilemma isn't bad in theory, the issue is that it's made clear Rand respectfully accepts Egwene's decision to choose her ambition to be a Wisdom / Aes Sedai over him in the first episode. Despite this, they continue to argue about it throughout the season until the final episode, where Rand refuses the Dark One's offer to enable him to be with Egwene because it's not what Egwene wants... even though Rand already came to this conclusion. Perrin also gets dragged into it when it's suggested he also has feelings for Egwene. It doesn't help that Rand and Egwene were never even a couple in the books, so this plotline goes nowhere.
- The X-Files has got to be the worst offender. Mulder's sister, The Cigarette Smoking Man's relationship to Mulder, etc. It could be argued that important arc progress occurred throughout every season. Except maybe seven. Though many frequently argue that the myth arc is properly tied up in mid season six two parter "Two Fathers/One Son" where in the conspiracy is more or less unraveled and a great many of the villains killed off. As such Arc Fatigue may set in at full force whenever the Myth Arc more or less begins anew.
Myth Stall
Examples
- Monk has been looking for the man who killed Trudy since the series began. Every season he has only an inkling of a clue to lead him in any real direction. In this respect, much of the series can be seen as filler - entertaining filler, but filler nonetheless. The show's final season was specifically advertised with the fact that it will finally wrap up Monk's hunt for the killer, delivering on that promise in the final episode. Her murder was only solved when Monk discovered he had, in fact, possessed the clue he needed the entire time (actually, a video message she recorded just before she was killed, spelling out who she thought was coming after her and why, left in the form of her Christmas present to him he did not want to open).
- In How I Met Your Mother the driving question of the show has had virtually no progress. They leave hints like the yellow umbrella and meeting her roommate, seeing her ankle, and knowing they meet at a wedding where Ted is the best man. Often lampshaded on the show, usually either by the future children ("I feel like you've been talking for a year!") or by Ted ("When I have kids, I'm gonna tell them the WHOLE story of how I met their mother!"). It has become somewhat of a meme with the line "Tell me who the mother is already!"
- The show was on the verge of cancellation for the first 4 seasons and as such they actually seemed to be making progress with interconnecting the stories in such a way that it makes sense why Ted would start at a certain point assuming that Stella was intended to be the end game (meeting Robin, dating Robin, breaking up with Robin, got an accidental tattoo in the aftermath, met Stella looking to get the tattoo removed). The sixth season opened with a Flash Forward to a wedding day that was conclusively stated to be the day Ted meets the mother, but other than token gestures at the beginning and end of each season (for three years) such a tease has only drawn out the angst even worse.
- Lampshaded in the joke teaser for the final season. It features David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca reprising their roles (every episode since season 2 has been using stock footage) as Ted's kids going on a tirade on how they've wasted 8 years listening to the story and just want him to wrap it up.
- The finale of the eighth season has finally revealed who the mother is, and the ninth and final season is about how she and Ted truly, finally, properly, freaking meet. And for all that waiting, surprise! She's been Dead All Along. A LOT of obscenities could be heard in the air of America being hurled out by the most irate viewers the night the show had its series finale and that particular final reveal.
- Babylon 5 has its principal myth stall completely in the middle of season four, when the Vorlon/Shadow war comes to an end, due to issues with the network they were on (PTEN) going under, and only being saved by TNT at the last minute after steps had been taken to wrap everything up before the expected end of the series.
- Smallville to the nth degree. They ran out of material from before Clark was Superman, so he became a member of the Justice League, worked with costumed superheroes, and had fought most of Superman's Rogues Gallery (including friggin' Doomsday) long before the end of the show. Clark started working with Lois Lane at the Daily Planet in Season 8, and was well known as a superhero in Metropolis (under the name of "The Blur"). But no, he still couldn't fly or be Superman until the very last scene of the very last episode of Season 10. Because that was a rule the head writers had imposed on the show A DECADE earlier. This was quite eloquently summed up by Sheldon in an episode of The Big Bang Theory: "It took them ten years to show us someone that we already know can fly, fly!"
- In a similar vein as Smallville, Merlin works on the same "before he was famous" idea, and has Merlin's magical abilities remain a secret from all of the cast. Three seasons in, and the writers' determination to stall and stall and stall this reveal has resulted in Merlin's co-stars looking like complete idiots. Although Arthur finally becoming King and marrying Gwen in Series 4 ended some of the myth stall on their part, the fans are desperately hoping that the words "five-year-plan" mean "we're not going to know if we've got another season until we finish writing this one so we're going to do the reveal."
- Psych: It took Jules nearly seven years to figure out that Shawn was faking his psychic ability. Even worse, this was written into the ending of the lighthearted episode "Deez Nups" (which isn't even primarily about either character) as an Ass Pull.
