What multi season TV series had a good arc?

[andrewducker]

I'm primarily looking for series that had an arc plot which started at the beginning, crossed between seasons, and came to an ending which took in the whole run of the show and brought it to a coherent close, intended since the beginning, which made narrative sense and was emotionally satisfying.

I'm not asking for perfection here. Happy to include something like Babylon 5 (had an intended arc plot from the beginning, was derailed by the studio, and half of season 5 was a mess, but still worked overall, and had the ending it started out towards).

I'm just curious what other examples there are. Far more TV seems to consist of lots of exciting set-up, but with the writers later admitting they didn't actually know where they were going. I still enjoyed Battlestar Galactica, but it definitely suffered from this. Lost was the epitome of this, and nobody at all seems to have enjoyed its ending.

A better model for most TV seems to be a season arc. Where you've dealt with your Big Bad at the end of the season, but left things open for future ones. Buffy excelled at that.

In any case, the only things I can think of recently that fit this mould are the She-Ra reboot and Steven Universe. And going back fifteen years there's Avatar: The Last Airbender. All of which were animated kid's shows.

I hear Breaking Bad did pay off at the end, with what the creators had been aiming for since the beginning. What else did?

Comments

[nickbarlow]

You can make an argument that Breaking Bad isn't fitting with the original intent as the initial plan was for one of the core characters to die in the first season, but stayed alive because it was cut short because of the writers' strike. But that would be a quibble rather than a genuine objection, and I think any TV story of more than one season is going to end up with some course correction on the way.

It lost focus during the final season, but I think Orphan Black wrapped itself up well in the end. I'm not sure Michael Schur knew where The Good Place was going from the start, but from the start of S2 it's clearly ending towards an ending like that.

[theandrewhickey]

I'm absolutely certain Schur had a fairly clear idea that the Good Place was going to end the way it did, at least in broad outlines, from the very first episode.

[problemsdog]

Came here to say Orphan Black. I thought it tied together beautifully (and is just superb throughout).

[soon_lee]

That's a good example!