As long as there is television, there will be arguments about how long they should be aired. Often, the best shows are drug out, wrung dry of all enjoyment you once harbored for it, because they make too much money to end when the story's told. Being in the middle of a new Golden Age of Television, being a more prevalent brand than ever before, I've been thinking about the different shows I've watched and the ups and downs of their run.

The show that showed me modern television was for real, was Game of Thrones. I watched the first three seasons with my brother in anticipation of the fourth season. With every episode, it became harder for me to believe that I'd slept on this show. I tried to get everyone who would listen to give it a chance. When season four finally did debut, I watched every episode, every Sunday, never bothering with leaks or theories. I didn't know then that season four would be the last season that I loved.

That isn't to say there isn't enjoyment in seasons 5, 6, and 7. They all have their moments. Like the Field of Fire battle in season 7, or the Battle of the Bastards in season 6, or season 5's "Hardhome" episode. But what's the common trend between the three highlights of the latest three seasons?

They're expensive scenes. But they lack what made the show gripping in the first place.

What made the series so enticing was it shed expectations the viewers had about good and evil, war, and leadership. It made us question what "fantasy" was; whether it was still Tolkien-esque or if it could change into something new, something just as groundbreaking as Lord of The Rings was back in the day. Maybe it can one day. As it stands, I don't think it will, but it's unfair to compare the two anyway, considering Tolkien invented modern fantasy and Game of Thrones is an answer to Tolkien fantasy, not necessarily a complete overhaul of the genre. It played with our hearts. Who do we trust? Who do we root for? Everyone seems scummy, even the ones who are closest to being "heroes." It showed a fantasy landscape that was complicated. It was irresistibly human. That ended in season 4, as far as I can tell. Now it's about scale and battles. The amorphous political struggle, fraught with Shakespearean levels of pointless bloodshed, have been traded for the conventions it sought to subvert. Jon Snow is no longer a petulant bastard of Winterfell, serving with the worst criminals in Westeros who chose the black (Night's Watchmen) instead of being executed for their crimes; he's our Luke Skywalker. No longer do we have the irony that probably the noblest job in Westeros, the Night's Watch, defending the wretched place from ice zombies, ditching all claims and rights to a family, is understaffed and the men they DO have are thieves, rapists, murderers, etc. At least we still have the Lannisters, who still manage to bring that Rorschach of good and evil, although even their character arcs have become shallow thanks to the blistering pace the series has decided to adopt.

The case of mistaken identity faced by Game of Thrones isn't a new opinion or idea, and I'm not going to pretend I have some hot-take on it that no one's said before, because odds are someone has. I will admit, the show has retained a few things and even improved on some. It still has great music, the special effects have only improved with every season, and characters are meeting up that we never imagined would meet. Seriously, who would have thought Sandor "The Hound" Clegane marching North with Jon and the Brotherhood Without Banners would be one of the best character matchups in the series? Kinda like how Arya and Sandor in season 4 was a pleasant surprise. I think it's time to admit Rory McCann is one of the few actors left on the show who can really carry it. He elevates the characters around him, which is the best the audience can ask of the side characters that showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss have shoved into the limelight. I suppose it was inevitable, considering their insistence on killing off characters they don't know what to do with and refusing to introduce new ones found in the books so late in the series. And I don't blame them for it because while I love the books, George R.R Martin desperately needed an editor, especially for the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons. But I'm getting off track.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones has been slated for release in 2019, according to Sophie Turner anyway, and that's a relief because I need time to miss the show. It's the same problem I see with cash-cow franchises like Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Lord of The Rings: they don't know when to end. Rather, the higher-ups won't allow them to end, so long as cash is still being wrung from its lifeless husk. I'll bet George Lucas had a very clear vision about how long Star Wars should have been. But we'll never see that now, as Star Wars is the most lucrative franchise in the world (although the drop off on The Last Jedi at the box office suggests they may need to adapt their strategy sooner then they thought), and owned by the Empire, I mean Disney. It will never see retirement. And that, I think, speaks to a deeper problem within our society. At least, our culture.

See, we're only getting one Star Wars movie per year because Disney knows we'll go see it. I'm sitting here talking about the problems of rehashing ideas for the sake of extending the life of a story, yet I will openly admit I saw The Force Awakens three times in theaters, Rogue One once, and The Last Jedi once. I'm as much a part of the problem as anyone else, but I don't think we'll continue to devour low-calorie media. There will come a time when the pendulum will swing the other way, and we will demand self-contained and cerebral stories. The book isn't dead, it's just on vacation, letting us kid ourselves that we can stand to throw away stories when we have the potential for so much more.

I think the problem lies in our inability to let things end. Game of Thrones should have probably been a trilogy as intended when George R.R Martin started writing and just been about the War of the Five Kings. You can mark exactly where the series lost its edge, and it was exactly when the War of the Five Kings was "resolved" (aka, they ran out of people to kill).

We deal with things ending in our lives all the time. Friendships, relationships, jobs, and lives; they all end at some point. Why shouldn't we expect some consistency in what we make, the stories we write about, imaginary people who only go through what we let them go through? I get the sentiment. But it's restricting what we can do with our stories. Not all endings are good, but all good stories end. To deny it is to deny an intrinsic part of humanity into our stories.

One of the best shows I've watched in a long time was HBO's The Night Of, and I don't know a single person who watched it. It's an eight-episode crime drama that is gripping, and I think that has a lot to do with it's "get in and get out" approach to TV storytelling. I'd like to do an article focused solely on that show because I think it has one problem that prevented it from being perfect. It was concise, it had character growth, some of the best performances I've seen, in John Turturro, Riz Ahmed, and Michael K. Williams. Maybe I love it because of my love for James Gandolfini. It was the show he was working on when he died in 2013. His part was taken over by John Turturro. Maybe it's my fabulism of New York, a place I can only look at in wonder. People actually live there! With all those dizzying skyscrapers! At the same time! It's Christmas.

Point is, what separates shows like The Night Of from everything else, is that a sequel wasn't planned. As far as I know, there won't be a season two, and I hope there isn't. The story is complete. Another series that tried to combine the longevity of a show like Thrones and the artistic integrity of The Night Of, was True Detective. Instead of telling one story across multiple seasons, they told one complete story per season. Season one of True Detective is also some of the best television ever put on screen. Season two, well... It didn't work out as well, but I respect the effort. There was talk awhile back about revisiting Rust and Marty in True Detective season three, which filled me with horror. The horror associated with repeating oneself, with spinning your wheels. Because that's all they would be doing by looking back instead of ahead.

It's why films like Blade Runner 2049 terrified me at first look. "They're going back to a cult classic and remaking it?! Oh, it's a sequel? But why? I thought the original ended just fine. I'm still thinking about Rutger Hauer's haunting ending monologue. Why do we need another?" I said. Now I look like an idiot because 2049 is easily one of the best movies I've ever seen and certainly my favorite of the year. But how did it manage that? That's an article for another day. Suffice it to say, they respected what came before while saying something new.

I guess that's the answer if I had to give one to this problem. Don't be afraid to make limited series'. Put your foot down, tell your story and walk out of the room. The artist doesn't owe a thing to the audience, just as the audience doesn't owe a thing to the artist. It's market capitalism in its rudest form. But in the case of Star Wars and Game of Thrones, the artist keeps expecting more and the audience keeps giving more.

There, that's it. If I kept going, I'd make myself out to be a hypocrite. Foot's down.