Your eyes are locked on the screen, moving left and right, up and down with the movement of the characters. On the edge of your seat, suspense nearly kills you as you try to figure out what will happen next. Just as the show climaxes, a notification pops up. “Are you still watching?” Netflix says. After this has killed the mood, you carry on to the next season, usually season four. And when the big reveal finally comes, there is not much of a big reveal. Either the obvious has occurred, or the show has brought in a new character utterly unrelated to its original plot, proving that TV shows often start strong but lose their original appeal due to unnecessary changes and weak endings.

I consider myself a television enthusiast, and after watching millions of series of all genres, I am confident that I am qualified to discuss the rise and fall of shows.

After just a few minutes of a new show, I can tell if I hate or love it, and when I do love it, I binge. When shows start good, they start really good, and I will watch for hours on end. But, after quickly binging seasons one, two, and (depending on the length of the show) three, I feel like a task to continue watching. I often forget the real reason I was watching the show in the first place, as the original plot diminishes and gets skewed to some obscure story.

While I understand that plot lines need to progress, shows do not need to change completely. Instead, they should slowly evolve, introducing new characters in stages to ensure the plot has time to develop.

Grey’s Anatomy, a show 21 seasons long, with more to come, successfully slowly evolved, showing that plots can change; it just has to happen over time. But the show has become entirely different than it originally was, so at this point, it should have either ended or turned into a spin-off series. Slow evolution only works for so long before it is an entirely new show.

Additionally, something that is sure to ruin a show is giving it a completely random and bizarre ending. One of my favorite shows of all time is Pretty Little Liars, but the ending was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. For seasons, the viewer follows the teenage girls’ journey to figure out who “A,” the mystery person sending them taunting messages, is. The viewers wait and wait for the big reveal, just for it to be a random character, newly introduced. I won’t give any more spoilers about the show, but it gets more confusing and off-track as it progresses.

But maybe part of the reason current shows only have a few episodes per season is so the plot does not stray too far off. When broadcast networks were still popular, shows almost always had around 20 episodes per season. A few years later, television drastically dropped to 13 episodes per season, and now shows only have eight or ten episodes. I always yearn for more when I finish a show with only ten episodes per season, but it may be for the better.

All good things need to come to an end eventually, but I wish there were a way to make that sweet spot of shows last longer. Watching television is supposed to offer an escape from reality, but when shows lose their spark, it makes the show feel more real than ever. The suspense is gone, and clicking “no” when Netflix asks if you are still watching feels more tempting than ever. Because if you are like me, once you start a show, you need to conquer it to prove that you can finish something.