Well, that was a fun break from thinking about stories.
Part of it involved watching the sitcom New Girl, a modern coming of age (i.e. early 30s) comedy about a group of flatmates in LA. My wife put it on hesitantly and was delighted when I loved it. And I did. But come Season Six, I was routinely leaving the room and shouting at the TV. Why?
Something that I think is important in long stories is being able to sell the audience on every arc. It is natural for characters go through changes, for the focus of the story to shift, and if it doesn't it's probably not going to be a very long story, but every arc has to work. If it doesn't, people aren't going to enjoy the whole story. How I experienced New Girl is a good example of how this can go wrong.
The first season of New Girl was very much an exploratory one, judging from what the writers said. After that, they were running arcs about how the characters were growing up and where they were going. The main arc was Jess (quirky dork and the eponymous new girl in the flat) and Nick (chaotic slacker) and their growing romantic tension. The second arc was Schmidt (Nick's best friend and flatmate and metro douchebro) and his sexual attraction to Cece (Jess' best friend and successful model). Then there was Winston, general comic relief to both.
To me the Schmidt arc was the best because Schmidt had the best internal character tension. One part of Schmidt was a gigantic turd who valued visible success above everything else and was a shallow douchebag as a result. The other part was a people pleaser, a guy with a heart of gold. Both parts came out in his courtship of Cece. But Jess and Nick was solid value too.
Then, as you'd expect, those arcs came to ends. Schmidt and Cece got together, broke up, then got back together and got married. Jess and Nick got together, broke up... but couldn't get back together as quickly because you can't use the same one for both, can you? And while it was clear they'd eventually get back together again as well, that romantic tension couldn't be the main ingredient.
So what was there? No Schmidt becoming a better man. Winston remained a mostly secondary character. The show became mainly about Jess getting involved in various things but with less dramatic motivation. So essentially, episode after episode became Jess seeing a point of dramatic tension, then sticking her nose in for no good reason. It made her look narcissistic and selfish. She was unbearable. The writers of New Girl brought one set of arcs to an end and didn't replace them well.
What do I think they should have done?
Option one is wrap up all the arcs at the same time and call it a day. It's neat (probably too neat in a show partly about the chaos of being young).
Option two is to give Jess a new arc and purpose that gives her a purpose other than "I can fix anything if I want to even if it's clearly not about me".
Option three is to move in a strong secondary like Schmidt was. I think they tried to do this with Winston but he never had an internal conflict. He got attention, but he was a guy who knew what he wanted and could get it (except for the romantic partner of his choice, which was fair overplayed by that point in the series).
Option four is a lack of purpose for Jess, but someone forcing her into doing things (instead of forcing her to be sane).
Option four would have made most sense to me thematically but might have been hard to sell dramatically. Option three would be my preferred choice, although maybe it might have not been enough. In any case, they didn't build that conflict in Winston or Nick prior to time. Arguably this is the greatest weakness in a discovery method for a long project. The initial arcs are great, but once resolved, they haven't built the next step. Yes, I am looking at GRRM here, and maybe Robert Jordan too.
I don't have a solution here, but it is something worth thinking about for those doing on longer projects.
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