Update: finally finished that 10-season show I kept quitting

I started watching The Blacklist back in January but kept dropping it around season 4. Last weekend I got sick and just pushed through the boring parts. Turns out the middle seasons are rough but season 8 and 9 actually pick up a lot. Has anyone else struggled to get past a certain season of a long show?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_richard16d agoTop Commenter

Oh man, I gotta push back on that a little. The Blacklist is one of those shows where I actually liked the middle seasons (you know, the ones everyone complains about) because they were doing so much world building. Season 4 is where they really start digging into the whole mythology angle, and yeah it's slow, but I think that payoff later on only works because of all that groundwork. Season 8 and 9 are great, don't get me wrong, but I feel like you kind of need to earn that momentum by sitting through the slower parts. Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually prefer when a long show takes its time instead of rushing to the good stuff every episode.

gavin_mason3116d ago

Read an interview with the creator once where he basically said season 4 was their "emotional core" for the whole Reddington mystery. Ngl, that changed how I watched those slower episodes. It made me pay way more attention to the little details between Red and Liz, like those quiet scenes where they're just talking in the car or at a diner. Tbh, I think the showrunners knew exactly what they were doing, even if it felt weird at the time. Slow burn can be a slog, but it's the only way to make the big twists hit as hard as they do.