The worst thing you can do to a show is to not have an ending in mind. What eventually happens is that the show runners run out of things to do, so they just keep repurposing old stories or spend a whole bunch of time spinning wheels. Look at The Walking Dead, that’s the prime example. You could even count The Simpsons if you wanted. Or the vast majority of sitcoms. Of course, there are shows like South Park that go on forever and are still good, but that’s because they constantly riff on current events to keep fresh.
So I’m pretty glad that Vice Principals has an end goal in mind. Danny McBride told Variety all about it.
“The whole series is only 18 episodes and that’s it. We just wanted to make a really long movie. It’s one school year and a complete story,” McBride said at the show’s premiere. “This was an old screenplay that Jody [Hill] and I wrote back in 2006. But we needed it to be longer so we added and reworked it and broke it up into 18 segments.”
“HBO trusted us to make those episodes without anyone watching them, so they really, really trust us,” McBride said.
Both seasons of the show are already in the can, so it’s done and dusted and just waiting for its many, many premieres. It’s nice to know that the show won’t spin its wheels, and that there’s a story they want to tell and that they got to tell it. And sure, it’s going to be sad if the show is great and it ends after 18 episodes and there’s nothing left, but I’d much rather have a complete experience than watch a show shrivel up and die because its creatively exhausted. [Variety]