Sequels are weird, right? It’s weird that the world has a “Full House” sequel show, or there’s just another “Walking Dead” or about 73 Marvel Cinematic Universe things.  All of these sequels and spinoffs and reboots taste sour to me.  Sure, they’re just money grabs most of the time, but that’s not necessarily a problem — we saw the original versions of these shows because they were also money grabs.

The weird feeling comes from something deeper. Every time a new sequel or spinoff gets the green light, it means we are one step closer to TV becoming a raw, unapologetic recycling machine.

If sequel culture is like anything else, we are going to get tired of it eventually.  I think we’re already on our way there, or at least looking down from the peak of sequels’ successes.  The market is flooded with sequel shows, and there are even more to come.  Eventually, the bubble will burst.

We as a collective audience will eventually realize that good stories are meant to have an ending. That there’s no reason for a company like Yahoo! to resurrect “Community” when it’s devoid of the two characters who made the show funny and two and a half seasons past the end of its prime.  Stories end. It’s much better that way. Get over it.

So what will happen when there’s no audience for “CSI: Syracuse?” Hopefully some good new shows.  However, until that happens, we are left begging for our old favorites to return.

Throw all of this together and what do you get? “Arrested Development” season 5. Say what you will about the puzzling fourth season, but there’s no doubt that the fifth season will happen with plenty of people welcoming the promises of showrunner Mitch Hurwitz, producer Brian Grazer and Gob Bluth himself played by Will Arnett, that the fifth season will happen.

The incredibly overblown irony of the show is its own arrested development since its early days on Fox. It transitioned between networks while still on its original run, ended its third season with the hope of return, never lost hope for that return for almost a decade, then returned with a fourth season on Netflix as the king of sequels in 2013.

And once again, we find ourselves in the awkward phase between seasons. So I have to ask myself, is a fifth season worth it?  The fourth season underwhelmed, lost cohesiveness and gained a bajillion plot lines. But honestly, I still laughed and enjoyed it.

And that’s the problem.  The people who make the show are funny and they know how to write a show, so the show will be funny.  But at what point will adding more to the story ruin the show?  ”Arrested Development” might not be a perfect example, as it makes fun of itself so much and the end goal of the show was never to find a perfect ending.

It’s probably clear to you by know that I don’t know what I want.  I love TV shows ,and I like when they have new episodes, but damn, I’m tired of hearing about a new spinoff or revival every other week.

Oh well.  At some point pop culture and TV will implode from repeating itself and something else will happen.  Until then, we’ll keep getting seasons of “Arrested Development” in different increments of time.  Probably.

Kyle Stevens is a sophomore advertising major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email him at ksteve03@syr.edu or reach him on Twitter at @kstevs_.

Published on March 6, 2016 at 10:02 pm