Why are series (usually) so bad?

I'm sure we've all had this before: you start an exciting looking book, tear through it at a breakneck speed and finish it in a state of awe. You decide the story line's perfect, the characters are deeply relatable and anything the else the author's written will be the same ambrosia for the heart. To your delight, there's two more in the series! You lunge in for the kill, waving away the price and devour the next in the series. You soon realise that it's boring, poorly written and nothing actually happens at all during the book.

Okay, okay, it's obvious: I have an axe to grind. Good series are few and hard to come by. Sure, you can remember the memorable ones (Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Ranger's Apprentice etc.) but we've all laboured through trilogies so rubbish, we forget them soon after. Series seem to be either stunning or average, with no middle ground. This leads to the question: why do book series have such potential to fail?

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I've decided that this is due to a natural desire to extend a fresh book idea into long series, either as a money spinner or just to prolong the magic. The golden number is three, creating a predictable pattern: the first book's mind blowing, but the second is just a build up to the third. The poor readers plowing through the second installment are thoroughly fed up by the time they reach the third.

This applies to action: if an author has a series to look after, s/he can't afford to dispense with any characters. This means that us readers are treated to one after another of near-death experiences, all of which the main characters manged to escape.  Another common problem is the constant need to create an even better finale at the end of each book, soon blowing up into an unrealistic festival of almost-deaths and action.

Okay, I've complained enough. What my basic point is that I think that authors should contain their idea into one book - complete with a dramatic finale, a few deaths along the way and an emotional (but fresh) finish. Wouldn't it be better to have one memorable, mind-blowing book than an average series with a prequel tacked on at the end? I can't see my humble blog having any effect, so I better get writing then! ;-)