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I feel like short seasons leads to insufficient time to know the characters, and causes writers to pack in so much plot and melodrama that it's exhausting to watch. Every second is packed too tightly , always trying to be EPIC. Miss 3 seconds in the episode? Sorry, that plot point was critical and either you go back and find it, or give up on the show. And heavy serialization also requires more of this obsessive watching and a requirement to not forget minor details between seasons. The higher production values result in 2-3 years between seasons, deepening all of the problems above: it MUST be considered epic, it MUST be tightly serialized to every minor detail, and when people don't live to watch the TV, well, they might as well cancel it.
Writers also seem like movie writers have come to TV - think up a premise, write a story arc, and then have no idea where it goes after that. The drop off after S1 is usually pretty stark, and then S2 is when it gets cancelled.
TV having 20+ episodes (almost half of the year with weekly releases) means the characters were around long enough that they can actually build meaningful on-screen relationships. Every episode didn't have to be a high stakes drama, plot, or writing. Lower budgets per episode means that writing quality, dialog, and character building takes precedence over flash, action, location, and epic camera shots.
Give me more Star Trek Deep Space 9 and less Marvel-like Star Trek Discovery.
It also deepens genre-ization. With only 10 episodes, a comedy is a COMEDY. A drama is a DRAMA. We don't have time to be experimental or weave something more complex.
I disagree, though I mainly watch anime so that's probably skewing things a bit.
With the transition to shorter seasons (12/13 episodes vs 24/25), I'm seeing MORE filler added because the studio tries to fit an arc that only needs 10 episodes to fill out 12. With a longer season, there's more room to play with pacing of various story arcs
Different strokes for different folks. While I prefer the shorter seasons and the streamlining that this leads to, I can appreciate your perspective on this. The general feel of the shorter vs longer seasons varies significantly.
I usually find longer seasons to feel like a slog, however I will note that Deep Space 9 is a notable exception and one of my favorite shows. They really knew how to make use of the time that they had.
Respectfully, THIS is the conversation I want to respond to - instead of what you actually said to me earlier. I have to bang on about it, the medium is the message and streaming is not the same medium as network television. You're not meant to watch it all in one go, of course it feels like a slog if you consume it that way.
The TV binge is a newer phenomenon (that only exists because of DVR and now streaming) and the point I'm really trying to make here is that this is a medium that structurally doesn't treat you the same way.
Netflix doesn't need you to like all their shows, they want you to obsess over a few of their shows, ideally one at a time, and they're going to cancel anything that doesn't get them the metrics they're looking for. The carrots and sticks all line up to have an effect on the creative side and on the viewer that I'm not at ease with.
That's a long rant you didn't ask for, sorry. It's just that I don't see these changes as healthy even though some new good shows are still getting made. Hollywood is dying and I feel sorry for anyone who dreamed of going into that business.
I am definitely guilty of bingeing shows that I get into. Even the aforementioned DS9, I watched the 180 episodes or so over the span of probably 6 months. It was great. Though building off the previous comment that you made, DS9 is serialized rather than episodic. The show came out before streaming, but I didn't watch it until after streaming because of how unapproachable serialized shows are on standard scheduled TV.
That said, I can still appreciate episodic shows. Comedies (including sitcoms) do really well with this format. And interestingly, I would even put sports into this category. There is continuity across a season via record and standings, but each game itself is largely self-contained. You can miss a game, or even a bunch of games, and just jump back into watching whenever. Regarding baseball's long season of 162 games, I've seen someone refer to it as a friend who is always there for you.
I hadn't thought about sports in that way before. That's interesting. And you're right that serialised shows didn't work so well in broadcast, which is probably partially why I'm so prejudiced against them - they slightly remind me of the daytime soaps I suffered through when I was home sick as a kid. I'll cop to that.
But as an adult, the reason I still go to bat so hard for episodic as a format is because it imposes a creative constraint on the writer that makes it immediately clear whether the script has succeeded in telling a compelling story. And if it's a short episode, say ten minutes like with Adventure Time, and it still manages to tell an emotionally compelling episodic story in that time, that's amazingly impressive.
I liken serialisation to gravity. It sets in eventually no matter how hard you try. But for me, it's more fun to watch the plane actually fly than to watch it taxi around on the runway. Just a series of events. When everyone's clapping for that, I'm the one sitting with my arms crossed muttering "no, fuck this pilot, spill the passengers' drinks! Do a back flip in the sky!"
Another malformed rant. Thank you for being so tolerant.