TV Tuesday: Seasons and An Announcement

[yourlibrarian]

Do you prefer short seasons for your shows, long seasons, or no seasons at all, like soap operas that go on without a clear break? What do you consider the minimum number of episodes to make up an effective season of a TV show?

Also, an announcement! Starting January 12 the mods would like to kick off a weeklong rec fest. Although people do rec shows on other days, we thought a tagged recs event would help newcomers find shows they might enjoy more easily.

So for 7 days of genres we'll have Sunday: Family viewing/Children's Shows, Monday: Comedies, Tuesday: Dramas, Wednesday: Sci Fi/Fantasy, Thursday: Mysteries or Horror, Friday: Romances, and Saturday: Miscellaneous (any shows you don't think fit the other categories!)

We hope you'll put together some recs to share over the next month -- they can be shows you've discussed before in other tv_talk posts, new things you've just tried out, or shows others have recced before!

Comments

[rogueslayer452]

Considering the current state of television these days, I much prefer longer seasons. While it does depend on the show, the 22-24 episode per season was honestly perfect, and something I think most took for granted until we didn't have that as the standard anymore. Longer seasons guarantees just more material in general, giving more substance to the story, the characters, allowing the audience to spend time with the way things are unfolding rather than it being a race to binge-watch.

As for "no seasons at all" approach, TTRPG actual play shows like Critical Role definitely apply to this as their campaigns are ongoing and can last for years (each campaign has over 100 episodes, with each episode being around 4 hours long). It only works for this kind of story platform though, as I probably wouldn't have had the energy to continue on with watching such a show otherwise.

In addition to that, Asian dramas often don't have more than one season and their episode order can vary depending. Cdramas now have a max limit of 40 episodes, though previously it had been up to 60 or 70 episodes.

[yourlibrarian]

Your comment about the "race to binge-watch" struck a chord with me. I wouldn't say that the change in season length really affected the pressure to keep up, because I think it was there before to make sure a favorite show was watched live and the conversations would begin even as it was airing. I remember having to wait for video tapes for certain shows we couldn't get locally and I never joined those fandoms because I was so out of step with viewing.

But I do feel that the quantity of content has not just increased because of the variety of outlets but because the format itself has shortened. That means more different stories can be started (cancellations happen just as often) and there's a wider variety of talent available because the commitment to a single project isn't as demanding. But the glut makes shows seem ever more disposable. It's take one in and on to the next.

And to digress a bit, a single episode is also different now. When web series began they might be 6 10 minute episodes. Streaming shows means that viewing time can vary from episode to episode and, of course, the whole season is shorter. I notice, for example, that Brit shows shown in the U.S. via PBS get chopped in half to create "hour" long shows (even though they're about 40 minutes) when they were originally about 2 hours in their original broadcasts. I do personally feel that an episode should last as long as the story requires so that's a real plus of streaming. I wouldn't want to go back to a strict format where valuable scenes get cut out or things are drawn out to fill air time. It also means comedies might run for an hour or drama for 30 minutes (or so). But overall there's a lot less that's "standard" any more.