I can't say I miss clip episodes, as often, as you point out, they were done for reasons that had nothing to do with creativity or advancing the show in any way. However, some shows did manage to use the format fairly effectively.
One of the best, I think, was the M*A*S*H* episode "The Interview". It was presented as a black and white documentary/50s TV news special with the characters were being interviewed by Clete Roberts. In the 2023 special, MASH: The Comedy That Changed Television, if I'm remembering things correctly, the actors answered the questions as their characters, without a script. Then you have Community, which flipped the script on clip episodes by doing clip episodes that contained all new content. Friends did a few clip episodes that didn't feel like fillers.
One of the absolute worse, however, is "Shades of Gray", the last episode of season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was done as a cost-saving measure because a few other episodes that season ran over-budget. The head writer referred to the episode as a "piece of shit". The "plot" was Riker gets infected by a deadly virus during an away mission, and the only way to save his life is to put him in a coma and hook him up to a machine that will artificially stimulate his brain neurons, keeping them active and resisting the virus. This causes Riker to dream of his past adventures aboard the Enterprise. Most of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG were pretty bad, but this one takes the cake.
I can't think of any current/recent shows that have done clip episodes, and given 1) the shorter seasons you mentioned and also 2) streaming, I don't know if they make sense now. We tend to forget the past when there was no streaming, no DVDs, some shows didn't have reruns everywhere. If you were watching season 7 of a show and they had a clip episode with clips from earlier seasons, it might have been years since you'd seen those clips -- and maybe you'd never seen them. That just isn't the case anymore when you can binge 10 seasons of a show in a matter of days/weeks.
no subject
One of the best, I think, was the M*A*S*H* episode "The Interview". It was presented as a black and white documentary/50s TV news special with the characters were being interviewed by Clete Roberts. In the 2023 special, MASH: The Comedy That Changed Television, if I'm remembering things correctly, the actors answered the questions as their characters, without a script. Then you have Community, which flipped the script on clip episodes by doing clip episodes that contained all new content. Friends did a few clip episodes that didn't feel like fillers.
One of the absolute worse, however, is "Shades of Gray", the last episode of season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was done as a cost-saving measure because a few other episodes that season ran over-budget. The head writer referred to the episode as a "piece of shit". The "plot" was Riker gets infected by a deadly virus during an away mission, and the only way to save his life is to put him in a coma and hook him up to a machine that will artificially stimulate his brain neurons, keeping them active and resisting the virus. This causes Riker to dream of his past adventures aboard the Enterprise. Most of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG were pretty bad, but this one takes the cake.
I can't think of any current/recent shows that have done clip episodes, and given 1) the shorter seasons you mentioned and also 2) streaming, I don't know if they make sense now. We tend to forget the past when there was no streaming, no DVDs, some shows didn't have reruns everywhere. If you were watching season 7 of a show and they had a clip episode with clips from earlier seasons, it might have been years since you'd seen those clips -- and maybe you'd never seen them. That just isn't the case anymore when you can binge 10 seasons of a show in a matter of days/weeks.