Bring Back More Television Shows With 22-Episode Seasons

By Brian Richards | TV | April 24, 2024 |

By Brian Richards | TV | April 24, 2024 |

When people talk about the beginning of Peak TV (a term created by FX chairman John Landgraf), the shows that immediately come to mind are shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, and Sex and the City. Back when those shows first aired, they were seen as Peak TV because they were the opposite of what we were getting on network television, not just because of quality, but because of what they were able to accomplish in a season without needing 22 to 24 episodes to do so. Lost was one of the biggest and most popular shows of the 2000s, and is also considered to be Peak TV. It also caused some viewers to tear their hair out in frustration during its first three seasons (each of which contained 23 to 25 episodes) because of some story choices, and especially because ABC would break the momentum of its serialized storytelling with weeks of reruns. Those same viewers began to wonder why Lost didn’t do shorter seasons, which would allow episodes to air every week without delays, and avoid any unnecessary flashbacks, so that Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse would tighten up the storytelling to answer the show’s most pressing mysteries. Halfway through Season 3, Lindelof and Cuse heard those complaints, and it was soon announced that not only would the next three seasons be 16 to 17 episodes long, but Season 6 would be the show’s last. This showed that Lost wasn’t going to spin its wheels for ten seasons without any answers, and it let everyone know that Lindelof, Cuse, and their writers could begin plotting exactly how they wanted the series to end as they got closer to the finish line.

This was the start of more television fans feeling that more shows need to be more like Lost, and embrace the same format as shows on cable: 12 to 13 episodes a season, and they should last no longer than five seasons. But even as we got more TV dramas that embraced 13-episode seasons, even that wasn’t enough to guarantee viewer satisfaction. For every drama like Justified that fired on all cylinders (except for that fifth season with Michael Rapaport, and the less said about it, the better), the Marvel shows on Netflix made some viewers feel as if 13 episodes were too long to sit through, due to their issues with pacing, quality, and consistency. Soon enough, more dramas lowered the number from 13 episodes a season, to between 8 and 10 episodes a season, much like how the U.K. makes their television shows.

Fast-forward to the Age of Streaming, when social media has made it a lot easier for fans to express their anger and disappointment with the current state of TV. Shows are being canceled and removed entirely from the catalog by their streaming service, or they’re being canceled after just one season, or they’re being canceled just one month after premiering because the algorithm says they should be canceled. But what really grinds the gears of those fans when it comes to the current state of TV? The incredibly long wait time for new seasons of shows like Stranger Things and Euphoria, and for those seasons to be less than 10 episodes before the next long waiting period goes into effect. (FYI: It should be mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes obviously contributed to those long waiting periods for television shows to return.) It’s why there have been more people on social media who have stated that they’ve grown tired of television shows with shorter seasons, and want them to go back to the good old days of shows doing 22 to 24 episodes a year, and staying on air for much longer than five seasons.

Some people, like Star Trek: Discovery creator/executive producer Alex Kurtzman, have pushed back against this mindset, and stated that shorter seasons are better for television shows, and prevent filler episodes from being made that take focus away from the stories being told. Others, including those who write for and about television, have called bullsh-t, and see filler episodes as essential pieces of the puzzle that help contribute to world-building and character development.

It also doesn’t help that…

1) One of the reasons for the WGA strike was to preserve the existence of writers’ rooms, so that more writers are available to work and collaborate on the shows they write for, and longer seasons would mean more opportunities for those writers to work on scripts.

2) There are too many showrunners who refuse to accept that they’re making a television show, and instead, they decide to treat the story they’re telling as a 10-hour-long movie, or as a novel made for television.

There are numerous examples of “filler episodes” that are just as memorable and entertaining as the more “serious” episodes: Angel being turned into a puppet. Hurley, Charlie, Sawyer, and Jin jump-starting the DHARMA van, and happily riding around the island together. Mulder and Scully investigating a family of murderous, incestuous cannibals with a fondness for Johnny Mathis’ “Wonderful, Wonderful.” The Dundler-Mifflin employees playing Office Olympics together. An alternate reality where the crew of Deep Space Nine are writers and illustrators for a sci-fi magazine in the 1950s. Dr. Ross trying to rescue a boy trapped in a storm drain. Galentine’s Day. Treat Yo’Self Day. “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” Four demons sitting together in a doughnut shop to discuss their favorite experiences of leading humans to damnation. The Gentlemen taking everyone’s voices, including Buffy and her friends. “Out Where The Buses Don’t Run.” Walter White trying and failing to kill a housefly in his lab. Raylan Givens using a box of fried chicken to convince a convict in the U.S. Marshals office to release his hostages. A squad of homicide detectives watching a documentary of themselves and how they work. Rick being reunited with Morgan for the first time. Buffy forcing Spike to tell her how he became a vampire who killed two Slayers. Starbuck and Apollo beating the crap out of each other in a boxing ring to repair their friendship. Pacey and Joey getting trapped overnight in a K-Mart together. Joker, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Penguin, and Killer Croc talking about how close they each came to killing Batman. Christopher and Paulie getting lost in the woods as they pursue a Russian mobster they’re attempting to kill. Bill and Frank falling in love as the world falls apart.

As if the online debate about filler episodes hasn’t been divisive and heated enough, there has also been discussion about how television shows on streaming services release their episodes and whether all episodes should be dropped at once so they can be binge-watched immediately or for the episodes to be released on a weekly schedule. BenDavid Grabinski, showrunner for Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, has tweeted that he hates it when streamers drop all episodes at once. Others have expressed a similar sentiment, as they feel that shows with all episodes being released for binge-watching can result in little to no conversation about the series after a week or two, and shows like The Bear and Fallout deserve much better. X-Men ‘97, on the other hand, releases its episodes weekly and has benefited greatly because of it, especially after the fifth episode which nearly broke the Internet after it aired. It was a reminder of how an episode would blow viewers away after watching it, and they would spend the next week talking and theorizing about it with each other, either in person around the watercooler, social media, or message boards like Snarkfest and Television Without Pity, until their antici…pation finally ends with the premiere of the next episode.

The binge release model doesn’t work for every show. Something like #TheBear needs time and space between every episode for the viewer to digest what’s happened and think about how it fits into the narrative as a whole. But executives don’t care about that, of course. pic.twitter.com/WvJby7aQoL

— David Opie (@DavidOpie) June 29, 2023

Are you a binge watcher? Or do you prefer a weekly episode drop? @ChloeMelas and @sepinwall join us to debate the merits of both pic.twitter.com/PNtEdFCkl9

— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) January 31, 2023

As someone who is a longtime user of Twitter, back when live-tweeting was a regular occurrence, and Twitter users would get together online every week to discuss their favorite shows while they aired, and would often crack jokes that were more entertaining than the shows themselves, it’s both amusing and ironic to see social media come full circle from wanting television to be more like cable, to wanting television to go back to how it was before cable, with long-running shows with likable characters like The Office and Parks and Recreation that they can embrace as comfort shows to binge-watch whenever the need arises. But right now, Hollywood is still in recovery from the pandemic and the strikes, streaming services are trying to figure out how to stay afloat as the streaming bubble continues to burst, and even late-night talk shows are now seen as possibly being on the brink of extinction. Time will soon tell as to how the television industry will evolve, if it actually does evolve, and whether or not viewers will be happy with what it becomes.