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Opinion: Small screen, big investment: TV episodes have become way too long
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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Television
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The problem with a lot of those shows from back in the day is they were filled with a lot of filler, and I don’t mean the “monster of the week” in between larger arcs counting as filler. Writers said they didn’t have time to really care about all 22-24 episodes, so many were half assed. Then you have the budget constraints, which would lead to bottle episodes, because there never really was enough budget to make 22-24 episodes a season. Every once in a while you’d get people who try, and you’d get something like the famous Breaking Bad Fly episode.
When Netflix started doing their own shows at 13 episodes, you’d get people complaining that they were just stretching it out to fit 13.
Personally I think 12 or 13 episodes is a good balance and I liked that we got a higher number count on something like Andor. 6 episodes of something is often way too short.