I don't even like the season part one and part two later in the year. 1923 lost a lot of my interest and then they didn't even do a recap. In the day and age of steaming, I feel they should drop episodes one week at a time for 8-10 weeks and not do this BS a month or two later the season picks up. Get your act together and stop playing like TV series have not been made for 50 years or more and this is new to us so wait while we finish producing the rest of the season.

To answer the other part something like Better Call Saul is worth the wait, but lesser shows like Lost in Space on Netflix should be able to go year on year with 10 episodes without a significant delay (pandemic not included) something like West World or GOT it seems ridiculous to make mini move episodes clocking in at an hour twenty min and three years between seasons. Get rid of bloated storylines and the hobbit packing a sweater and tell the story in a timely fashion

I get the "I wish everything was released on physical media" complaint, but I don't get a philisophical ban on streaming. Like just pay for Netflix for a month to watch the season of Stranger Things after it's over, they don't tie you in for a year or anything. I realize with prices rising everyone is complaining about the price of the services but there's too much content to reasonably watch subscribing year round to multiple services anyway, and if you're judicious it's probably some of the best media value propositions of all time.

The thing that fails in this scenario are things like Zaslav cutting shows from HBO Max, but even then they do it so they can sell you the media elsewhere so more often than not it's available somewhere, the main problem being if it's only on some ad based service or something.

Kills? Depends on how good the show is.

But it certainly doesn't help.

I think some people just don’t believe in streaming and it’s a new monthly expense they don’t want. And they don’t want to deal with locating where x show is on x service.

Yet some of those same people will pay $100 for a disc collection which stays wrapped on their shelf for years.

This is why I started re-watching the finale of the previous season before starting the new season.

Funny thing happened to me. When I started watching the new season of "The Boys" I was confused at first because I was thinking it was "The Umbrella Academy".

See quote below...

Not only that, I have a TV show in my collection, and knowing there is more of that show out there, but also knowing that I'll never be able to complete that show in my collection because some asshole TV executive decided they wanted the rest of it only available to streamers.

There are no still wrapped videos in my collection.

I understand it from the production side but I have to believe it kills the momentum of many shows in the streaming era. Sometimes so much time passes it doesn't even feel like the same show.

Depends on the series with most being quite forgettable after a season, if not after a few episodes.

In general, I don't watch "live" any more and will only sample a series that gets good buzz. If I like it after watching an episode or three I'll put it on my "buy it when it comes out on physical" list and often wait for the entire series to drop before making the purchase. If I opt for purchasing seasons as they come out I typically don't watch it until the last season is announced for physical release.

The last series I bothered watching "live" was Game of Thrones. It was, generally, good enough to keep up with that way, yet I watched *all* of the entire prior seasons before a new season dropped so I'd remember what happened.

That happened to me with Westworld. I loved the first season, two years later I watched the first episode of season two and was completely lost. I didn't really want to rewatch season one all over again, so I just gave up on it.

This approach has never clicked with me, even going back to the Sopranos when it would air.

When people who never watched it asked me about it, I said it might play better when you binge it then having to wait between those breaks.

I've dropped a few shows because of the gap and lost interest in, and it's mostly because by the time the next season comes around I've either forgotten the previous seasons (I do not have the time to rewatch shows as I did years ago pre-marriage and kids) or the show was kinda interesting but not enough for me to revisit a second season after a huge period of time (for instance, didn't even realize there was a second season of Hunters on deck till recently).

Covid definitely has played into these gaps being longer for some titles but this cat was already out of the bag before the pandemic.

I seem to recall that being my experience with Westworld, as well.

That could just be because the first episode of season 2 of Westworld started, IIRC, in medias res and was super confusing for everyone.

Sometimes. I rely on recaps more, these days. When some shows come back, I get to them when I have time (Bad Batch) but others I'll be there day one (Ted Lasso).

My wife and I just started to watch the final season of Better Call Saul a couple of nights ago. We were completely lost on the first episode, but realized that BCS sometimes jumps around with timelines. After the first episode was over, we realized we hadn't even seen Season 5 yet. Not that it helped a whole lot, we were still pretty lost at the beginning of Season 5. Fortunately, we were able to slowly piece things together through the first two episodes.

HBO announced today that House of the Dragon season 2 isn't slated to return until summer 2024

Twitter

It did pretty well and was in the pop culture discussions when it came out late last summer. Now who knows where it will be late next year with people's interest levels considering how the pop culture landscape rapidly changes all the time.

Was just thinking. It seems like large gaps are an even worse idea for shows aimed at kids. Year, year and a half to two year break for an animated show is a really long time for a kid and they would have to be reminded they were even watching it. (maybe) Media moves much faster now than before.

Nope. Doesn't bother me. Plenty of other shows and things to do besides watch TV, and it's easy enough to recap whether or not the channel provides one.

I'm also a fan of one show/week, as a blanket dump of everything leads to binge watching, lessening the show's impact, whilst turnipheads parrot spoilers all over social media.