Counterpoint: a lot of the "unwatchable filler" was a fun opportunity to break free of plot constraints and experiment, and longer seasons meant longer-term, more consistent jobs. Aren't we supposed to be pro-labour around here?

This is just a side effect of not understanding the genre. Now they try and make shows into episodic movies, but movies take time. Good old TV shows understood the parameters they were working in. We need to make a lot of these things on a budget, so we gotta make the most use of the sets we already have and the characters we've already established.

That's why the best older TV shows tend to take place in limited environments with core casts where it's easy to understand their relationship. Star Trek, takes place mostly on one star ship, so we can reuse sets a lot, and the cast is mostly the crew of the ship and we understand their roles and ranks, got it. Malcolm in the Middle, follows a single family, easy, and most episodes take place primarily either in their home, or at the school the kids are attending, and whenever they do need to go to another location they can pretty easily use sets from other shows (I think the ranch Francis worked on was from another show for example). Trying to have these sprawling epic narratives on TV was always sometimes that was gonna work for like mini-series type stuff were it's one or two seasons, like Andor, but pulling it off for anything longer than that is going to be a struggle.

Seasons 1-4 of the sopranos came out 1 year apart, with 2 years between 4-5 and 5-6, with another year for the second half of 6. And each of those seasons was 13 episodes long, except 6 which was 12 + 9. 86 episodes over 8 years.

Stranger Things by comparison, was a 1 year gap, then 2, then 3, then 3 again. And each of those seasons were 8 or 9 episodes. 42 episodes over 9 years. Half as many episodes with an extra year.

I’m also not against filler episodes - They’re used to flesh out the world and the characters, as well as giving the writers and actors time to find their groove and figure out how to write/play those characters; Think of how many shows only get good after the first season. Modern shows frequently get cancelled before they’re able to find that. Filler episodes also used to give junior writers more experience.

I don't have any evidence of this so I could be wrong, but I get the sense that a lot of platforms are extremely risk averse to where they won't allow any work to be started on Season 2 until Season 1 is the mega hit they're expecting. Which is why so many of their shows get cancelled after 1 season. This extends production time because they aren't filming parts of different episodes concurrently and already accumulating footage they need for later seasons like many other shows do/did.

I don't think the wait between seasons needs to be as long, they just need to work more efficiently and trust/recognize when they have something they think will hit and when they don't. I imagine most shows people hate are also hated by the cast and crew before it airs, just like game devs know when they're working on and are going to release a bad/compromised game.

nah i've seen season 3-6 of TNG it's mostly great, and there are like four bad episodes of ds9 total.

season 2-7 of the simpsons are almost all bangers too

bad tv was bad, but some of the best episodes of TV are bottle shows where they had to write under constraints.

Not all TV needs to be Prestige TV. I want more sitcom slop that's actually fun that I can watch after work. And give it time to grow, so I can actually get to know the characters.

I disagree, though I see where you're coming from. My humble take on those days is that there simply was more to each show, so while it was harder to maintain high quality over many episodes, I feel that that simply means you had a higher chance of watching something good with there being so much out there.

Take Cowboy Bebop, it's 26 episodes of just some of the best television out there. Not just best anime, no, best television ever made, and there might be one filler episode in the whole thing? A 26 episode season of anything just isn't a thing anymore, and imho having even shitty TV is better than none at all as it's art, and the amount of unique/novel/risktaking art being produced in a society is one of many barometers for that society's health.

The risks just aren't being taken anymore, you only see "sure deals" now, and that leads to stagnation and eventually death of culture, and yeah, that is what's slowly happening. The media ecosystem is a reflection of the psyche of the the society that made said media, and right now that ecosystem is just a bunch of vultures feasting on the recently deceased bloated corpse of what remains.

I appreciate your balancing comment.