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[–] 21 points 1 day ago (6 children)

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.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    But those shows are the rare exceptions, with a diehard fanbase that still watches the classic episodes 30 years later. I think a better comparison would be The X-Files vs Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul. The first couple of seasons of the X-Files were truly creative and inspired, but you saw the quality decline as the seasons went on due to Gilligan being forced into the annual schedule. When FX granted him additional time (and money) to realize his vision, he created masterpieces that only got better up to their finales.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    But those shows are the rare exceptions

    I would say that good shows are still a rare exception. There were a few great shows in a sea of slop then and a few great shows in a sea of slop now with the biggest difference being that the sea of slop is significantly more vast now. The changes in the medium from old school TV to streaming sites has allowed for a little more of a blurring of the line between movies and TV shows in that prestige TV is higher budget and does take longer to produce, closer to how only movies used to be produced, and it's fine that there are more shows with higher production value and longer wait times between seasons, but that doesn't mean that TV is great now and was bad in the past.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago

    Yeah, it's much easier for people to avoid slop these days. Back in the day, you only had so many channels so sometimes you'd end up just picking the best of bad choices to get you through the hour or half hour. Good shows tended to run long.

    Netflix otoh cancels huge shows, or cuts them to 2 seasons, 10 eps a season to avoid extra payouts to actors and crew

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago

    even mid-tier stuff like marvel's x-men and spider-man shows are pretty good and those have long seasons. Family Ties has a couple good seasons and then it falls off a cliff but that's not because of the season length the show just gets bad.

    i can't think of any shows where like 1/4 of the episodes are good and the rest are bad, those just get written off as bad shows overall and not making half the episodes wouldn't have saved them. maybe dragonball Z.

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