I do feel weird saying this, as someone who thought that part of what killed Marvel Netflix was too many episodes and not enough story. And I still stand by that decision, but it’s also occurred to me that they weren’t using filler episodes properly. Nowadays television shows are a half to 1/3 of the amount of episodes then they used to be, and I think this is a major factor in why the quality of them starts to dip after a season or two. Now I’m starting to think that the real problem is too much story and not enough episodes.

Gather around children, as I tell you a tale of how it used to be. Back in my day you had shows that could be up to 30 episodes a season. That’s an awful amount of time to fill even with a very good story. To combat this writers would generally have filler episodes, but those filler episodes could be used to focus on secondary characters. That would usually help fill out the universe of the show better. Well fast-forward to today and now we get shows that are 10 episode seasons, but they still want to fill out that world. So you get a banger of a first season, because you’re basically getting a concentrated dose of the stuff you want. But that need to fill out the lore is still there and they’re only time to really do it might be during subsequent seasons. Which then distracts from the main story. Which is a problem when you’re only doing 10 episodes, it drags everything down. A decade ago Bo Katan would be the solid B story in a season of Mandolorian, not a character that draws focus from the main one.

Yes, of course many shows have managed to work within this new format very well, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. I think we still haven’t quite figured out how to effectively write for streaming, with people treating these shows like mini movies that they break up into 10 parts instead of trying to write 10 episodes of a series. TV writing and movie writing are two very different animals and I think they’re trying to unsuccessfully cram the two together into one format, and it doesn’t work.