The Issue with current television
Picture this: it’s Christmas day of 2025. All the gifts have been opened, the eggnog has been drunk, Grandpa’s been knocked out in the chair since twelve, and dad has finally been relieved of trash bag duty. There is one last thing to do: watch the second part of Stranger Things.
You sit down, grab a snack, and prepare for the long haul. You’ve got three episodes and last thing you saw was that (SPOILERS! But honestly, you should know this by now) Will is suddenly a sorcerer. It was one of the best episodes of television, and you are downright ecstatic about how the show you’ve been watching for the past ten years will come to an end.
You get brutally disappointed.
Maybe it was the pacing, the character arcs, or even just the fact that you still have an entire episode the length of a movie yet to watch that won’t come out for another week. So, to ease your distress, you put on Heated Rivalry, the newest hit everyone’s been talking about. You love it. You binge all the episodes, except where is the rest?
There were only six.
This is the issue with television and streaming. In current times, there is a certain structure that almost every hit show follows. Every three or so years, a new season will come out with eight episodes that are each an hour long. That’s it. Three entire years for eight hours.
What’s even worse is that they are now being split into parts. You can’t binge the whole series, nor can you have something each week to look forward to. It’s just split.
This format just doesn’t work. Too many shows have taken on this format in the past few years, and the buzz around each one of them has died off. When Bridgerton season three was announced, the only thing people said in the comment section was that they were annoyed by the show’s split. Viewer engagement dropped significantly.
So what is the best Television structure?
For many, the best structure may be that of the past dramas and sitcoms. You get around twenty-four episodes a season that come out every one to two years, each thirty to forty-five minutes long.
Companies often argue that a yearly release is impossible. It takes time to develop CGI and plots.
Which, sure, that is true. Yet Supernatural and Teen Wolf had global fame despite outright awful CGI. Plus, Stranger Things season five was given almost five years, and the plot lines still fell flat, with many character arcs being destroyed (I am so sorry, Mike Wheeler).
But this isn’t the best format in my eyes.
In fact, to me, the best show structure is as follows: twelve to fourteen episodes a season with around fifty-minute episodes, with seasons dropped every year to every year and a half.
This is doable too; many eastern countries have already adopted this format. Many companies, particularly in Thailand, produce multiple shows at the same time, and these shows often don’t take very long from start to end.
In fact, although the show only had a total of six episodes, Ticket to Heaven was shot in less than two months and was then aired about a month after wrapping. The show was phenomenal as well, with good pacing, excellent acting (shoutout to GeminiFourth), beautiful cinematography, and downright life-changing quotes. This goes to show how the amount of time it takes to film and produce doesn’t necessarily constitute a good show.
Double that amount of time, and you have a great twelve-episode show that takes about half a year to a year to produce.
As for the number of episodes, twelve is the sweet spot. If a show is eight episodes, it tends to be rushed, and very little character and plot development can occur. No mundane or everyday moments are shown, which are vital to character building and their relationships. It also lends way to a huge annoyance: telling and not showing.
The new Percy Jackson adaptation is a huge offender of doing this. Due to the amount of content in each book regarding myths, the show cannot fit the necessary details to key in the viewer. Instead, Percy just knows everything, which is a direct contrast to the books. Season two did a much better job than season one, but it is still a major problem. Additionally, vital book characters have been cut, not present, or moved due to limited time. I think it’s about time we introduce Silena Beauregard, Charlie Beckendorf, Will Solace, and the Stoll brothers if we want seasons four and five to go well.
That is just one example of a show being held back by eight episodes, but it happens to plenty of others.
If the twelve-episode format were adopted instead, more time could be devoted to building the plot, and filling in any gaps, and showing small moments that establish relationships between characters.
I say twelve to also avoid an excessive number of episodes, as too many could be detrimental to the show’s success. Nowadays, nobody wants to sit through more than fourteen episodes of a show. Our attention spans are too rotted by short-form entertainment. Thank you, TikTok.
In all, the true ideal structure of television really depends on the person watching. Some prefer more episodes, but shorter ones to watch in the background, while others may love to sit down for hours and binge a series. My personal style tends to lean towards twelve, fifty-minute-long episodes. Though, as a busy college student, a thirty-minute-long episode fits perfectly in my schedule. Yet I still stand by that waiting three years for a show is outrageous.