Not Just Owls

spiderman dances to the beat

and then in even LESS time we got the entirety of House MD which was an 8-season show with an average release map of 20-25 episodes (40 min long each) per season per *year*

so yeah anyone who says that it makes total sense actually for Stranger Things to have gone on this long and for the child actors to now be old enough to have kids of their own are just flat out full of it and are probably under the age of 16 because they don't remember what TV used to be like (or literally weren't there to experience it before it turned into whatever the fuck Netflix has turned it into)

like gee idk maybe it has to do with the fact that The Bear is filmed across like 1-3 recurring locations and every location is just a room in a building

or the fact that The Bear features regular people in a regular kitchen environment with a focus put on the writing and editing to create the drama

or the fact that The Bear doesn't require as much post-production editing because it doesn't employ gratuitous amounts of CGI

or maybe just the simple fact that The Bear knows it's a fucking TV show and knows it isn't productive to keep audiences waiting 4+ years for a new season made up of 4-6 films

like what The Bear is doing isn't unique, it's not "new", it's literally just what television used to be. We're deadass just not used to it anymore because TV has become this binging marathon where we sit and watch 4 episodes for 12+ hours straight.

yes Stranger Things is a different genre from The Bear, it's obviously going to require a different workload and different accommodations and it has unique and different challenges to face in its production

but it's absolutely not the first show of its kind, we owe the success of shows like Stranger Things to the shows that came before - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Doctor Who, the list goes on - and all of those shows that ran so Stranger Things could crawl at a glacial pace were capable of being produced similarly to shows like The Bear - with effective writing and camera work that pushed the limits of their set designs, and practical effects that could make up for what they couldn't achieve with CGI (either because it just wasn't viable enough yet or because it wasn't worth the expense).

the real irony here is that Stranger Things is supposed to be an 80's-reminiscent show, and yet it couldn't be further from the philosophies of 80's television that gave us the formats of modern TV and its cultural environment that both Stranger Things and its predecessors owe their legacies to

TV used to be this sort of liminal space where you could kick off your shoes after work / school and watch 20-40 minutes of your show in between your other obligations like making dinner, doing homework, working on other hobbies, and self-care

movies, on the other hand, were a special occasion, you either went to the theaters to fully indulge in a feature length film that was usually at least 90 minutes (but not always, some would be as little as 70-80) or you rented a VHS/DVD to watch at home for some uninterrupted family time

and while TV definitely had its own host of problems as an attention-whoring device, streaming productions like Stranger Things have really managed to find the next exploitation in the attention economy - by turning TV into a whole ass movie marathon that takes longer to get through per season than watching the entire uncut Lord of the Rings trilogy or a single 25-episode season of House MD

and not because it necessarily has more to offer - but because every episode demands your attention for 2-4 times as long as the norm of what used to be expected out of TV, and every season has a production cycle that somehow manages to take longer than it would have taken them to just make a fucking movie

i'm sorry b/c this really turned into an "old man yells at cloud" rant but it's just absolutely insane to me how much we've lost the plot of what TV is and what it was specifically designed for - quick, manageable hits of entertainment that weren't as demanding of your time and attention as movies. that was it. that was the whole appeal. and Netflix has convinced people to pay $10-$20+/month just to wait for their TV content because they decided TV should be a bunch of back-to-back movies now

we let this happen

we all let this happen

we have just as much of ourselves to blame as we do the corporate entities that took the simple and elegant concept of TV away from us

because we (as a society) keep paying for it and waiting for it until it eventually decides to give us what we were paying and waiting for

and i can't help but feel with how successful and profitable these shows wind up being in spite of the criticisms people have to make of them, there's never going to be a way back to what we lost

we thought we were just cutting our monthly cable bill but what we were really cutting was an essential limb of entertainment culture that's now being threatened by Netflix Netflix Netflix Netflix Netflix Reddit Netflix Netflix and their two favorite dimwits with beards and plain t-shirts who collectively call themselves "the Duffer Brothers"

Irregularly released short streaming-bomb show releases do all this and more. A 20-26 episode season released weekly could gain traction and build up; they’d often premiere fairly late in the year, take a short break around Christmas, resume in January then finish their season before Summer because people are gonna want to enjoy the extra day-light. Streaming shows are released all at once so they don’t get any build up, only anticipation, there’s no discussion after eventful episodes because we already have the following episode right now so eventful moments don’t get to sit with us, discussion isn’t focussed on the smaller moments because why bother when we have the bigger picture right now? And because of how streaming skewed ratings and the fear of social media spoiling something there’s an audience-side incentive to get through the season as fast as possible. We can’t take our time and enjoy a series, we need to get through it in one sitting so we can use Twitter of all sites, so streaming services cater to that by making seasons shorter. 12 episodes! No, 10 episodes! 8 episodes! 6 episodes! Shorter and shorter seasons that keep you watching by literally not finishing a plot-line by seasons end because “how else will we keep audiences hooked?” and so shows start feeling hollower because they aren’t allowed to do as much anymore.

Streaming is kinda proving its value (or lack there of) by raising prices and re-introducing commercial breaks to turn a profit, which has people whining because streaming had this unspoken promise of “no ads,” which was never going to go well because the TV Commercial break was arguably one of the most important parts of the film and TV eco-system. Networks could turn a profit and show you all kinds of stuff that might interest you. “Here’s a highlight reel of this new show thats gonna be airing soon.” TV doesn’t get that anymore, the most advertising a show can afford anymore is the thumbnail on the site itself, so is it any wonder why original programming is dying out and being replaced by reboots and revivals of shows that already did the hard work of advertising to you 15-25 years ago!?

A show being on air for longer keeps it in the public consciousness for just as long, if not longer. Not having to wait years for the next season will ensure the audience won’t forget about the show and leave it behind. You may be getting bigger reactions because the whole thing is out now but it will fade just as quickly.