Anyone remember the simpler times when it came to television? A time where a new episode of a show was something you could look forward to every single week?! The episode itself was only a half hour long with a couple of commercial breaks in between with a tease of what next week’s episode was going to be. Back when television shows were short, sweet, and fast paced. To quote Ryan Gosling’s character in Blade Runner 2049, “things were simpler then”.
While there are certainly shows and series still out there that do that, one can’t help but wonder why is it that shows you watch on tv or series you watch on a streaming service is becoming the equivalent of watching a feature film? What I mean by that is how the ways shows nowadays are structure and when exactly each episode of a show gets released.
Instead of an episode being a brief 15 to 30 minutes long, they are now somewhere between 60 to 75 minutes now. Instead of building anticipation for the next episode and making it a weekly thing, they are now just making a handful of episodes available at the exact same time. Instead of feeling like mini-movies with each one serving their own standalone purpose, they now feel like a really big movie but split into multiple different parts with an abrupted cliffhanger after each one. This can make for a fairly disjointed and bizarrely paced entertainments. Not just because with the way each episode is put together but how companies are choosing to release all new episodes.
While it can definitely make for an interesting binging experience to have multiple episodes released at the same time, it also runs the risks of big spoilers on the show being out much more quickly than it should be. If you are someone on social media every day, you know damn well it is hard to avoid massive spoilers in any form of capacity. You know that there’s a big chance people will already be talking about a certain big twist or reveals on your Twitter or YouTube timeline before you even get a chance to watch it. You always have to remind yourself to stay off your social media pages before you watch a show to avoid any big spoilers. While shows should be able to work as it’s own thing without having big spoilers ruin the experience for you, it can be unfair to expect your audience to be able to avoid those kind of spoilers when you make the decision to be multiple episodes that are at least an hour long on the same day.
This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time now but what really compelled me to write this piece is around the time the news came out that about every single episode of the fourth season of Stranger Things was going to be at least over an hour long.
In case you don’t know, before the newest season of Stranger Things came out, the length of every episode of the season was announced. Every single episode was to be at least one hour long. Here was the final episode runtimes for what was confirmed to be Part I of Season 4.
Episode 1- 1 Hour 16 Minutes
Episode 2– 1 Hour 15 Minutes
Episode 3– 1 Hour 3 Minutes
Episode 4– 1 Hour 17 Minutes
Episode 5– 1 Hour 13 Minutes
Episode 6– 1 Hour 13 Minutes
Episode 7– 1 Hour 38 Minutes
So, the first few episodes of Season 4 Part 1 was at least one hour long with the longest one being Episode 7 which was exactly 98 minutes long. The length of an actual movie. While I won’t comment on whether or not the runtime of each episode was warranted (I’m still on Episode 5 at the time of writing this!), that does seem to be asking a lot of your audience to find the amount of free time available to be able to watch all seven of these episodes without getting the big surprises revealed beforehand.
However, that was just Part I. How about Part II? Well, Part II is only confirmed to have two episodes that is scheduled to be released on July 1st, more than a month after Part I was released. And here are the confirmed runtimes for those.
Episode 8– 1 Hour 25 Minutes
Episode 9– 2 Hours 30 Minutes
Yes, you read that last one correctly. The final episode of the season is confirmed to be TWO HOURS and 30 MINUTES LONG! The length of the ending of a season is about as long as an Avengers movie. Talk about overboard! Again, I can’t confirmed if the runtime is necessary but it just feels completely and utterly bizarre to see the length of an episode be as long as an actual movie. It’s not like this is suppose to be a tv movie where the length can be considered justified. This is an episode of a big and long running series that needs at least 150 minutes of your time to provide the complete experience.
As we move time and time again in this age of streaming services, one can’t help but ask the question of how we got to this point. How is it that shows are fairly long now with multiple episodes being released at once? My conclusion comes down to two factors: social media and tv/streaming service companies.
I know I’ve stated it several times in the pass but no one can deny that we are living in a time of social media. Everyone is free to say whatever they want and when they want to. This gives anybody free realm to share how they feel about a certain form of entertainment, whether it’s a movie, tv show, book, video game, song, etc. When they really like it, they will often make a post or two about how much they enjoy it and move on with their daily lives. When they really hate it, then they will make sure that the social media account of said entertainment hears them loud and clear about their displeasure. Because of that, no doubt that will get the creators attentions as they will believe that to be the general reaction to what the public thinks of their latest projects. It’s elements like that is what is leading me to believe as to why shows have become what they are along with movies.
A main possible reason why shows and movies are as long as they are is because the creators believe they have to make their points loud and clear so they make sure the audience get the point they are trying to make. Considering we are in a time where CinemaSins is a big thing (I got a whole piece about them in the works!), they have to use certain scenes to overexplain and show off every little detail so that any potential nitpickers won’t have too much to nitpick at. While that is not necessarily the fault of CinemaSins or any other big content creators out there, the influence are becoming clear as day and something that has gotten in the heads of many creators out there. Oh, and also certain networks and companies making deals of the amount of episodes each season must have and the length of the episodes certainly isn’t helping either.
Stranger Things is definitely not the only show out there that has fallen victim to really long episodes. HBO had the writers of Game of Thrones fill up huge chunks of the show with filler so that it could match the agreed runtimes. Netflix forced Marvel to have at least 13 episodes a season regardless if there was enough material to cover that much episodes for their series. And even some would admit that Disney Plus series like Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Obi-Wan Kenobi would have probably benefited more as being movies instead of shows. This has been definitely going on for awhile now but it seems that we are now getting to a point where it feels like tv series/shows are just feeling like one giant feature film except divided into multiple parts and with no deleted scenes whatsoever. (Seriously, I dare someone to find an episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier that did NOT end with a last-minute cliffhanger out of nowhere.)
Regardless of what the true cause of this turn with television and streaming entertainment, it has definitely change the way we view shows and series. Personally, I do like the way that some streaming services like Disney +, HBO Max, and Apple are doing it by releasing just one or two episodes of a show at a time and being able to watch that episode at any given time without having to record it. That is the kind of proper transaction we need from tv to streaming as oppose as to just dumping up all 13+ episodes of a season at once like Netflix does. Even so, I do hope we go back to a time with shows where episodes can work as their own thing. Have each one have a proper beginning, middle, and end with a brief hint as what’s to come for the future. Not just feeling like a quarter or half of a movie that got cut to multiple pieces to make it structured like a show. It doesn’t make for a satisfying viewing experience in my humble opinion. I rather have movies be movies and shows be shows but that’s just me.
Stranger Things Season 4 Part I is available to watch now on Netflix with Part II available on July 1st.
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