A show should get as many episodes as it needs to tell the story it wants to tell in the best way possible.
Forcing a show to fill 20+ episodes with a set runtime often leads to lower quality filler episodes. It’s also a lot harder to do with the more serialized style that audiences have gotten used to. Babylon 5 showed that it could be done, but it takes a lot of skill, effort and planning.
On the other hand, having only 6 to 8 episodes can be infuriating when a show isn’t laser focused on telling a narrowly scoped and tightly scripted story. It can be done, but many shows waste precious time on tangents and subplots at the expense of the larger story. There’s less time for character development, foreshadowing, subtlety and pacing. Again, it can be done if it’s planned well and the writing is good, but often it just feels like a longer show that’s had essential material cut and rushed the plot because they didn’t plan for the amount of time they had. We still get the filler, even as they struggle to squeeze the story in. Can be especially bad when every episode has a different writer, and no one seems to know where the focus should be.
A show should get as many episodes as it needs to tell the story it wants to tell in the best way possible.
Forcing a show to fill 20+ episodes with a set runtime often leads to lower quality filler episodes. It’s also a lot harder to do with the more serialized style that audiences have gotten used to. Babylon 5 showed that it could be done, but it takes a lot of skill, effort and planning.
On the other hand, having only 6 to 8 episodes can be infuriating when a show isn’t laser focused on telling a narrowly scoped and tightly scripted story. It can be done, but many shows waste precious time on tangents and subplots at the expense of the larger story. There’s less time for character development, foreshadowing, subtlety and pacing. Again, it can be done if it’s planned well and the writing is good, but often it just feels like a longer show that’s had essential material cut and rushed the plot because they didn’t plan for the amount of time they had. We still get the filler, even as they struggle to squeeze the story in. Can be especially bad when every episode has a different writer, and no one seems to know where the focus should be.