2000s TV feels better than anything streaming makes because 22-episode seasons were subsidized by a business model that no longer exists.
Network TV ran on syndication economics. A show had to hit 88 to 100 episodes before it could be "stripped": sold to cable stations that aired it 5 days a week for 20 weeks without a single repeat. Four seasons of 22 episodes each landed at 88 exactly. Seinfeld, Friends, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Law & Order, CSI. Every one was engineered to cross that threshold because the real money lived on the other side of it.
A show that made syndication cleared the initial network license fee multiple times over in back-end revenue. Friends ran 236 episodes and still generates an estimated $1 billion per year for Warner Bros, two decades after the finale. Jerry Seinfeld is nearly a billionaire because of 180 episodes of half-hour television shot between 1989 and 1998.
The 22-episode format forced "filler" episodes. The bottle episode. The beach episode. The holiday episode. The one where nothing happens and the characters just sit in an apartment. These are the episodes that built parasocial attachment. Dinner Party from The Office. The Constant from Lost. Pine Barrens from The Sopranos. Nothing happens in any of them. They're why people still talk about the show 20 years later.
Streaming killed this in two moves. Netflix, Max, and Apple pay per-episode production budgets with no syndication upside because they ARE the endpoint. And the binge model means viewers finish a season in three days whether it's 8 episodes or 22, so there's no incentive to keep a cast employed for nine months to make the long version. Cheaper to ship 8, market it as a "prestige limited series," and move the showrunner to the next project.
The result: every streaming season has to advance plot every episode because there's no room for anything else. No breather. No character development. No filler that turns into the best episode of the series. The math won't allow it.
The end state is already on the board. As of 2024, zero American series originally made for streaming has reached 100 episodes. In 50 years of television, the milestone that defined what a "show" even was got erased in one decade.
The 100-episode threshold is gone. So is the kind of show it produced.
The true story of innocence is that for many, their childhood was the best time of their lives
As an adult, wouldn't you rather help future generations experience their own amazing childhoods instead of yourself trying to falsely relive them?
Let's make a better world for them
Hate it when cartoons have a kid and the kid is an exact clone of one parent. Such a perfect opportunity to be fun and creative, and you choose… copy-paste?
And also consider the spelling. Don’t torture your kid by constantly having their names mispronounced and misspelled for their whole lives because you decided you wanted to be edgy and unique.
Always fascinated how people in the middle ages for hundreds of years just lived amongst the ever decrepitating Roman ruins. It was just a part of daily life for them.
the ultimate solution is through technology
we engineer what has been called a bodyoid: brainless animal bodies that provide as much meat as we desire without harming any sentient beings
this would transform medicine - the same platform would allow us to grow organs on demand, eliminate transplant waiting lists, and produce perfectly matched tissues for each patient
experimental therapies could be tested on full biological systems without involving conscious animals, regenerative medicine would accelerate as entire replacement tissues become manufacturable
in the same way that agriculture turned food from a scarce resource into an abundant one, engineered bodyoids would turn biological material into infrastructure - meat without slaughter, organs without donors, and medical research without sentient suffering
Here's a thing about storytelling: Yes, your show can be a complete joke, but if you want it to have stakes, you need to be able to make tone work... I something happened that makes people sad, no jokes until it's all over... be smart and human, not subversive and moronic.
Chungus and Weadon humor sucks ass
“I think it’d be funny & cute if this fictional couple I like and envision in a commited relationship had a kid”
“so you think she is just a WOMB you think she’s a BIRTHING MACHINE you are forcing a FICTIONAL SURROGACY on her YOU SICK FUCK”
like, do y’all even hear yourselves
sometimes ill see a tweet and ill think “theres no reason to get mad at this. this is very obviously a sheltered 15 year old and theres literally no circumstance where i should be seeing this persons opinion in the first place” and then i check the bio and theyre 27
Most western female characters nowadays only have flat chests because the artist behind them are afraid to give them any form of feminine shape and bust. Especially with emotionally stunted gay/female artist drawing said characters . Let fanartist do whatever they want.