I hear you and I sympathize -- I'm exactly the same way. What I do now (for the shows I really like) is save the last 2-3 episodes of the current season. When the new season rolls around these will usually catch me up pretty quickly. Just did this with Pennyworth and it really does work.

I've found YouTube season summary videos to be extremely helpful for this, along with more in-depth character story videos or plot-point breakdowns. I usually watch them with my wife before we kick off into a new season so we can both get refreshed as I'm with you - I'll remember a lot of big-picture items, but forget the details.

Before streaming boom yeah, but right now there are a shitton of content to watch, you end forgetting the shows that got you invested when you find new ones and the cycle continues, at least that's my case

People always had this problem even when there were only 12 weeks between seasons. That’s why previously on has to exist.

Yes, this is a problem. It's okay if the show is relatively simple.

Like The Witcher, it doesn't matter. HOTD is actually quite simple narratively, so it also doesn't matter too much.

Westworld? Dark? This is a problem.

i'm always disappointed when i can't find a recap on youtube because the show is too small. this is only topped by the official recap being completely pointless and half commentary on the upcoming season by the actors.

it was hard to find a channel that i could stand. if it wasn't a super animated voice with a facecam to match it was the person adding in unwanted commentary like jokes.

> The Witcher, it doesn't matter

Yeah no I didn’t remember shit from the first season. I had to rewatch the whole thing to remember who anyone but Geralt, Yennifer and Jaskier were.

Yeah but like the plot points are kinda irrelevant lol, if that makes sense. They're just stuff that happens

> They're just stuff that happens

That describes all shows.

Yes, it's hard to put into words but I never felt with The Witcher that the details especially mattered in terms of understanding what comes next.

Whereas with Westworld, Dark, that is just not the case.

I'm not too excited for mandalorian 3. I don't know if I'll be interested enough to watch it. First season was fine. Scratched that itch.

I’ve been used to the longer breaks for a while.

I just watch other stuff.

It makes me not want to watch a show until the season is over

https://www.youtube.com/c/ManOfRecaps

Love his recaps

Even the little jokes are great

Netflix just dropped s2 of Barbarians, a fairly good German show set during the Roman conquest of Germania. Even with the Netflix recap I couldn't remember S1 and kept conflating it with shows like Vikings and others set during the period.

I wouldn’t say I “struggle” with it, but it does make me wanna sit down and watch a good movie (that’s not in a franchise) more often, instead of getting into too much prestige TV. Still watch and love some of it of course.

On occasion. I want an actual complete story with a conclusion, you know? It’s not just the waiting either, sometimes you wait years and then it’s just unceremoniously cancelled by some random executive.

Wait until it finishes it’s run then watch … u can avoid the 1 season shows that stop at cliffhangers

There's a reason binge-watching shows became popular. The narrative flow isn't broken; the dramatic tension isn't broken; you know what just happened, what is happening, and what might happen; and shows don't need to constant repeat and call back to things just so you have an inkling of why anything going on is going on. (Granted the year wait for a season sucks, but the build-up in the binge hopefully lasts because it should have stronger emotional resonance.)

Weekly shows done annually (3-9 month gap(s))? Can still work, as they did for a long time. A little weaker, but a decent compromise between flow and filming schedules.

A show that has a 2 year gap? What flow? Wait, when is the next season? Oh, that's back? Huh, what happened and do I still care?

I know I'm annoyed at how often the BBC started down 1.5-2 year gaps between Doctor Who series. It's part of why I stopped bothering several years ago. "Is it coming back this year, or next year? Let me add it to my calenda-- oh wait, it's a TV show, screw adding it to my schedule like my life depends on it."

Lol imagine living before streaming services when you had to catch an episode live if you wanted to watch it.

Yes! I always have to read recaps or watch recap videos on YouTube. The wait in between shows is honestly getting a little ridiculous, if you ask me. The momentum is killed when we are having to wait well over a year, sometimes even two years, for another season. Take House of the Dragon for example. It just finished airing it's first season, but we aren't getting season 2 until sometime in 2024. It will be almost 2 years before we get another season. The story is fairly simple and easy to follow, but for me to even remotely remember half of what happened, I'm going to have to rewatch or read a bunch of recaps.

On one hand, I feel we can't complain too much because I'd rather have to wait to get another season than just simply not get another season at all. But on the other hand, maybe the long wait time is a huge reason why so many shows get cancelled so easily. By the time another season rolls around, people have forgotten about it and don't care. So people don't watch. You can't make people wait that long and expect them to keep coming back. There is too much TV out there right now. You have to keep the momentum going or people will lose interest and forget.

Tv Tropes is pretty useful to remember where the previous season ended.

The best thing I’ve done for myself is I’ve limited the amount of shows I’ve followed week-to-week and season-to-season. There are so many completed shows to explore that I’ll only give my attention to current one’s that I want to follow the hype on or I’m confident it will be completed. There’s a lot of crap out there and it needs to be filtered.

But many shows were not a serial format back then.

It was 'case of the week', or 'patient of the week', or 'monster of the week'.

Not at all because I understand prestige TV takes time to make, and theres literally no shortage of other media to enjoy while they work their asses off to make something great

So many are low quality though, with super annoying dudes trying to be funny or stretching the video to like 30 minutes.

How could you forget the dwarves!?

It was a pain in the ass but man, I miss it. The good ole days (like 2005), when TV viewing was a community experience. Not just online - real life sitting down with the family, talking about it at school the next day type deal.

The anticipation was fun, and limited options meant being super invested. I remember the devastation of missing an episode of Prison Break, then making my best friend put on a one woman show describing what happened lmao...

For a short while some shows were splitting their seasons, 10 episodes in the spring 10 in the fall or winter/summer. I really liked that. But now that so many shows are 8-10 episodes, maybe 13 if you're lucky there is no splitting the season.

Yup. There's a lot of alternatives available. The only wait that drove me kind of crazy was Better Call Saul, partly 'cause Bob Odenkirk's heart attack gave me an existential crisis about dying before I got to see the final season lol. Not exactly the biggest thing I'd miss out on if I died but still...

[deleted]

Honestly staggering 5 episodes (of a 10 season arc) across the year is genuinely probably better for recollection.

Not really. I just go about my life and then I'm surprised when a new season is coming out. It's like forgetting you bought something online and you get a package in the mail. I have life, work and plenty of other hobbies to keep me busy in the time between seasons.

You didn't watch Breaking Bad as it aired, did you?

The year and a half break between I think seasons 4 and 5 was interminable.

It was such a great show that I pretty much remembered everything as soon as it went back on the air. I do recall missing a callback to Crazy 8 though -- I'd completely forgotten about him.

[removed]

We also had attention spans longer than a flea back then.

Is it because you forget about them or just stop caring? If it's the former, I use Trackseries.tv amd/or trakt.tv to keep track of what I'm watching. The home page tells you what it and you haven't watched yet. It's not perfect but it's good for 99+% of shows.

What I struggle with is finding decent recap videos on YouTube that don't have some annoying moron yapping over the top.

Why can't anyone make recap videos that only use audio from the series?

That has absolutely nothing to do with the question though.

Sort of. I also find that if I binge a season I forget what happens much quicker. So I usually try to watch two episodes at a time and spread it out over a couple of weeks.

It's not about forgetting what's happened since the last season, rather losing whatever emotional connection I had with the characters and events in the years since. Currently dealing with that with the new season of The Dragon Prince. My wife and I are both sick at home today and have tried to get through the new season that just dropped, but the time jump and the three years since the last season have left us feeling solidly "meh," and we keep turning it off to watch something else instead.

Yeah I could never get back into Dark because of how completely and utterly lost I was when I tried watching S2. I can usually still remember character and basic plot points between seasons pretty well (I was alright between seasons of Westworld actually) but that show was a whole other level of convoluted.

You mean when new seasons premiered every year, without the 2-3 year lag current shows seem to struggle with?
Oh yeah, that was horrible *eye roll*

And many shows were as well - depending what we're counting as "before streaming services"

Yeah I don't do weekly watches anymore.
The only show that I made an exception for was Better Call Saul. And even for that show, I waited until the season was almost finished until I started watching.

Well, to be honest I don't really mind because by the time it's out I'm usually good for a re-watch of the previous season(s). If I don't really care for it then youtube recap

Also the normal season episode count was upwards of 30 episodes and rolled over into the next year, usually leaving a short 6 month wait. Even the hour long dramas like ER took over half a year to air.

It never actually felt that long, especially compared to today's 8 episodes every 18 months

I emphasise with this a bit. I remember earlier this year when Netflix finally dropped S2 of Top Boy, I had forgotten who a lot of the side characters were as well as some of the key plot points of the previous season. I had to do some homework (I.e. read a couple of online summaries) which was annoying but ultimately the show was so good I didn't mind.

Would I be willing to put in the work for a lesser show? I'm not too sure , especially with the sheer glut of options there is now.

Yeah I lose attachment. Honestly I find myself that way too with weekly shows. I'll get halfway through the show after a billion weeks and realize that I'm not in the mood for the show anymore and just drop them. That's why I binge instead but yeah if it's 3 years until a new season then I just drop the show. GoT was the same. Terrible ending and a billion years for a spin-off just made me not care. I tried watching it and just dropped it right before the time jump. Found myself wondering if I even cared enough to keep watching if the characters I liked were going to be entirely new actors and the answer was no.

no I use IMDB

I just really miss the "previously on ..." recaps.

I wish they'd do a 'Season 2, Episode 0' 5 minute recap mini episode or something. People could skip it if they don't need it, meanwhile I could refamiliarise myself with all the characters and basic plot points.

The worst thing back then was the christmas and superbowl breaks. So annoying for a show to go on break for 4 weeks because of some random sporting event.

the fact that we only get like 8 episodes every 18 months sucks too

I agree to a point, though I also think it could easily be analogized to the release of books in a book series, which often take even longer between releases. And just reading episode summaries is usually enough to refresh my memory.

> That’s why previously on has to exist.

Wasn't that more because they wanted people to be able to just jump in with some context for things even if they hadn't been watching previous episodes of the show?

It's not about juggling plotlines, it's about retaining the fucks to give about a show.

A show that I would watch every week for a prolonged time with short breaks would play on my mind a lot more and I find that if I have to wait 2 years for 10 episodes I never find myself thinking about it.

yes super annoying, they get on my nerves, these dudes, and they think theyre so funny

None of them ever provide enough info unless you’ve already seen old episodes. Plus, like, Lord of the Rings has a previously on every episode even though it’s streaming and all the old episodes are available to watch at all times. But they released it weekly so they couldn’t trust people to remember the old episodes even over the course of 8 weeks. No, 7 weeks, because they put the first two out on one week, right?

The shows i watch I rewatch before the new season starts. Basicallt if I dont care enough to rewatch I don't continue.

The problem for me is that they’re not only taking years between seasons, but ALSO rolling out seasons weekly over months. It’ll be 3 years from the first episode of the new Thrones to the next season. They’re dragging out content and release schedules and it’s gotten really thin, to the point each service has like one show running at a time, which ain’t nearly enough for their rising prices and advertising annoyances.

Yeah I have this issue, Disenchantment on Netflix is a show I barely remember jack shit about, despite the fact I've seen all 4 seasons lol.

Ozark is another I gave up watching, season one was good, but by the time season 2 came out, I couldn't remember much, and just didn't care enough to rewatch the show.

Look on the bright side, my brother was really loving GoT, and had his heart attack just after season 6.

I want it good. and fast. AND cheap.

I'm waiting for Barry to finish before getting into it. Exception I made was House of the Dragon, since felt it'd be very hard to avoid spoilers and I could go and read the Fire and Blood book to finish it out.

When a show gets last season announced has been when I usually start getting interested now. I wish there were more miniseries.

Nah screw that, missing the finale because I got diarrhea or having to choose between two of my favorite sitcoms airing a new episode on different networks in the same time slot.

I missed half of Static Shock because I had soccer practice Saturday mornings.

Love Netflix limited series for this reason.

If you worked second shift with no predictable schedule, no TV for you.

I can relate to this, yep.

There were replays and reruns and internet too. It wasn't nearly as bad as waiting for 2 years.

you also just described what it's like to catch up with a show not having seen earlier episodes though.

Yeah I usually just wait until they're on their final season before I start on season 1

I'm on the same page. There are too many shows today competing for my limited entertainment time, so my threshold has become quite high. Ozark, Peaky Blinders, The Crown: these are all shows that I like but took too much time between their seasons, and when they came back I wasn't interested enough anymore.

And if a new show fails to interest my in one, or at most two episodes, they're gone too. I simply don't have the time anymore.

This is just what happens when we as a culture are accustomed to "TV Shows" that are actually 10 hour movies with huge special effects budgets, dozens of cast members, and Hollywood-style action sequences.

You get what you pay for with this stuff. If more audiences were interested in 22 episode seasons of cheaply produced situation comedies, then we'd be getting a bunch of those made every year instead.

I use the app TVTime for a similar thing

Yeah, the normalization of year+ waits between seasons is tiring. Like, it's completely normal now for a show, with only about 10 episodes per season, to wait 2 years between seasons, and no one bats an eye.

YES! Before you'd always wait one year until the next season; nowadays you have to wait 2-3 years! It makes no sense!

Eh. That was more because if you didn't watch your show specifically at the time it was released on TV then you had a near zero chance of ever seeing the episode again.

I think this issue is directly related to why shows get canceled after only 2 or 3 seasons on the streaming networks. By the time a shows 2nd season comes out I've forgotten what happened in the 1st, so I don't bother watching it. I'm guessing this happens for a lot of people so they cancel cause not enough people watched it the day it gets released.

Always Sunny is getting pretty bad lately, Huge wait times and then the episodes are super short and the seasons get more and more condensed.

It’s not that big of a deal for me. 2 years really isn’t that long at all, and there’s plenty of time to brush up on the lore if there is something I need to remember. Video games take longer than a year to make, most music artists drop every 3 or so years, movies by my favorite directors take time to release as well. I don’t see what is so special about TV that people can’t be patient for new content. I understand wanting to know what happens next, but that’s life.

Yes. Used to love Resident Alien but now I feel like I don't care as much. Though I do love the humor still

I remember being on twitter sharing family trees with fans

I did watch Breaking Bad as it aired and loved the show but the wait after Season 4 was not too bad because it ended the Gus arc quite well.

Dark is the most confusing show I ever watched, and also one of my favorites. I loved it. But I did read episode synopses and look at family trees after each episode.

Also, before streaming, popular shows would have a second airing that week, and they'd rerun the entire season over the summer, because "the big three" wouldn't release new content over the summer.

I get really pissed off now that FIOS doesn't make previous seasons of their broadcast/cable network shows available for free "on demand". I deliberately won't bother checking out Ghosts (CBS) in its second season, because I'm not paying for a Paramount+ subscription to watch Ghosts first season, and I don't torrent on a whim anymore.

Welcome to the world of anime watching. Where sometimes you can go years between seasons.

Im happy Dark was only 3 seasons. Every year I would rewatch the previous seasons. Only show I have ever done that. Dont regret it! Im so excited for the Dark creators new show coming November.

I don't watch shows until they're cancelled. Can't be bothered to remember what happened.

I'm a super star wars fan. Seen all the movies, clone wars (all three), rebels, etc etc. Haven't seen a single episode of Disney+ star wars originals.

I told my friend to tell me when they get cancelled and I'll binge it lmao.

Like Doctor Who. Sherlock Holmes. To start.

Had to re watch Dark, YouTube summaries were not useful. Big time commitment but worth it

weren't DVRs pretty popular back then ?

As television and popular film merge into this bizarre, unnatural monster called "content", this is indeed what will happen!

To be less negative, film and television are basically the same now. Television used to be always airing, and had these massive 26 episode seasons, most of which were episodic. Now, television is going after being 10-50 hour movies, it seems like.

it's rare that i ever sit down in front of the tv anymore... and, this is partly why. the last thing i remember watching with any real interested was 'the walking dead'. i made it through the first few seasons but, the seemingly constant seasonal 'breaks' killed it for me.

i know the show is coming / has come to an end recently and really? i could care less at this point.... which sucks because it was such a good show.

seriously, if i can't sit and binge watch the entire series over a bored weekend, i'm not interested.

I'd say that most "Previously On..."s would fall far short of catching someone up.

Short-episode recaps are present now in the day of digital distribution. A 3-minute season recap to prep you for a follow-on season with a bit of context.

But typical in-season recaps for an episode are kept to 30-60s, and really just give you a memory-jog of major plot points.

I don't know that binge watching really helps, though. If anything you're less likely to remember specific details if you watch the entire show in one or two sittings.

I don't think the issue is that it takes time to make shows. The issue is how the shows are written. Simply put, the people writing seem to care less and less about the audience experience.

It's not very different than when GoT/HoD get in trouble for releasing a very dark episode.

I'm not a big fan of the extensive hiatus mode.

For me the issue is not with the breaks themselves. The issue is that for a while, in television, serious or intelligent has become synonymous with self-referential and dense and serialized. But too little attention is paid to the basic craft of conveying information. We end up with shows that seem to assume you have as much knowledge as the writers as to what's happening at any given moment, no matter how long the show's been off the air.

I mean television is still 'always' airing in the sense that there's so much more than there was. There might be shorter seasons, but there's more shows to watch.

Yes, but those 20 episodes a season were procedural. Most of the episodes didn't really matter because they were self-contained.

When you get to 30+ it's drifting into soap opera tier quality.

Whilst there are less episodes per show now, there's way more shows.

Thanks for the warning, I'll do a background rewatch before starting the new one

Well in the context of this thread specifically, it is about the gap between seasons for high budget TV tbf

I think the longer break between seasons also hurts shows that require more engagement than others. One example that pops to mind is Westworld. In that show you need to remember small details brought up in previous seasons to fully understand what’s going on. Therefore, more casual viewers are always confused asf when a new season comes out cause it’s been 2+ years since they even watched it.

It depends on the show. If it's a network TV show, I'm okay with several month long breaks. If it's a streaming show, no. I watch the show when they've announced AND scheduled the final season.

Yes, I miss out on the social media chatter while airing, but there's always rewatches going on and I can start new Reddit threads like, "I'm on S2 and ..." to get some feedback.

I'm fine with the fact that it can take years to make some of this great TV, but I too don't have a memory good enough to watch in real time. On rare occasions, I will use YouTube season recaps if I caught something live, but if I know its a show that is likely to have years between seasons, I just wait usually.

Shows need to have 3/4 minute recaps after a long break imo. I don't want to rewatch a series when it returns but sometimes I need my memory jogging when it's been a year+

take HOTD for example, I'll probably just wait until end of season 2 or 3 to even start it. New models suck.

No, it doesn't really bother me. If it's been a while (e.g. The Dragon Prince's 4th season) there's always some useful video or forum post to get your caught up to speed without a rewatch. Sometimes the network provides their own recap for you (e.g. also the Dragon Prince).

lmao, life forcing you to miss things builds character! Makes you a better problem solver. I successfully faked being sick twice so I could stay home and watch Flight 29 Down instead of going to church...

Honestly, if I had nothing but my country's version of DVR growing up I probably would've been fine. Less distractions, more time for books...and people.

Yikes...did he survive to see how much worse it got after that season?

Yeah. When season 2 of the Witcher came out, I started it and realized halfway through the recap that I had zero recollection of anything that happened in season 1. So I never wound up watching season 2

Static Shock came out in 2000, lol

I don't know if I'd call it a struggle, but by the time the show comes back I probably forgot about the previous season and don't really care about it.

I've found that I just really appreciate a good "Previously on..." summary.

Otherwise, I just skim the descriptions of last seasons episodes in Wikipedia, and then I'm all set.

Which shows have you been watching that you could recommend I look into?

Well, what are your favourite shows and are you restricted to specific platforms or just rich/spendthrift or a pirate?

yah. The problem for me is that I liked the dragon prince but not enough to watch the first 3 seasons again. A lot of characters are non humans so I dont remember them as easily. Had the same problem with Voltron.

You've got it quite backwards there. Binge watching is far in a way a far worse overall experience. People are far more likely to forget details and remember hardly anything at all over time if you binge a show than if you watched episodes on a weekly basis.

I like pretty much everything! And am able to watch more or less anything!

I just finished House of the Dragons

Am watching Babylon Berlin, and Handmaids Tale.

Show isn't good enough for a rewatch but is good enough that you're interested in a second season. . .

Very cool! Any other recs? Interesting that all three are like, shows to transport you to other worlds!

Loads. Severance, See, From, Black Sails

Gunna check out The Peripheral soon

Yeah. I often have to rewatch them or find a good recap video. Babylon Berlin S4 is on now and I'll definitely have to rewatch that before starting the new season or I'll be goosed

Back in the old days you had one chance to watch an episode, and once more in summer reruns... Then it was gone forever.

And before VCR's, you literally had to plan your ass to be in front of the TV at air time.

If we're lucky. I hate that aspect.

Some of us just aren't big on rewatching hour-long serialized dramas. I only ever do that if a show is one of my all-time favorites, and even then not until like a decade has passed.

Those shows demand full rewatches if you're gonna do it, with dozens of hours of commitment. It's not like a classic sitcom of which you can just throw a random episode on any time.

same

I got attacked on here by some people a few months back bywhen I posted asking if anyone missed the era of network TV when we had a set TV season and around 18-24 episodes a year, we generally knew when stuff would be on, and we were able to spend a lot of time with good characters (since honestly, filler episodes are needed sometimes just to learn more about the characters)

Fucking Maybelline

You didn't enjoy 2.5?

I didn't see it