Getting Serious About Series

I'll continue on with my completely random thoughts today and make sure that I give the TV series some love after so summarily rejecting it yesterday.

It's not that I'm anti-series (in fact, for years, I've preferred the format to my new bestie, the Talkie).  It's just that they require a time commitment and have a messy habit of either not completing (I'm looking at you, Better Off Ted) or unraveling into a complete mess in their final season (I'm looking at you, Ted Mosby).  I like consuming things in neat little packages and, if they ultimately suck because their creators can't be arsed to pace things appropriately because they want to move a Star Wars franchise deal that ultimately falls through, then I've only lost a couple of hours.

As much as I like the idea of hard and fast rules, life is too complicated to adhere to golden rules (other than breathe only oxygen).  However, there are some guidelines that I've been migrating toward:

• I prefer my series wrapped, spoilers be damned!  While I try to avoid spoilers, I can't be realistic about avoiding spoilers for series that are years old.  Also, if the writing is good enough, the spoilers don't really matter.  I just finished Pride and Prejudice for the nth time, and was still happy to see Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam march off toward wedded bliss after spending an entire novel deliberately being obtuse in their observations of others.  Then I don't have to face the pain of either having the series cancelled out from under me or having to face the pain of naming my child Mother of Dragons and not banking on a very realistic (if unevenly paced) outcome that made me just wish I named my child Doug.
• I prefer 8 seasons max.  After that, writers get a little too creative.  They can screw it up before that (Let's get Maddy and David together and introduce them into a love triangle!  How can that miss?), but if they're planning for a shorter story duration, the writing tends to be tighter and focused with coherent themes.
• Anthologies are an exception, except American Horror Story, which went the way of Moonlighting pretty fast.
• The fewer episodes per season, the better.  I like the trend of 6-12 episodes per season.  Even in my segmented viewing, I can get through a season in a reasonable amount of time.
• Bring back the miniseries!  Death By Lightning was awesome and provided a rock-solid origin story for everyone's favorite lasagna-loving cat!

I'll admit that I'm currently not following my own rules.  I've been catching up with Ted Lasso, which is heading into deep meh territory for me, violating Rule 1; I'm caught up with Wednesday, which I have no real complaints with yet, and will probably actively violate my guidelines by watching Widow's Bay, which is only one season in, but is getting rave reviews from everyone writing for The Athletic.

Happy viewing!

Until next time, my human and robot friends.