I’m two months late to this gig, but this past weekend finally saw me watch Reboot — a Hulu comedy that lampoons the TV industry. I also finished the entire show in one day because, to my chagrin, season one was just eight episodes.
To put that into the numbers, including the credits, the show is 3 hours and 46 minutes long. For reference, the Snyder Cut is 4 hours 2 minutes long, as is Return of the King’s Extended Edition (its theatrical length is 3 hours 20 minutes).
That’s a long way of saying Reboot isn’t a long view, which is an issue for me. There seems to be a shortage of big 30-minute comedies right now, and the ones on the air seem to have abandoned the usual 20-plus episode season in favor of a much shorter run.
A new era of shorter seasons is in stark contrast
Think of the comedy shows that are currently on the air. How many of them have more than a dozen episodes per season? (Editor’s note: Only Abbott Elementary, which will go 22 episodes into its second season, comes to mind.) Make sure you have long-running animated shows doing their usual thing, and live-action shows that are long past their welcome. The ones that started when longer seasons were still the norm, and follow the axiom of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
The same can’t be said of a lot of the new stuff. Much of this seems to have happened when broadcasting gained popularity over traditional broadcast television. Streaming exclusives have always had fewer episodes, something I haven’t encountered very often in the past.
Hour-long dramas, especially those with heavily serialized action sequences, can easily benefit from concise storytelling without unnecessary filler getting in the way. The sitcoms, meanwhile, seem to have copied this idea, even if they didn’t always need it. After all your classic TV sitcoms are supposed to be easy casual viewing, and they’re all pretty much filler.
Imagine if this was the way things always worked out
Take Seinfeld, for example. By his own admission, the show is about nothing, and there is almost no resolution to the problems the cast is facing. They just jump from one ridiculous situation to another. It doesn’t matter how much you get, it’s still fun.
And since the first season can sometimes be the only season, imagine if Seinfeld arrived and then ended after only eight episodes, you’d be pretty disappointed at how little you actually got. This is how I feel now that I’m done rebooting. Which season two is not guaranteed.
I really enjoyed the show, too. The reboot is the kind of self-deprecating referential comedy that I really enjoy. It’s a TV show that pokes fun at the TV industry, and Hollywood’s ongoing love affair with reviving and rebooting just about every franchise imaginable. Particularly with executives trying to cash in on classic shows that have found new audiences in the broadcast era — in this case, a long-cancelled fantasy sitcom called Step Right Up.
Crucially, the show doesn’t delve into absurdity, something the likes of The Office have done. It’s awful that someone at Dunder Mifflin can get any work done with all the shenanigans going on all day. The Step Right Up group is not, as the cast and crew maintain a modicum of professionalism and pride in their work. But funny things still happen, especially as old-timers and up-and-coming talent veer toward what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Yes, sometimes less is more
Of course not all shows can move up to their old season order right away, even before shortened seasons commissioned by broadcasters. The Office is a particularly notable example, as the first season was only six episodes long. The same goes for Parks and Recreation, which is probably for the best because both shows didn’t hit their stride until much later.
Can you imagine a full 22 episodes of David Brent-esque Michael Scott? Not even David Brent himself could stay in the business for long, and The Office probably won’t last nearly as long as he did.
Other notable shows that have found success under similar circumstances include Veep, Breaking Bad, and How I Met Your Father – which jumps from a 10-episode first season to a 20-episode run in season two. Even Seinfeld, that gold-standard TV comedy, only had five episodes in its first season.
After all, TV shows cost a lot to make, and if you bomb right away, you’ll have a bunch of episodes commitment that no one will ever watch. Testing the waters with half a dozen episodes is a much less risky strategy — though frustrating for people like me.
Shouldn’t Hulu want longer shows?
As mentioned above, Reboot Season 2 isn’t guaranteed right now, but I hope it follows the same pattern. Heck even if it wasn’t a twenty-something episode, going into double digits would be a win. Even if it’s six hours of watching material instead of four.
Plus, next time I’ll be ready to watch the episodes as they go down — and not watch them all two months after they originally aired. This exacerbated the issue of running out of episodes to watch, and the 30 minute runtime just wasn’t doing me any good.
A longer season – which also doesn’t seem like something I can expect, many shows sticking to the same length year after year – is just not good for me. More Reboot episodes means people will ostensibly spend more time watching Hulu, and less time thinking about cancellations.
At least by adjusting weekly, I’m going to stretch my viewing experience over several weeks. I’ll probably be upset when it’s over, just as I am with the short crime seasons of What We Do In The Shadows, but at least it won’t go faster than a pair of limited-edition sneakers.
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