Age of the Geek

Mid-Season Madness

     People are in peril, the world is in danger, everything you know could be changed. And it’s only December.

     When did television’s mid-season finale become such a big deal?

     Sure, some shows have always used the impending winter hiatus to drum up excitement, but nowadays it seems like they’re pulling out all the stops.

     On “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” the team of secret agents have discovered the long lost Inhuman city they have been searching for since the September premiere. When I last checked in on “Once Upon A Time,” the whole city of misplaced fables were seconds away from doom. Meanwhile, over on “Sleepy Hollow,” the characters are dealing with a full-on apocalypse.

     These are pretty high stakes when you have another 12 episodes left in the season.

     I’m not complaining, mind you. I’ve no problem at all with television producers trimming out the filler episodes so they can tell a story in 11 episodes that they would normally tell in 22. If they don’t want to stretch things out and get right to the meat and potatoes, more power to them.

     But if TV shows are going to start treating the traditional season length like a formality, it does make me wonder how necessary that tradition is.

     As it stands, seasons of television are generally 22 to 24 episodes long. They start in September and end in May, with a month or two of break for the holiday season in the middle. This break is where the “mid-season finale” happens, but is there really any need to distinguish the two-month break in the winter from the three-month break of the summer?

     There’s really nothing gained in pretending that two blocks of a dozen episodes constitute a single season if each of those blocks can stand on their own merits. Especially if TV shows are going to continue the trend of big finishes in December.

     And it’s not like audiences are unwilling to embrace shorter seasons. “Game of Thrones” has been doing fine with 10 episode seasons. The last three seasons of “The Walking Dead” have only had 16 episodes, generally with a two-month gap in the middle.

     I’m not saying we should go the British route, where the 13 annual episodes of “Doctor Who” are still considerably more than the average show gets, but maybe two shorter seasons per year would be a preferable model to one longer one.

     Another advantage would be less heartbreak when new shows get the axe. Many shows starting out only get an order for a half-season’s worth of episodes. If they do well enough in the ratings, they get picked up for a full season and everything is fine. If not, they abruptly end without closure. “Firefly” is the most famous example of this, but it’s hardly the only great TV show to get cut-down without a chance at a proper send-off.

     Of course, all this talk hinges on the idea that the current television model is going to survive for much longer in the first place. Netflix is continually increasing their production of original content. They don’t bother with fixed schedules. When a new season of “House of Cards” is finished, they put the whole thing online and let the viewer watch it at their own pace.

     Whatever happens, it’s looking like the traditional model is on its way out. It’ll be interesting to see how the industry adapts itself.

     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is going to have to hit up Netflix until sweeps week.