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Minus ad breaks, I missed this aspect of content consumption. Choosing to watch a random episode of a random show just doesn’t happen and I missed being able to just “see what’s on”. I spent a fair amount of time setting up random “channels” I can tune into that play random episodes from tv shows on my media server and it’s great.
A lot of newer shows cannot be watched randomly though because the episodes actually build upon each other.
If you take older shows like TNG or X files: you could easily jump back in after missing half a season. The episodes were written to be mostly self-contained, because missing an episode or two because of life was very very common. Season finales were often a major exception, and were therefore also majority advertised so people knew to plan around them.
If you write a show for streaming, however, there is no concept of "missing an episode". So the writers are freed from that constraint, and subsequently write shows that are only meant to be watched in their entirety, in order.
Interesting to see it as being freed from a constraint rather than a crutch that viewers can be relied upon to watch all episodes. IMO writing satisfying one episode arc that also makes up part of a wider arc is much more difficult, and many shows now really have just a single arc that only gets good in the last third, making it essentially a 6-8 hour movie rather than an episodic show.
Yeah, you can definitely see a trend towards more HBO style shows as streaming took off.
I remember watching an episode of The Wire, and somebody else watched it with me and didn't like it because they didn't know what was going on and the story wasn't resolved in an hour. I'm like 10 episodes in, and this ain't Columbo.