Once again, a show I was looking forward to has returned to Netflix for a new season, and once again, Netflix has awkwardly cut that season in half. This time it’s for The Lincoln Lawyer, where after a solid season 1, it’s returned for season 2 only to have it split in what has now become an annoying Netflix tradition.
The release date of Season 2, Part 2 is August 3, 2023, effectively a month after Part 1’s debut. And once again I must spotlight how much I hate this practice, and how Netflix is uncomfortably trying to split the difference between the main two models of TV releases, its own binge-everything-at-once model and a traditional weekly release schedule.
I believe this mainly started in earnest with Stranger Things season 4, where the final, movie-length episodes were pushed out a month or so, though at the time that was mainly because they had to polish up some final VFX work on the long-delayed series attempting to be released at the tail end of a pandemic.
But, Netflix must have liked the result there, and started doing that with follow-up seasons of many different shows, You, Ozark, Money Heist, Lucifer, even Firefly Lane, for some reason. Most recently, this happened with The Witcher, illustrating the point that these series often start the split at awkward moments. In this case, it was after the worst episode of The Witcher’s third season. Will it get better after that? Who knows! Time to wait three more weeks to find out.
Now it’s The Lincoln Lawyer, another show that very much does not need to be doing this. I do wonder if Netflix’s new model here is changing how these shows are made. Previously, the benefit of the binge model was that you didn’t have to worry about episode breaks the same way you did on traditional TV, and they could flow into each other better. But now, is Netflix telling these shows to write in some sort of logical “break point” around episode 5 or 6 in order to better suit that new model? For some of these shows, that’s certainly what it feels like, even if it rarely works.
As I’ve said, Netflix is trying to have it both ways. It is trying to prolong subscriptions and further conversation about its shows without fully ditching the binge model it’s said it will never end. But in doing this it’s ruining the best part of the binge model, that you can watch a full seasonal story all at once. Instead, it’s just creating these stupid mid-season mini-cliffhangers you have to finish up the next month, and you’ve likely already started another half dozen shows by then, and will forget most of what happened without a recap.
It’s a terrible model and it’s only getting worse because it’s becoming the new norm. Think about any popular Netflix show that will be returning at some point and you can bet it’s going to be split in half. Wednesday season 2, Squid Games season 2. It’s not even a question, unless Netflix reverses course. And they should.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Read the full article here
