“Season 1 Episode 6: “The Good Man” [Season 1 Finale]”
Six episodes is a whole “season?”
Damn, I’m tired of getting played like this. I want shows to go back to being 24 episodes per season. Damn cable tv (especially HBO, which started this crap)!
Agree.
These short season programs are ridiculous.
Even worse, AMC took a ‘regular’ season of Hell on Wheels and cut it into 2 seasons of about 7 episodes each to close out the series next year.
The first season of the walking dead was six episodes. The network does this to gauge interest. A six episode season gives the show a better chance than just a pilot episode.
It’s way better. If you only have 6 hours of story then only tell 6 hours of story. Pumping a bunch of filler episodes doesn’t make a show better, it just dilutes what made the show good over more time. Cable didn’t start it, British TV started it. Some of the best shows in the history of TV have a total episode count under what America used to consider a season. Would the Prisoner be better with 5 episodes nobody actually wanted to make or had story for? Would Fawlty Towers be better with 36 more episodes that weren’t as polished and perfected? Cable just realized it’s a better way to run shows. FTWD has been renewed for 15 next year. The real question is does this creative team have enough story to do 31 episodes across two different shows?
The first Season of The Walking Dead was only 6 episodes also.
When the original Walking Dead first premiered on AMC the first "season" was only 6 episodes. I figured they wanted to see if it would fly as a regular show and if the fans of the books would transfer the loyalty to the show. Both of those things happened, and now the season for TWD is usually 16 episodes (I think). Most shows on "cable" have shorter seasons, I've noticed. Perhaps it is the shorter attention span of audiences nowadays.
A lot of British shows run in lots of 6 episodes; “Being Human” is one of my favorites, I’ve heard “Black Mirror” used the same format.
That’s enough to give people a large chunk of plot but force dense plotting and character development, without stretching out an arc for 12 to 20 episodes.
The side benefit of 6 episodes is that they can see if it is worth paying for a long run without killing the show half way through the season - and short enough to plop in on another network if a different show is killed after the first few episodes.
First season of TWD was 7 episodes.
I was surprised they didn’t do 7 for this ones’ first year.