I hate the mid-season finale of a television show. I mean, HATE. It is artificial and sends the wrong message to viewers.
Here’s an example. My nwife and I are watching The Blacklist. It is on Moday nights, and as with every television program we watch, it gets recorded on our DVR to be watched at our convenience. We simply don’t have the time to coordinate watching live television anymore.
So last night (Tuesday) we watched the “fall finale” of The Blacklist. This was hyped up as the fall finale, but the program would be returning. It used to be a show was on hiatus instead of having a finale. Over the last few years a show has gone on hiatus and not come back. Networks are trying to convey a show is only temporarily going off the air I guess with this mid-season finale ballyhoo.
I find it misleading.
A finale is supposed to be an end-point, not an intermission. For a show that has a shortened season from the traditional 22-24 episode model, I would much rather have all the episodes air weekly than breaking them up. Some shows that have have 13 or 14 episodes have, in the last few years, aired only 6 or 7 episodes at a time. Doctor Who is a recent example. It’s just bothersome to take a few weeks to get into a show only to have it stop being broadcast for a few months.
I wish networks would just show the whole of a season rather than breaking it apart to try out several mid-season replacements. With the way things have been going if the ratings numbers aren’t spectacular often a show will get cancelled by the second airing. Often a show that is worth saving will be gone before its audience can find it.
More than that is the annoyance and over-reliance on “finale” as an incorrect storytelling device to pace out episodes. It sucks.