Series and Seasons, Seriously
Rick Retro’s Realm, Behind the Scenes #13: Can we please define what is a TV Series and what is a season of said series?
Yesterday I mentioned the term mega-series. What do I mean by that?
If a series goes “on hiatus” for more than a couple of years, and then resumes, or if the name of the series changes, I consider the original series and the new series to be different television series. But many sources don’t, so in those cases I call the overall result a mega-series.
Some of these cases are viewed as separate series by a few sources and as just one and the same series by others. In other cases, almost everyone but me agrees it’s just one series.
I want an objective standard though, so I’m sticking to my guns, and defining those cases as separate series. My only concession is that I will use the season numbers that are generally accepted. This means, for example, that to me, the TV series Scrubs has eight seasons, not nine. The mega-series Scrubs has nine seasons. And the TV series Scrubs: Med School has one season: season #9.
In a similar vein, producers of TV series now sometimes release “seasons” over the course of two, even three years. No. That is two or three seasons. I will stick with the official numbers to avoid confusion, but will append an “a”, “b”, or “c” to clarify these are separate seasons, dividing them usually at the longest breaks in the release schedule. This results in things like me considering a series to have seven seasons even though the official count is five. So be it.
Thanks for your support.
Keep the comments coming!
Originally posted to text group 2025-01-06
Last updated 2025-02-03