this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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But how many dramas with 20+ episodes per season actually hold up? I only ever see people discussing Trek, Lost, ER, and the West Wing.
Also I dont think trek was comparatively low budget for its time.
I think people are nostalgic for 2000s tv which was a result of the new frontier of cable. New channels had to make a niche for themselves to stand out from all the competing channels and so funded all types of stuff in the hopes of finding an audience. The streaming era that followed it and the network tv that preceded were near monopolies appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Little House on the Prairie had some ongoing stuff iirc
They spent about half of what current Trek episodes do adjusted for inflation. TNG also had a lot of episodes where it's just people on set and there wasn't much in the way of special effects to worry about.
Off the top of my head Xena, Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica all hold up pretty well.
Babylon fucking 5 is a masterpiece of storytelling
I'm rewatching SG-1 and there's definitely parts/episodes that don't hold up/age poorly but for an end-of-history Airforce propaganda show it's overall pretty good.
I'm also a sucker for that era of tv, stargate was pretty good at playing it seriously when it needed to but also being able to poke fun at themselves and have fun. I feel like that's something that's missing in modern shows, I can't remember the last time I saw an episode like Wormhole X-treme which is just a live letter to the show itself
Yeah I've been watching Xena with a friend that has never seen it and we just got to the episode where their distant relatives find the Xena scrolls and those are used in universe for the Xena TV show. There's also the episode in the last season where they're cloned in the present day and implanted with their memories
Supernatural and Lucifer are a bit like that too.
Oh, adding this to my question about stargate, is that any good compared to say babylon 5
I think it's one of the better sci-fi series from that era if you like late 90s / early 2000s shows.
I do like those shows
The main budget adjustment you have to do between streamers and broadcast tv is residuals. With broadcast tv residuals could have you set for life. Meanwhile streaming barely has any so established actors ask for more upfront, which inflates the budget.
hard disagree on stargate sg-1 holding up, atlantis, maybe.
I tried to watch SG-1 recently and got to the episode with the tribesman who wouldn't look or speak to the woman and just couldn't. Painfully cringey
Imagine giving up on TNG because of S01E04 Code of Honor
Coincidentally, written by the same writer (Katharyn Powers)
Xena, Stargate sg-1 and atlantis but not the third one, Babylon 5, Farscape, X-files, twin peaks (22 episode season 2), that justice league cartoon where it's all 2-part half hour episodes and they were broadcast in an hour block originally?
and trek is 80s tv, kind of.
A lot of shows, including some of the ones you mentioned, have a lot of one-shot episodes and just a few that make big plot changes (ER and Trek fit this model), and I think that holds true going back for a while. You didn't ask for sitcoms per se, but some sitcoms did this, like Frasier, Friends, Scrubs, and the later episodes of Cheers. Firefly was an example of a failed show that maintained a long following, and a few network shows like Alias, Smallville, X-Files, and House had developing plots too. YMMV on whether these shows "hold up."
But in general it's not going to have happened a lot under the old model because shows could be dropped even just a few episodes in, but if successful, were expected to run for an indefinite length, and layering heavy into episode-by-episode plot progression risked losing viewers who missed an episode. Big event episodes would have marketing and often get priority for rerun schedules so you knew to prioritize your shows if you were a diehard.
These days, shows are signed on for full seasons from the get-go and are usually wrapped by the time the show publishes, so it's easier for producers and writers to work around. But the real reason 10 episode runs and 2 season shows feature so heavy is because those have lower contractual obligations than anything greater. Yes, it's about budget, but the cost jumps dramatically the moment they go past these constraints, so they generally won't unless they're shooting for a prestige show to nab some Emmys in which case the budgets are already huge
Yes I specified Dramas because Comedies do better with longer seasons. Comedy is all about rythm and it takes a while to find it. Early episodes of sitcoms always pair up random characters to see who has the best chemistry, thats on the job training streaming shows cant do.
Ironically I think firefly stayed popular because its cancellation, it exists in just the right way for fanfics to go wild over. And the actors can charge money for a picture and an autograph for years after a part time gig.
My parents sure do love Law & Order, but it isn't just dramas. The same happened with comedies as well.
yeah there's a shitload of 20+ episode/season sitcoms that hold up