10 TV Shows That Need To Ditch ONE Thing
4. The BRUTAL Episode Lengths - Stranger Things
Though Stranger Things' fourth season was largely well received by critics and fans alike, there was one persistent criticism - the episodes were just too damn long.
The shortest episode in the season was 64 minutes long and the longest was an eye-watering 150, while most of the season's nine episodes clocked in at around 75-80 minutes.
As great as the show is, this was very obviously a case of too much of a good thing, as many found these expanded runtimes bloated and over-indulgent.
Clearly Netflix gave the Duffer Brothers carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, and they chose to turn season four into a 13-hour endurance trial.
But for the upcoming fifth and final season, the Duffers would do well to calm things down a bit and return to the more concise, modest storytelling canvas of the three prior seasons.
Thankfully this does seem to be the case, as in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last summer, the Duffers suggested season five's runtimes would be less "extreme":
"I don't think the run times will be as extreme in season five. We're trying to return to the simplicity of the structure in season one, with bigger scale and scope. Except for the finale, which I'm expecting will be pretty massive."