The original post: /r/television by /u/Poweredkingbear on 2025-09-15 10:10:20+00:00.
I think this is one of those discussions where any and all nuances are thrown out of the window. People don’t want quality because what they really want is quick entertainment. They want to go back to the good old days when VFX didn’t matter as much and people are willing to tolerate downright awful CGI just to have a consistent 30 episodes per year. Even those folks don’t even tolerate it as much as they want themselves to believe when The CW or The Flash became a laughing stock for awful looking shows with laughable VFX and they became meme worthy because of it.
I feel like some folks are close to arguing that Stranger Things and ICarly are comparable because both are TV shows so therefore Stranger Things sucks because ICarly was able to produce 30 episodes per year. Don’t even mention the damn budget or the fact that Icarly is a sitcom that’s shot indoors in the same set over and over again with zero VFX or practical effects. I know that ICarly is an over exaggeration and no one mentions ICarly ,but that’s how I feel whenever people bring up House, Breaking Bad, The Wire and The Sopranos whenever there’s a discussion about prestige TV taking 3 years with 8 episodes to produce. None of those shows are remotely close to being “Big blockbuster movie” like quality. Even Star Trek TNG is 90% of the time shot in the same interior with reused assets where the large majority of it are just characters talking to each other. They have a much higher budget than a regular sitcom ,but not enough to be considered “big blockbuster movie” quality. Trying to compare those shows to Stranger Things or The Mandalorian makes absolutely zero sense because they don’t even have the 10th of the budget that those shows have.
Even those older shows like Buffy, Lost, or Supernatural have badly aged VFX. The only reason why people were willing to tolerate them was because the expectation for TV shows when compared to movies were different back then. Having cheap VFX/practical sets, fillers, flat lighting and basic camera work were necessary evil to make those shows work. Everyone knew back then that TV shows won’t have the 10th of the budget that movies would have on a regular basis so they shouldn’t even bother trying to compete. Times obviously has changed when people are expecting higher quality as everfor their television. Some people would even argue “Who even asked for it?” Well everyone mocked and laughed at The CW by having Buffy The Vampire level of VFX for The Flash series. People are indeed asking for it.