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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gabriel Maxwell" data-source="post: 162878" data-attributes="member: 121">My point in the OP was - with shorter episodes today you'd expect fewer scenes. But no -- not only are the episodes shorter, you also get a staggering 50% (!) higher number of scenes per episode (35 today as opposed to 23 in the 1980s).So this is not purely a question of quick-cut editing -- they actually write and film a lot, lot more scenes (but shorter scenes) for each episode, which in my opinion leaves very little room for character development.A scene simply serves a purpose to move the story forward and deliver some zinger punchlines for the audience to laugh at and that's it. And maybe that's one of the main reasons why today's shows can never achieve the greatness of the best seasons of the 1980s soaps. They are crippled by design from the get go.That was the standard in the 1980s, but not anymore. All "hour-long" dramas now are 39-43 minutes in length per episode. Half-hour sitcoms on CBS like 'Young Sheldon' now run for only 18-19 minutes per half-hour, which is shocking compared to the 22 minutes for 1980s sitcoms or 26 minutes in the golden days of 'I Love Lucy'. I can't even imagine how horrible watching DYNASTY on The CW must be with a total of 5 commercial breaks running after every 6-7 minutes of the show.It sounds a bit like the original idea for a DYNASTY spin-off from the 1980s -- Fallon Carrington moves to Miami to run a hotel to make it on her own, leaving her family in Denver behind.I wonder if whatever system they now have in place in the writers' room as well as these big cast departures have anything to do with the budget. It seems they decided at some point (thanks to the Netflix involvement) they can keep this show going for at least the minimum life-span of a moderately successful series which is 4 seasons or 80-ish episodes, regardless of the linear ratings. But, once they saw the show wouldn't be a hit they were hoping to get initially, they downgraded it in every aspect of production & broadcasting. Churn out 22 episodes per season, but cut the costs as low as possible.First it moves to Friday; then it's promotional budget is slashed (no more proper 30-second promos); then the show chooses to focus on Fallon and they let Cristal go and replace her with (I assume) a cheaper actress; then they want a creepy Adam on the show, so they get rid of Steven; perhaps even Nicolette Sheridan was too expensive to keep beyond her initial 22 episodes, so they came up with a story why she needed to go, instead they'll have a cheaper actress as Dominique to fill the void for a while, etc.I'm of course heavily speculating here, maybe I'm totally off base, but it just seems plausible to me that since they seem to be saving money left and right with this show, that such cuts would have heavily impacted the creative aspect of the show as well, including the work of the writing staff and the manner in which the episodic scripts were produced.</blockquote>

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