Outlander season 4 debate: Are more extended episodes a good idea?
So why does this happen? There are often a couple of different reasons for it. Sometimes, you have a network that wants to fit their episodes into a limited run time. That works best for scheduling, largely because there are many casual viewers who want to watch Outlander and then also check out something else the following our. Beyond that, there’s also the notion of momentum — some scenes that are filmed just don’t sometimes work in the final edit or an episode, or they do something to interrupt the pacing.
Yet, even with all of this in mind, are there reasons to include some of these scenes anyway? Would Outlander really be better if most of their episodes were longer than an hour? Given that there are some episodes that do have an increased run time (see “Dragonfly in Amber” or “A. Malcolm”) that are rather fantastic, we do think that the series could consider this and be okay.
By and large, we’re fairly critical of shows that go past the standard run time, largely because they are bloated and feel as though they are adding minutes just for the heck of it. Yet, that isn’t exactly the case with Outlander. It has some very-rich source material and, to go along with that, never feels as though it is just throwing a scene into an episode because longer = better. Every single moment we get on this series matters and with that, there is potential to get a few more minutes of it a week. It’s more content and it’s hard to imagine anyone complaining about that.
Yet, doing more extended episodes comes with its drawbacks. There is the scheduling concern of constantly going over an hour with new episodes and, beyond that, you also have an issue from a production end. You can’t just add more scenes and expect it to not either inflate the budget or make the schedule longer. You would have to find a way to edit in more of the deleted scenes and other material that was cut out. Given that the team probably would include these already if they could, this could prove challenging.
Personally, we’re all for longer episodes, but we’re also for not exhausting the cast. As it is, we can’t be too greedy getting 13 hour-long episodes of a show a year, especially given that this is more than just about any other premium-cable drama out there.
What do you think: Should we get some more extended episodes of Outlander season 4? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments!
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