All I'm sayin' is, 21 years? That's just about one-third of your lifespan. Kind of a long time.
First off, "except" is doing a
lot of work there. You're also ignoring some pretty fundamental structural changes in how television works these days. First off, most shows are heavily serialized, with each episode functioning more as a chapter in a story than as a complete story in their own right; a lot of shows are also constructed to be binge-watched instead of over time. There's also the fact that most television shows have much shorter season orders -- 10 to 13 has become standard, and this is literally half the typical season order in 2001 (22), and is even less than a typical season order back in the late 90s (26). There's also just the general fact that the market is
much more saturated these days, which means that the bar for a show to be successful is much lower -- which in turn means that TV shows can be constructed to appeal to much more specific, niche tastes, since they don't have to try to attract as large of an audience with broad tastes as they used to. And that's not to say all the ways in which television production has become more cinematic in style and presentation, as the costs of cinematic-style lighting and cinematography have decreased.
And, I'm sorry, but the visual effects on DIS, SNW, and PIC are just much better than they were on ENT. That's not a diss against ENT, but the age of the old CGI is noticeable.
Television is just very, very different than it was a literal generation ago.
I am
delighted to be called a kid, especially since I recently had the horror of speaking to the campaign manager of a state delegate and realizing this person was
literally born in 2002. lol
But -- 21 years is 40.38% of your entire lifespan. That's still a long time ago.
I have definitely been having that sensation of being shocked that 20 years ago was in fact
twenty entire years ago....!
