I have no problem believing that Patreon would be digging through the couch cushions like this, given what I know about their financial state. CTH is in the top 5 Patreon accounts in terms of earnings, and has been for a decade, so it’s not like they wouldn’t be on Patreon’s radar. The podcast is making more money than it ever has, so I assume it’s not because the hosts are going broke and need to pump the numbers.
If they’re being too cool about letting people sidestep Patreon then Patreon may be pressuring them to make an effort to keep paywalled content paywalled. I have no idea how Patreon works as a creator nor what steps Patreon could take, but I do know that they’re a for-profit digital platform and that digital platforms are assholes who will play hardball. I’m going to give Chris Wade the benefit of the doubt here, given that they’ve spent a decade not caring whether anyone is paying them.
It would be a funny way of bringing back the podcast subreddit. I don’t ever want to go back to reddit, but I wouldn’t mind seeing what happens from the outside. I hope the mods hand the sub over and then maybe we could see some John Brown memes make a comeback.
It’s not inherently bad. Episodic television is a series of self-contained narratives, and those narratives have value in themselves, even if they don’t alter the core premise of the show. Sometimes the show goes on too long and the writers run out of ideas or the original creatives move on, but that doesn’t invalidate the creative work up to that point. There are plenty of episodic TV shows that are amazing and wouldn’t benefit from fundamental changes to the premise.
Frankly, I think shows have gone too far in the other direction. Every streaming series is now a very long movie, and the medium isn’t better for it. Individual episodes often lack standalone value or punch, with plot and character development flowing too freely between them. Some creators are good at making use of the series format, using different visual or storytelling techniques to create episodes that feel distinct, but a lot of it just feels like they’re shooting an eight-hour film and then having an editor cut it into appropriately-sized pieces.
I guess what I’m saying is that, although it’s fine to not like TV as a medium, the idea of having a central, irresolvable conflict and exploring within the boundaries of that conflict doesn’t necessarily make for bad art. It’s a creative limitation, and limitations often lead to good art. There’s plenty of bad TV (like The West Wing) but there’s also plenty of great TV (unless you just dislike TV altogether, which, again, is fine).