‘I thought it was a good idea’: The creator of a hit Netflix series has no issues indulging one of the streamer’s worst trends

While every TV series is presumably designed with multi-season arcs and open-ended storylines in mind, it’s a very recent phenomenon to deliberately cut a run of episodes in half and have them separated by several weeks, with The Lincoln Lawyer the latest to suffer from one of Netflix’s worst indulgences.

The Witcher did the exact same very recently, and it’s infuriating for subscribers to know as soon as they hit play on that none of their burning questions are going to be answered immediately. If anything, it’s eve more infuriating than the standard model of dropping episodes weekly and letting them end on a cliffhanger, because that was the way things were done; as opposed to the streaming service allowing itself to luxuriate in two different sets of audience data to pat itself on the back.

The creatives don’t seem to mind, though, with The Lincoln Lawyer co-showrunner Ted Humphrey admitting to Deadline that he doesn’t have any problems being told to craft Mickey Haller’s ongoing adventures around a pre-mandated mid-season finale.

“I thought it was a good idea. I guess time will tell if that was right or not, though I don’t know why it wouldn’t be right. The first season was the first time I’ve ever done a show for Netflix, and the experience of having a show come out that skyrockets to number one was really amazing. But it’s just, like, gone in a flash. You have this great moment where everybody’s talking about you and everybody’s watching you, and then suddenly they’re on to something else. This is a way to stay in the conversation longer and give people something to look forward to. I thought it was a good idea.”

Of course, there are plenty of subscribers who vehemently disagree, but that’s not going to do a damn thing in changing Netflix’s mind when the polarizing preference has been proven to work in terms of cold, hard, data.