Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
I agree, and I go one step beyond:
Any "series" is BY DEFINITION, bad. If to tell a good story you need +4 episodes, you're doing a poor job. Or, what's real, you're just bloating it ON PURPOSE to keep people attached to their screens.
If Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, 2001 Space Odyssey or any other good film managed to tell their story in <3hs, I'm sure any other of these "originals" should be able to do the same.
The real quality resides in making something SHORTER and condensed. This is when you start playing with REAL cinematic mechanisms. For example, Seven Samurai is well known for its use of motion and dynamism. Kurosawa communicates a lot without using dialogue, just by the use of movement of the characters or the background. Today's productions are just: explicit dialog > cut scene nature > explicit dialog > cut scene nature > etc.
Some stories might need longer runtimes, like Lord of the Rings or whatever "bigger universe" it is. But these are EXCEPTIONS, not the rule.
For the record, I do enjoy some Series: Friends, The Office, etc. But these are just comedies, and one could argue they're explicitly made to be "bloated" (in terms of length span).
> Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
PS: I know I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion but I don't care.