The Diplomat

Netflix

One of Netflix’s best sleeper shows in a while, The Diplomat, returns for season 2 this coming Thursday on Halloween, despite its lack of spookiness. But when viewers log on, they will notice something unfortunate, that season 2 has been cut down to just six episodes, fewer than the eight we got for season 1.

Everyone’s first instinct, of course, will be to blame Netflix, as it would not be the first time we’ve seen slashed episode orders, likely for budget reasons. That’s an understandable conclusion. It is not, however, what happened here. This is actually a judgement call from the creator of the series Debora Cahn, who actually said Netflix very much didn’t want this:

“It was my decision,” Cahn told TVLine, “[Netflix] was not happy. They wanted the full eight….I was really tired. It was a time thing. It felt like there wasn’t enough time to turn around eight of them. It was a lot to do in what appeared to be a short period of time.”

The Diplomat

Netflix
However, as it turned out this…didn’t actually need to happen. Originally, Cahn was told that they had less time to turn around season 2, but it ended up being a timeline that was extended to a new, somewhat industry standard 18 months. Cahn says that from the start, if she’d know that, maybe she could have done the eight episodes Netflix (and fans) wanted. So clearly something got messed up here.

Hopefully this will not happen for season 3, and yes, there is going to be a season 3, as Netflix really likes the show and it has already been renewed two weeks ago ahead of this Thursday’s season 2 premiere. Production has already started, indicating that maybe things are back on track and with a proper timeline pathway, an eight episode season is likely to return. Season 3 is also headed to New York City instead of DC, it seems.

This also represents just how weird TV has gotten, where turning around eight episodes of a show in over a year that does not need some kind of elaborate VFX work still barely seems possible for these showrunners. Bridgerton’s creator has also said at minimum, they can really only do every two years. Times have certainly changed from 22 episode seasons ever year in the broadcast era, and it does not seem like we’re ever going back.