#but having francesca eye up michaela when john is LITERALLY right there made my blood boil

[broadway-and-books-love]

I’m gonna say something controversial, but maybe Bridgerton wouldn’t have felt the need to rush Penelope and Colin’s season to screen if the show had a cable release schedule.

The show said they pushed Polin to season 3 because they felt audiences were getting impatient to see their love story resolved, which may be true, but they wouldn’t be so antsy after only two seasons if there weren’t two years between each of them. Yes, season 2 had to wait on COVID, and season 3 had to wait on the writer’s/actor’s strike, but they’ve said that season 4 will come out 2026 at best without any exterior obstacles, and they’ve just now convened the writer’s room (after season 3’s full release). I don’t watch many Netflix shows, but seeing as this is how they operate with TV, I don’t know how many people are going to continue sticking around for what will be an 8-season show (if they’re allowed to finish) with two years between everything when they’re already expressing discontent over the fact they have to wait so long, and often forget characters’ names and arcs but are unwilling to rewatch the entire show every time just to remember what happened one season ago. Audiences are finally reaching the point where they’re unsatisfied with 8 episodes every two years (often, in many show’s cases, with half an hour or less per episode), and with shows like Bridgerton losing production quality and poorly handling the source material (see: keeping Penelope and Colin’s core conflict over her being Lady Whistledown, but removing the context around it and providing a weaker argument, or having Francesca fall for Michael/a while being married to John, inadvertently playing into biphobic stereotypes and harming both characters’ love for John and their grief over his eventual death/guilty feelings for falling in love once he’s gone).

While there are things I love that the show changed (making the Bridgerton men much more appealing love interests, adding Queen Charlotte and her miniseries, creating a relevant but not central storyline regarding race equality in alternate England, LGBTQ+ rep, and, more recently, giving Lady Danbury more backstory), the main storyline has started suffering, especially in season 3. I’m not saying 22-episode shows with yearly releases don’t also decline over time, but they also aren’t expected to garner a massive following immediately upon release or face cancellation - or, if they are widely popular, to string fans along for far longer than necessary to retain subscribers for less, subpar content.