Contemporary Crossover

I know the whole streaming wars subject is much too dwelled upon for many reasons, but there’s one I just have not been able to wrap my head around lately.

After coming across a five month old Twitter draft reading: “Why aren’t they making crossover-episodes like they used to?”, I had no choice but to let the question occupy my brain for the next 48 hours. And then it drifted off and I tucked the question away for another four months, and needless to say the thought now permeates my brain at least once a week (as what happens with most of my Twitter drafts). Naturally, this intrusive thought prompted me to ask what the modern day equivalent is to such a beautiful theatrical release for a cable TV episode. 

All I hear these days is “IP this” and “IP that”, and I never put two and two together to understand that that directly translates to “your favorite characters may never interact on the same forced and overly lit stage set ever again”, and even though these streaming service CEOs maybe aren’t to blame, they are the closest thing I can find to an explanation for such a sorrowful query. 

Yeah a contract can expire and shows can be rotated out through the carousel of different streaming services every year, but what’s the fun in that? This Contemporary Crossover is one of the worst phenomenons to occur in the latter half of the 2010’s, and I will never forgive the CEOs pictured in this collage for their failure to redress this universal grievance among Gen Z audiences.