Month-to-Month: Episodic Medium's Winter 2025 Schedule

Long hiatuses come to an end in an attempt at a balanced coverage schedule

Welcome to our quarterly update on the shows we’re covering on a weekly basis here at Episodic Medium. To make sure you’re able to read along with all this coverage, no better time to become a paid subscriber than right now.

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I’ve long been a proponent that any show could serve as a strong candidate for weekly coverage like what we do here at Episodic Medium. However, this philosophy comes with the challenge that it means there’s arguably no reason we shouldn’t be covering any show.

The act of trying to balance the newsletter’s budget is a moving target, and it means that coverage I’d like to read doesn’t always make the most sense. I recently surveyed the newsletter’s subscribers, and someone especially mentioned they’d love to see coverage of some CBS procedurals like Matlock or Elsbeth. I’d love to assign that coverage, and would direct you to contributor Noel Murray’s reviews of the former at Vulture, but the math on covering broadcast shows is hard when it means 18+ episodes across the year. Will enough people subscribe explicitly to read that coverage to make up for that?

Sometimes timing and scheduling make checking in on a broadcast show make sense: the schedule had an opening in November when NBC debuted St. Denis Medical, and I think there’s slightly more to discuss in the first season of a comedy than in a procedural, with greater variation as the writers try to find a rhythm without the same number of safety nets structurally. I’m not sure if Caroline Siede’s coverage will extend beyond the first season, if the show is even renewed, but I’m going to let her see it through this winter/spring because the project of writing about a sitcom’s growing pains is worthwhile in any form.

But in other cases, the circumstances don’t necessarily line up the same way. Max’s The Pitt is a fascinating experiment of adapting broadcast formats for the streaming era, a 15-episode medical drama that’s clearly trying to be ER without being ER. But we’ve already got a large number of dramas we’re covering in the next few months, and the format—each episode covering an hour of a shift—means that there isn’t as much variation as there might be in other cases. I’m intrigued how subscribers respond to the show, and look forward to reading coverage elsewhere, but after talking to critics who saw a lot of the season (one of whom said covering it weekly would drive someone insane given the format), I ultimately determined that weekly coverage wouldn’t make the cut.

I realize that can be frustrating at times, and that the balancing act I try to engage with means that there’s never going to be consensus among subscribers. One comment in the survey explicitly suggested they wished we focused more on scripted content, which struck me as odd given that we’ve only ever covered one reality show (Survivor, which returns in February). And so I’m sure that person will be upset that we’re expanding our reality coverage to an additional franchise, but the subscribers who specifically join to talk Survivor will likely appreciate the opportunity to continue those conversations to another show.

To me, balance is the right word. I like that this winter sees us covering two broadcast sitcoms alongside some more prestigious streaming dramas, and that our concluding coverage of a classic teen drama sits alongside our take on the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s TV wing. The survey does remind us that the balancing act has its flaws: niche shows often don’t have a strong “return on investment” in the grand scheme of things, but I know it’s important to find space to reflect on those shows (and I’d have likely covered more of them in weekly newsletters in the last six months if not for some work commitments making those more challenging to produce). I’m looking forward to going over that survey data in more detail in the months ahead as we look to the spring and summer.

And thus concludes my quarterly navel-gazing designed to help you understand that our lineup is the result of a human process, and that I hope you’ll consider supporting the humans who will bring it to your inboxes over the next few months with a paid subscription.

New and Returning Coverage

As always, plans are subject to change. There may be additional coverage added in March, for instance, as we get more release dates and screeners for new series.

The Traitors (Myles McNutt, January 9)

After shifting to a weekly drop in its second-season, Peacock’s reality celebrity-cast take on the Dutch format became a bona fide sensation, capping off its run with an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Competition program. And after spending some time last year reflecting on the show in newsletters, I figure it’s time to offer some weekly reactions to the most compelling broken reality show on TV.

The O.C. (Classic) (LaToya Ferguson, January 13)

I know that we’ve got another Episodic Classics show that’s been on hiatus for a while, but I don’t like to leave a project this close to completion for too long, and so LaToya Ferguson is back to talk cage-fighting and the Taylor Townsend Era with the teen drama’s redemptive fourth season. She’ll cover the shorter season over six weeks.

Severance (Myles McNutt, January 17)

Subscribers have been getting my nearly three-year-old reviews of season one on a weekly basis leading up to this, so it should be no surprise that our coverage of Severance will return. Based on the Apple TV+ charts, lots of people have been catching up in advance of the premiere, and so I’m excited to puzzle through the show with y’all.

Mythic Quest (Les Chappell, January 29)

Another show with a lengthy hiatus—you can tell because it’s all the way to the right on our header—returns for a fourth season, with Les Chappell stepping in to consider the next stage in the comedy’s take on the gaming industry.

Yellowjackets (Ben Rosenstock, February 14)

It’s hard to know precisely where this Showtime drama sits culturally after a rocky second season, but the discourse is likely to continue either way as the show returns from a lengthy hiatus of its own. Ben Rosenstock returns to cover the third season on Valentine’s Day.

The White Lotus (Ben Rosenstock, February 16)

Speaking of lengthy hiatuses—gosh, it’s almost like there’s a trend here—the Mike White anthology-but-not-quite-because-he-keeps-bringing-back-characters returns for a third season, this time with recent Emmy nominees Walton Goggins and Carrie Coon. Ben Rosenstock does double duty this winter, returning to coverage he first offered on the site back in 2022.

Daredevil: Born Again (Caroline Siede, March 4)

From the time Netflix brought Charlie Cox’s Daredevil into the MCU, the idea of reviving the longest-running Netflix Marvel series for Disney+ was on the table, but it took a dramatic mid-production reset before Feige and company figured it out. Caroline Siede continues her ongoing coverage of the MCU projects.

Ongoing Coverage

• Abbott Elementary (LaToya Ferguson)

• St. Denis Medical (Caroline Siede)

• Survivor (Myles McNutt)

Episodic Calendars

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