[El_Phil]

On the (possible) plus side. A long season means you cannot use the same writers for the entire run (no-one has that many ideas) you might get some consistency.

Something about most US tv which has always annoyed is the massive ups and downs in episode writing/plot quality. Since most of the crew will change between first and last episode the production style is going to change as well.

And finally AT you should be glad you don't live in the UK where we have 'series' of about half a dozen shows not 'seasons'.