As ive said in regards to both Walking Dead and Lost, many of these ultra-serialized shows have an achilles heel in that wherever you point out the show as jumping the shark or shitting the bed or whatever phrase, from reading on here and elsewhere, it almost always correlates to the point in the show where you caught up to realtime episodes, stopped watching 5 episode blocks, and waited each week for each episode. I found s4 to be kind of wheel turning, yes, but i was also waiting a week for each one. compared to earlier seasons, it doesnt move THAT much more slowly or have that much more exposition and plot meanderings, it just feels that way because taking an isolated 40 min block, nothing much gets resolved, so you're left kind of unsatisfied. It's not until you can engorge several episodes worth of arcs and subplots that you get a sense of 'yes that was good'.
I caught up to Lost at the beginning of season 6, and im like wtf this is so tedious. Now granted, the show had been tedious for a while, but i didnt notice bcause tediousness and lack of resolution doesn't bother you when you have just one more ep right after it.
Same with Walking Dead. I marathoned both s1 and s2 in chunks, and enjoyed it immensely. I am specifically avoiding watching the back half of s2 until i watch several eps in a row, so i don't succumb to the wheelspinning of trying to fit a large story into 40 minute chunks.
Lots of the hyperbole thrown around about BSG and how it goes downhill, are IMO colored by people's first impressions, having caught up with the show somewhere around its zenith (end of s2 maybe?) and lost the momentum of big immersive blocks of television.
