Part of the problem is that Netflix doesn’t care about viewers tuning out, since its model isn’t just based on rapid binge-watching. The streaming service cares more about subscribers, not viewer data, so if audiences lose interest, they can take as long as they want to catch up on Luke Cage—as long as they keep paying their subscription fee every month. This is a much more freeing creative model than the classic network-TV approach. The latter pits shows against each other in ratings free-for-alls and demands big twists from dramas and a return to the comfortable status quo from comedies to keep people coming back week after week. The network-TV model, which depends on new viewers being able to pick up a series midway through a season, can be the enemy of serialization.

Meanwhile, the longer-form approach lets a show like Luke Cage thrive in its details, with its villains Cottonmouth (beautifully played by Mahershala Ali) and Mariah Dillard (a commanding Alfre Woodard) spouting long, open-ended monologues about the history and future of Harlem to each other. But a comic-book series needs its villains to have real plans and purpose beyond perpetuating crime. Four episodes into Luke Cage, there isn’t much for the show’s hero to fight, just vague, foreboding menace and street-level criminals to bust up.

Daredevil and Jessica Jones were also small-scale tales of heroism centered on Manhattan, and both gave in to many of the same indulgences as Luke Cage. Lengthy flashbacks deepened each hero’s origin and backstory, and supporting members of the ensemble got whole adventures to themselves, even though some of this material felt like a desperate effort pad out a 13-episode season. Daredevil’s second season couldn’t repeat the origin of Matt Murdock’s superpowers, so instead it committed itself to recounting his college years and his romance with the femme fatale Elektra. A lot of this detail was good, but it could have been considerably compressed—none of the Marvel Netflix series, so far, would have lost much by being squeezed into 10 episodes, or even 8.

If Netflix shaved the 60-minute running time down quite a bit, it would likely inspire more economical—and better—storytelling from its shows. Emboldened by the advertising-free revolution of HBO dramas like The Sopranos and The Wire, prestige series have come to see 60 minutes as a standard running time for an episode. As I’ve previously written, this makes binging shows on streaming networks (like Bloodline, Sense8, Orange Is the New Black, and The Path) that much more of a daunting proposition. For comic-book TV, that length feels even more absurd—the typical comic issue runs only 22 pages, so why not divide the story into bite-sized chunks? Luke Cage episodes could easily be 45 minutes long, or even 30.