I understand that -- I'd rather call a show that's too tightly written "overwritten" (which a lot of modern comedies are, e.g., Modern Family, and the occasional episode of 30 Rock). I don't like that either.

What I'm saying is that several scenes in season four just keep going on past their natural end. When an episode had to be twenty-one minutes long, they didn't have this problem. On the other hand, several episodes from season three would have improved from being only fifteen minutes long after cutting out the slideshows....