According to things I've read the story is supposed to pick up for the second half of season 4. We will see.

Yeah pretty much that. It is still in the middle of season 4, but apparently there is some intermission now. They just wanted to make sure I come back after a couple of months to see the rest of the season.

But frankly, this is why I overall prefer movies to TV series, even if the latter are nowadays also made with big money and big actors. Movies usually have a concrete start, middle and ending, and don't try to drag it out forever. Ok, the Resident Evil: Afterlife that I saw on TV a couple of days ago seemed to end in a cliffhanger, just like the earlier Resident Evil movies? But at least they killed the baddie of the movie.

I was overall surprised how much I enjoyed that "yet another Resident Evil" movie. I guess it was empty, but quite stylish, in a way that I like. Or maybe it is because I liked to watch the actress who was playing Claire (Ali Larter, checked the name from IMDB).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005123/?ref_=tt_cl_t2

This really depends on a show.

I would never trade The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Spartacus, Fringe and many, many others for all movies in the world.

Well written tv shows use the time they have efficiently. You can write much more complex, detailed and interesting stories and characters in 50 hours than you can in 2 hours movie screen time.

And lately many movies run no longer than 1h30min!

If you asked me, I'd definitely prefer TV shows than films.

Still about Walking Dead: considering what a serious drama it is, I still have hard time getting over how silly the whole zombie thing is. Some other zombie series/movies have tried to make at least some more sense to the idea (like that the zombies do eventually die of hunger, if they really get nothing to eat for a very long time), but those Walking Dead zombies... meh.

I think those couple British zombie movies were quite good, 28 Day Later etc. I didn't have the same problem with them.

This actually makes it more stupid than less, becuase that would mean entire digestive system of zombies work, so zombies eat, digest and poop like normal people.

And that their bloodstream would have to work normally. And cells would get energy from processed food. Then rotting away makes no sense at all.

Not to mention, in this case killing a zombie only by shooting it in the head makes no sense either.

No. Zombies work on magic, end of story. Every attempt of explanation only makes the things worse.

Now I remember that some TV series got it right, by intentionally restricting the show to only a certain number of episodes, even without further seasons.

Those TV series feel like movies which are just divided into several sections. They still have a meaningful end, and it always feels the whole series is aiming to that climax, and not just dragging it out to fill episodes.

I think "Rome" was a good example (it had two seasons, but it always felt to me the whole story was mostly thought out fully already when they started shooting the first season), and I also recall certain British TV series from the late 80s or so where two agents were trying to find something about some hazy dealings with an UK nuclear station or something, and the protagonist (agent) kept being haunted by his dead daughter who had been some kind of activist dealing with the same nuclear station, and died while doing that.

Still, it worked for me in e.g. 28 Days Later (IIRC). I think they have to put a limit to somewhere, like those separated zombie heads in Walking Dead which apparently keep making noises forever. Well, if it was a supernatural show, but Walking Dead already made the mistake of giving it sort of scientific explanation during the first season, I think.

But I guess it is part of the drama that if you become a zombie, you would be eternally just doing something (even if you were a mere head anymore), until someone puts a hole into your head.

Anyways...

grab "Blink" the first series (hell all the series so far) of new who have had some REALLY bad episodes but also some very good ones to make up for it... the show evens out at slightly above average per series... but only just at times (I'm looking at you end of Tennant specials)

Star Wars.
The universe is fine, but the movies ..... well. Yeah I know it's not a show per se.

Doctor Who is like watching a book of short stories - some of them extremely innovative, fun or just playful, while others utterly terrible. The show keeps toying around with different themes and elements, which is always risky - but with a payoff that comes in the form of some episodes that I'll just never forget.

This ^
The general consensus (read : easy rule to get the best ones) is that Moffat did the best episodes in the whole lot (from the impressions I gathered and mine)

I haven't watched Mad Men, but I think an important part of why a work of fiction can be considered good is when it manages to make you interested in a subject matter or the life of people you did not care for before giving it a try. So if you want to find out if something is good and why, you first have to give it a try and see if it can draw you in despite your initial disinterest.

(Not refering to you directly, maybe you have given it a try and did not like it, just speaking in general and out of personal experience.)

Ain't nobody got time for that!

House - the same plot in every episode - random dude/lass has random disease which at first noone can identify, then Dr. House sends the team to investigate, they have 2 wrong guesses, then the third one works. End of story.

You forgot rectal bleeding / seizures after second wrong diagnosis.

Ah yes, how could I forget that :).