Shooting is at a premium in the NBA. Gone are the days where teams play multiple lumbering bigs incapable of hitting from outside the paint, and for good reason. Shooting breathes space into offenses, opening up passing and drive lanes and significantly increasing the pressure opposing defenses feel when scrambling in rotation. Players that can’t shoot are becoming rarer and rarer, particularly among perimeter options. But several of the NBA’s top contenders have found smart ways to fit guards who are ineffective shooters into their rotations.

When Danielle receives a message from her husband at Happy Valley, it’s a small request: her stepson is getting married, and they want her to send a message for the nuptials. It’s an example of something she’s missing by agreeing to return to Mars against her will, and she’s initially more than happy to hit record and send them a perfectly generic set of platitudes about marriage. But then she pauses.

“Progress is never free. There is always a cost.” The narrative maneuver that comes with the end of every season of For All Mankind is a significant burden. We’ve talked about this in the context of the beginning of the next season, which has to deal with the gap in characters’ lives as we pick things up years after the fact. However, it also means that whatever narrative momentum a finale is going to generate, the actual end of that episode is going to be a gesture to the future that has to serve as both an epilogue to the story that just finished and a hint at a potential path should the show be renewed for another season.

In the third episode of Ted Lasso’s second season, Keeley is explaining bantr to the players as she ropes them into her side hustle doing PR for the new app. As she points out how the app spells its name, Colin pipes in “Oh, like grindr,” and Keeley briefly raises her eyebrow before going on with her explanation. Two episodes later, bantr was the team’s main sponsor, and Colin…well, Colin was back into the ranks of AFC Richmond’s midfield, offering an occasional one-liner as necessary.

As season orders have shortened, the burden placed on ephemeral story arcs has increased. In a 22-episode season of a sitcom, a four-episode story arc would be a blip on the radar—in a 12-episode season of a streaming dramedy, it’s a full third of the story being told. If you are going to invest a third of a character or a team’s story around a temporary presence, then it needs to generate meaningful momentum and leave a mark on the characters involved.